My Two-Cents: Limbo (Not the Dance)

I vividly remember the first time I watched the movie Beetlejuice. It was at an elementary school sleepover. The idea of the “waiting room” struck a chord with my childish brain. I didn’t grow up Catholic, so the concept wasn’t brushed over in Sunday school, and this Beetlejuice showing was the first introduction to the concept of a waiting room purgatory -- or “limbo” if you will.

Now, before I continue, I must admit that I have not watched Beetlejuice since that showing many years ago. Michael Keaton gave me the heebie-jeebies. I mostly just remember the waiting room scene. This past summer, I felt myself in a situation similar to this room– floating in limbo, a transition period in life. 

After graduating college, I moved back home for a couple of months until I started the next endeavor. I’m not going to elaborate on all the jubilation I’ve felt towards living with my parents and younger brothers for the past two months. Mostly because you can’t elaborate on something that doesn’t exist. But my time at home has felt much like limbo – I have a past to reminisce on and a destination to dream about. But all that's in the present is waiting.

Limbo feels kind of like standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing sooner or later, it’ll be time to jump. It feels like laying in the pool, looking up at the sun, and dipping half your head under to the point that your ears fill with water and the sounds around you go muffled and dull. The best literature definition of limbo could be attributed to Sylvia Plath’s olive tree analogy in The Bell Jar – 

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Limbo isn’t good or bad, but rather time’s equivalent of grey. Not everything can be pre and post event. Not everything can be part of the sentence – limbo is the grammatical carrot you use to add an excerpt to a sentence that isn’t quite complete. It’s the waiting room. It’s the second Beetlejuice in the chant. Not the first. Not the last. But part of the incantation none-the-less. A time when the sound around you muffles. It’s also a good time to sit back, maybe learn a new card game (mine was cribbage), and enjoy the wait before you’re on to the next endeavor.