a threshold
turning to lessons from the body
The astrological among us already know that today, January 20th, the sun and Pluto are conjunct in Capricorn. This is an astrological moment of a lifetime - while Pluto will return to Capricorn for a brief moment in late fall, this marks a threshold of Pluto moving from Capricorn, where it’s been for the last 16 years, into Aquarius, where it will be for the next 20. These are lifetime events; Pluto is a generational planet.
So we are entering the Age of Aquarius, and there are certainly people with more astrological chops to tell you what the details of all this might mean for you individually and for us as a global community.
But here is what I do know: we have been witnessing the live streaming of a genocide for over 100 days.
That number that only keeps climbing is putting all the other numbers of my life in stark perspective. My book has been out for 10 days - the genocide has been happening 10 times as long. I’ve been visiting with my dear friends for 3 weeks now, the genocide has been happening for more than 15 weeks. I am exhausted by the grief, and I am trying not to fall into hopelessness or despair. I am worried about the political left’s obsession with optics over strategy, and I am beyond tired of hearing liberals make excuses. I do not know what to say about any of this - I’m living and learning through these unprecedented times also. But I also don’t know how to talk about anything else - am I supposed to talk about my book, or these astrological moments, or the weather, and not talk about this?
There is so much I don’t know, and so many emotions I don’t know how to hold. There are huge movements in the planets that I only barely understand. But I do know the body.
The following is an excerpt from my book Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World. It’s been helping me. Perhaps it will help you.
Chapter 13
this is how we widen timeThere’s this liminal space in us. Liminal meaning “in between”. Neither this nor that. From the Latin limen: “a threshold.”
The interstitium is a fluid space between the capillaries and the cells. From the Latin inter, “between,” and sistō, “place.” The between place. The liminal space between the cell and the blood vessel. Whatever the cell needs, or needs to release, travels across this liminal space of the interstitium. The interstitium is the primary source of lymph fluid in the body, and there is twice as much lymph as blood in the body.[i] So while it is entirely possible that you have never heard of the interstitium, or never heard of it as being filled with space or fluid, this is not an insignificant part of you. Like the mesentery, this is big, but our understanding is only just beginning to be wide enough to encompass it.
Until only recently, the interstitium was thought to be a layer of collagen. We could only look at things under a microscope, squeezed flat. Seen in this way, we couldn’t see the space or the fluid it contains. It’s not the first time humans have come to a flawed conclusion because we gathered only partial information.
As technology has improved, we can see what was previously unrecognizable. Recent scientific advances allow us to see with more and more clarity both farther and farther into space and deeper and deeper into the body. We are beginning to see that the universe itself is woven through with what is called the cosmic web: tangles of filaments formed by dark matter that is pulled by gravity.[ii] We are beginning to understand how trees communicate through an underground web of mycelia.[iii] And now we know: there is space between the blood vessels and cells. The interstitial space. It’s supported and given structure by collagen bundles: the same collagen that was squished flat under the microscope.[iv]
Within the space created by these boundaries and structures of the collagen is the interstitial fluid.[v] This interstitial space, the embodied threshold, is fluid. As anyone who’s found any comfort in being on a threshold knows: it’s far easier when we’re willing to be a little fluid with it. Rigidity in the liminal space, in the unknown that comes when we are in between, is awful. Clinging to what we thought we knew, holding tight to the way we think things should be, or bracing against the way we expect things will be, removes us from the permeability of any threshold. The body once more offers a story to guide us: when it feels as though any room for possibility is squeezed dry, we have to return to the fluidity of liminal space, and we can find this fluidity in the space between our cells.
The interstitium isn’t fluid as an afterthought: proteins and hormones and ions move into and out of cells through the interstitial fluid, so this fluidity is central to our very physiology. And although the interstitium is small enough to be imperceptible until only recently, as a whole the interstitium is hardly small. The fluid within the interstitium is approximately 12 percent of our body weight;[vi] if a person weighs 180 pounds, their body holds just over 21 pounds of interstitial fluid. (So as not to always center the imperial form of measurement: if a person weighs 80 kilograms, their body holds approximately 9.6 kilos of interstitial fluid.) So while the interstitium is small, it is also massive.
A study published in 2021 says that there is evidence of a “body-wide network of fluid-filled interstitial spaces” and goes on to show how the fluid within the interstitial space moves throughout the body, across tissue and organ boundaries.[vii] Perhaps then, we can think of the interstitium as like the mycelia of the forest: microscopic as it weaves the whole together.
So the interstitium is showing us: nothing is truly separate from anything else. And it’s showing us: the threshold is a fluid place. Squeeze it dry and you’ll miss it. And it’s showing us: the microscopic can be massive. And it’s showing us: there’s always space; we are woven through with space.
These lessons from the interstitium, from the liminal space in the body, can help bring space into moments that feel constricted. When it feels like time itself is squeezing in around us, we can bring our attention to the interstitium. We can breathe into the space between our cells. We can widen time—at least, our experience of time. And perhaps that’s the same thing. I’ll leave the discussions of what time is truly made of to the physicists and the philosophers. But as embodied poets, we know: we can widen time. When time is constricted, like the interstitium squeezed in the microscope, we miss the truth. When time is wide, the awe gets in.
from Returning Home to Our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke, published by North Atlantic Books, 2024. pg 185-187
[i] James E. Moore Jr. and Christopher D. Bertram, “Lymphatic System Flows,” Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 50 (2018): 459–82, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fluid-122316-045259.
[ii]Erika Hamden, “Observing the Cosmic Web: The Faint Signature of Gas Filaments in the Intergalactic Medium Is Finally Detected,” Science 366:646 (2019), 31–32, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz131.
[iii] Monika A. Gorzelak, Amanda K. Asay, Brian J. Pickles, and Suzanne W. Simard, “Inter-plant Communication Through Mycorrhizal Networks Mediates Complex Adaptive Behaviour in Plant Communities,” AoB Plants 7 (2015), plv050, https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plv050.
[iv] J. Scallan, V. H. Huxley, and R. J. Korthuis, “Chapter 2. The Interstitium,” Capillary Fluid Exchange: Regulation, Functions, and Pathology (San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool, 2010), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53446.
[v] Petros C. Benias, Rebecca G. Wells, Bridget Sackey-Aboagye, Heather Klavan, Jason Reidy, Darren Buonocore, Markus Miranda, Susan Kornacki, Michael Wayne, David L. Carr-Locke, and Neil D. Theise, “Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues,” Scientific Reports 8 (2018), 4947, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23062-6.
[vi] Joshua E. Brinkman, Bradley Dorius, and Sandeep Sharma, “Physiology, Body Fluids,” StatPearls, January 27, 2023, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482447.
[vii] Odise Cenaj, Douglas H. R. Allison, Rami Imam, Briana Zeck, Lilly M. Drohan, Luis Chiriboga, Jessica Llewellyn, Cheng Z. Liu, Young Nyun Park, Rebecca G. Wells, and Neil D. Theise, “Evidence for Continuity of Interstitial Spaces across Tissue and Organ Boundaries in Humans,” Communications Biology 4 (2021), 436, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01962-0.
