Gaganendranath Tagore, Meeting at the Staircase, 1920-1925

Stairs going down, so many stairs, so far down is the instinct I had last week for this week's Zephyr. I wanted to see lots of stairs, and for them to collaborate and tunnel on down somewhere— who knows where—but down, down, down and that's all I knew and all I know as we set out today

I do feel satisfaction on more than one front that there's an XXLarge, Going-Down-themed story in the news. But we're not discussing current events. Current events are up top and we are going down.

                   swoop down      meet here at this alleyway  and go inside  to go down more

this brutal stairway is the one I'm craving so good and blocky and unyielding not that stairways should ever be yielding yikes—although, quick trip down

                   If I were a superhero and could switch powers at will, change them like outfits, today I would shrink down— okay, wait, first, my actual superhero outfit not the metaphor, the LOOK for the metaphor: gray coveralls, a black watch cap and pitch-black, high-heeled boots (I can't wear them in life—my hip!—but I gotta signal glamour for this thing and if I'm a 1/4" tall superhero I am not required to have the bad hip of my daily life)  like I was saying, I would shrink down to 1/4" and sneak inside people, way down into their far bellies. I'd be wearing a backpack. Inside that backpack would be my- is it a weapon? It wouldn't be to hurt anybody IT'S A VACUUM, VERY HIGH-POWERED   and I'd use it to pull their attention down from the outside world and their daily brain chatter into their subconscious and their shadow selves find out what's driving them beneath their conscious knowledge VWOOOOOOOOOM down there in my boots and hat aiming up, sucking down VWOOOOOOOOOM  it's your time, citizen

I wouldn't try and make anybody do something I wouldn't do. I've had some good looks at the freak show within. There's still plenty left uncharted but I've traveled in there on purpose quite a bit over the last year in particular, rappelled on down there with a flashlight and some anti-nausea meds.  I saw some things.  Without bombarding you with too many details, I can give you some gentler glimpses.

SHADOW TOWN

*the desire to be much smaller and/or much bigger than I am i.e. super helpless baby with no bones getting carried around or merciless dominator who will happily blot out the sun for all other beings if it means I get more Vitamin D  *a creature who drinks her own tears like expensive brandy and then puts on a triumphantly tragic ballet, some real virtuoso action, all for her own pleasure, I AM THE SADDEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL, THE BEST AT IT <whirls into space>   *an elegant, terrifying black hole of a wolf man in a cape who wants to intimidate everyone in the room, and only after they show him respect does he relax and smile without the threat of murder-eating all the people  *a hearty, goofy peasant who enjoys being as poor as possible: you get pleasant, trustworthy company + no guillotine! so no money, please, nope, keep it, bye-bye  *a blobby creature in the cozy basement of a turret (this is my subconscious, where turrets stand alone at street level and have basements) who ignores the sound of breaking glass and invasion and fire and violence up on the main floor, safe and far down where no one knows she's there, eating pudding and pastries and whipped cream and sweets and things with buttery crusts and what is going on up there? sounds bad, maybe nazis, chomp chomp chomp pie chomp   It gets worse, of course. I haven't told you the freakiest, most shameful bits. We're in a newsletter.   

fresh air break

back in

I do invite you to go down and take frequent, freaky, extended looks. You will be both more and less horrifying to yourself than you think, and you can take it. People can go on for their whole lives without knowing what they have stashed away. It's an option. It's popular. Overly popular. We're having a reckoning here on Earth, no? What we have sitting unexamined deep inside us is running amok above ground and what we don't want to look at likes to show up in some form and make us look at it anyway. Might as well, then. You never want to fight a reckoning. It's not beautiful and it never works. I've found this out the hard way so many times and—knowing how slippery, baroque, and obtuse I am— I probably will again. Sigh.  So. Go first, go down, go hard, meet it at the source.

Say I'm game, Tina. What's the mechanism? If things are hidden, they're smart at staying hidden, no?

Yes. Casual effort isn't going to work. You have three good doors, though: Dreams, aversions, fears.

1. dreams write them down every night every morning, every middle of the night whenever you catch one, write it down I use the Notes app on my phone these days you'll remember them better, much better, and they'll start talking to you far more interestingly I promise and even flat-out guarantee but you can't half-ass it write them all the hell down even if they're fragments/stupid "i saw a bread bag for a second, the end" It'll get cool if you keep going It'll also get wild 

2. aversions (to people, creatures, experiences, yourself) identify and interrogate as many as you can what what what why be brave and go into granular detail what else does it remind you of see if any tenderness gets roused for anything you see it might & that's great   3. fears of the bad things, sure—follow them out as far as you can but why does that scare me what about that scares me and what's the scary part about that et cetera until you run into a wall and can't say anything else but also of the good things we're frightened of many good things because they're trojan horses full of secret, subtle, not-so-subtle, freaky things we hate so find out what those are maybe you fear that special people you love will resent you if good things happen? maybe you fear that you'll be able to afford a string of expensive, unflattering haircuts and you'll just get them, over and over and over  bring all those fears up into the light you're full of 1000 weird ones, just like I am  

Okay, I see. That's it, that's what the stair thing was about.   These sunlit stairs are now stairs going up. I'm not going to leave you in a hole.

Be free

photo attribution o'clock, top to bottom

the green, wild, mountainside one: Geran de Klerk  the blue stairs: Chris Lao  the concrete ones I was so into: Keith Camilleri  sexy red escalator: Jon Tyson  reclining moss monkey stairs: Marcus Löfvenberg  spiral, sienna: Alexandru Acea  elegant curve w/metal handrails ("those handrails were so metal"): Serhat Beyazkaya  white stairs, walls: Sunyu  peru: Eduardo Flores  all from the fine website Unsplash