Considering how central oil is to our daily lives, it’s easy to forget that most of us rarely see actual oil. Maybe on a paper towel if you check your oil before a long road trip or in the rainbow sheen on the water surface by a boat launch. Our engine oil is dealt with by mechanics who dispose of it for a fee. We hardly ever see the gasoline (an oil derivative) that goes into our cars since it goes from the pump to our tanks; if it sees the light of day, it’s because we’ve been clumsy. Even before we get to the gas station, gasoline is pumped from tanker trucks into the ground tanks below. Unless your job regularly requires it, if you’re looking directly at oil or gasoline, it usually means that something has gone very wrong.

It is easy to forget that time exists differently for people than it does for other species and ecosystems. (If you’re not following me, think about dog years. A human day is like a dog week; a human year is like 7 dog years.) It doesn’t help that our man-made economic systems are the most prevalent keepers of time today—and also the most destructive force on the planet. 

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term liminality, you’re definitely familiar with the experience. French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep’s concept of liminality is an experience of existing simultaneously on both sides of a boundary–existing inside of a transition.