Dana Levin
About Staircases
1.
To be human is to reflect upon your position in space: on a roof it’s called Seeking, in a basement Paranoia—especially with a telescope. On the leather couch, behind the blue door, one in a row down a long white hallway, windows chicken-wired glass: thirty years ago I told Dr. C, I feel like I’m being haunted by my four-year-old self, I feel like I’m being haunted—inside my body. Jury-rigged staircases, one atop the other, in my psych-room construct inside body: on the roof it’s called Save Me, in the basement Don’t Kill Me—up and down, the
ghost-child raged. Thinking then,
Inconsolable Escher—You never wanted to climb
the fucking stairs, ever.
2.
To be human is to try and change your position in space: Hide-n-Seek, King of the Mountain, all the drugs I did to stay awake inside dreams—Elevators, the philosopher wrote, do away with the heroism of climbing; no longer is there virtue in living up near the sky. In mythology class, we discuss ambition: the falling boy, his melted wings—late night dorm room pot-cloud question: how many human means of ascension? D. lost interest,
took up his guitar—
money, beauty, talent, force.
3.
Could change be achieved by contesting your position in space? The brave ones tried it: climbing into trees marked for clear-cut, refusing to move to the back of the bus. What we experience as conflict, the mythographer wrote, the Great Mother perceives as parts rearranging—her aim is Harmony, but was harmony possible in a kingdom of ladders, where there was always a foot coming down
on a neck? A poet asks: What would be a horizontal
notion of progress? (wider and wider
rings of kindness—)
4.
In a movie, a man repents murder by climbing to the top of Amazonian falls, lugging in a net his suit of armor. And when one of the priests, after hours of watching him slog through mud, lifts a machete and hacks the ropes —well it feels so true: how our liberated man tries to dive for the armor. But I’m thinking now about letting it go. About Georges Guetary in An American in Paris, singing “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.” In top hat and tails. On stairs that light up when pressed by a toe. He climbs between dancers descending in rivers, dancers who swan, diaphanous, down — once, a war was over and the stairs were lit: such
going up and down
with flourish—