Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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It's striking to me how one can get a sense of relative isolation even when objectively close to other people. Perhaps it's precisely because we're so used to being hemmed in by other people nowadays that even a little bit of separation makes an impression. I used to go running at a park by my house. Objectively it was probably only half a mile wide at its widest point and maybe 3 miles end to end. It was bracketed by the interstate on one side and a suburbs on the other 3 sides. During the day there were usually other people there and you could always hear the noise of the highway whatever the time. And yet, the way the network of trails I ran on twisted in and out of the trees and back on each other, it felt much more expansive than it was, and I often felt quite remote from other people - particularly around dusk. It made such an impression on me that I wrote a little bit of weird fiction inspired by it.
This finally made the “liminal spaces” thing click for me. I’ve never understood how anyone could find an empty or abandoned space scary (aside from concerns about deranged homeless people or animals, which people have always assured me aren’t what freak them out). Up until now, I’ve always chocked it up to people watching too many zombie movies. But then, I grew up in the country, and I spent a good deal of my childhood traipsing solo through abandoned barns and woods. Today, my nearest neighbor is about 300 yards away, and I sometimes find even that too close. I’m very much not used to being hemmed in by people. But if all you’ve ever known is being surrounded by other people, peaceful, quiet places with no one around must be completely unnerving.
I own a rental house that's on a back road between two gorges tucked in the far corner of our town. So five minutes away in the same zip code you're in solid suburbia, but at this house you're dead alone for a few hundred acres in every direction except for the coyotes.
And it's interesting because when I look for tenants, a large number of people will tell me that they can't live there because it isn't safe, no one is around. Where my reflex is that it's very safe because no one is around. I would have figured that it would be gendered, because I would think it very effeminate to worry about, but a lot of men say so too, expressed as concern about property or women.
It's just fascinating because such fears must be primal, as they are clearly irrational. There's much more to worry about in a city than in the middle of nowhere.
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