The Staircase

Even here, where carpenters took account of each step, the stairs stretch up and away at impossible angles. I am awake, yes? Yes.

The whole thing's untenable, and yet I will take the first step while chatting on the phone and wondering if I can beat the elevator to the next floor. I don't think about what the staircase is doing.

Its confusion hangs together, holding itself against the weight of my gaze, a wobbly puzzle of disparate intersections that surely cannot hold my body, but here I am, up the staircase, bound for another floor, and nothing's collapsed.

Reality knits itself around corners moments before we arrive.

I am dreaming.

Comments

[Rebecca]

This reminds me of an Ursula K. LeGuin short story about relativity and perspective, and the work that objects do all around us to help us maintain a familiar and comforting sense of reality as we move and pass. It is lovely and satisfying work, until cars are invented and rush by at impossible speeds, and the towering oak tree is becoming exhausted with holding up reality for us when we move so heedlessly.

(I would email a scan of it to you, but having emailed you a short essay before, I belatedly realized that emails from unknown people with attachments probably get filtered out as ominous spam...)