If borders mark differences, they do not all do so in the same way. While this has been studied from a range of angles, this has rarely focused on the forms that borders take, both in material and conceptual terms. Most often these days, borders are thought of as lines, or entities related to lines: walls, barriers, fences, perimeters,

edges. Lines always evoke a sense of two sides, and of course, that has been critiqued by scholars who prefer to think in terms of rhizomes, webs, fractals or networks. Others have noted that most borders are experienced as a series of points rather than lines, as such: points at which people, things, animals, cross or fail to cross. Lines only really appear on images of borders – maps, GIS images, aerial photographs.Traces, on the other hand, evoke a sense of time in a way that lines do not: traces are not always visible, or if they are, then they are only a small fragment of the whole entity – the crumbs left from a loaf of bread, the memory of a conversation only half heard. Traces are porous, leave much room for doubt and speculation, and they change over time, perhaps disappearing altogether. Tidemarks perhaps combine lines and traces, mixing the notion of a place in particular with the sense of time passing, in different ways at different moments. A tidemark left by waves in the sand will disappear shortly; one left by spilled coffee seeping into the weft and weave of a white shirt may leave a longer trace. Using the ideas of lines, traces and tidemarks, this contribution is intended to begin a conversation on ‘borderli-ness’.