Liminal space! Thank you for giving examples of something that, if you think about it, is becoming our reality in the post Covid isolation world. Yesterday I walked down an empty street past empty buildings in Atlanta that used to be busy and bustling. It's not the first time since I moved back to this city that I have done that. Nor is it just happening here. Downtowns are emptying. You can look around and find more and more liminal spaces are around you. Our society is in a transitional stage.

And this is not the first time a transitional stage has happened to a society, place or world. It happens all the time.

It also happens in our brains. Some of the people who go through this may not be able to tell you. I have had hallucinations all my life, and have my faculties and functions pretty well intact, so I can tell you. Sometimes our brains can empty the space we see around us. This can happen to anyone. How many times have you found out something you were looking for was right in front of you? I once entered an empty room. Only to find that a friend I didn't expect to be there was in the center of the room all along! She appeared as soon as she was able to get me to hear her voice, and I realized she was there.

That was the day I knew not seeing something was more than a momentary glitch in my attention. Sometimes my brain can remove things, not just add them, in hallucination.

We have no idea how our brains fully function or disfunction. Nor do we fully understand reality. I appreciate your article very much. I was unable to see or know what to call this phenomenon until now.

PS - BTW, The Sims game also has liminal spaces that happen when loading and unloading games. Now I can think of that as a whole new possibility in how our brains load or unload perception.