Oct 05 21
The alarm surprised us back into the room where we already were. A familiar nightmare had been playing out: we were young, alone and frightened on a spiral staircase. In these dreams it is always night, we are in bed clothes (about the age of 7) and are past the middle point of the interior curving steps of some sort of decrepit mansion or castle. We are pressed back to wall panic-stricken. The staircase is not of the cast iron, free-standing, Victorian sort, but walled-in (no windows) a sort of dark architectural cylinder, with a deep hollow center. We are possessed of a few terrifying feelings that keep us stuck, the first is, that to go back down would be to revisit the horror that we just extricated ourself from; whereas to go up, spiraling into shadow, would be be to encounter whatever eldritch entity awaits there. But to stay provides no comfort either as we inherently mistrust the soundness of the construction — a step in either direction, or the weight of staying put, could bring it all crashing down.
The dream is based in reality, as a fear of heights and a specific fear of spiral staircases persisted through our early life. We hated these formations on a sort of principle — they didn’t appear to have any real support. Where you currently stood was above where you just were, and where you just were, you saw no bracing or underpinning — just the thin underside of reverse stairs upwardly winding into the unknown. And this horrible understanding marks the entirety of these troubled helixes. Simply, the spiral staircase was a manifestation of an insecure past, an insecure present and an insecure future.
Obviously we have advanced in our understanding of general engineering — but it is the theme of the fear that still holds, and why the metaphor persists in our dreams. The terror of the spiral staircase will not abate; we know what’s happened behind us — but what is ahead? Like, what awaits a society willingly relinquishing itself to for-profit, private social media and news corporations? And all the other stuff beyond the dark curve. 🌀😅🤞
The dream is based in reality, as a fear of heights and a specific fear of spiral staircases persisted through our early life. We hated these formations on a sort of principle — they didn’t appear to have any real support. Where you currently stood was above where you just were, and where you just were, you saw no bracing or underpinning — just the thin underside of reverse stairs upwardly winding into the unknown. And this horrible understanding marks the entirety of these troubled helixes. Simply, the spiral staircase was a manifestation of an insecure past, an insecure present and an insecure future.
Obviously we have advanced in our understanding of general engineering — but it is the theme of the fear that still holds, and why the metaphor persists in our dreams. The terror of the spiral staircase will not abate; we know what’s happened behind us — but what is ahead? Like, what awaits a society willingly relinquishing itself to for-profit, private social media and news corporations? And all the other stuff beyond the dark curve. 🌀😅🤞