The Stairs

Spring isn't exactly here, but it's close. You catch a glimpse of it on an almost-bud on a tree, a few struggling snowdrops beginning to bloom under the tree in the front yard, in the scarf you lost (or I did) because it wasn't tied tightly to your bag...

I was walking down Astor Place, here in Jersey City - the major difference between NYC's Astor place and this starts with the fact that if your pants were ripped it wasn't because you bought them that way.

So I was walking and I was noticing (because my eyes weren't squinched tight against the cold- another glimpse of spring) ...stairs. The shapes. The character each had- the subtle color and strong shape, basically unnoticed, even when the escalator isn't working.

Strangely enough and totally unconnected I had just read something about stairs. Written by a middle-aged man.

"The stairs were all worn so that you had to put your feet where everybody else put theirs when they went up. Every step had two spots, both along the side, where the wood was about an inch lower than it was in the middle and at the end of the steps. Sometimes to be different I'd walk right up the center of the steps where nobody ever did."

John Kennedy Toole wrote that when he was 15. At 30 he killed himself after writing "A Confederacy of Dunces" and left Ignatius Reilly as his legacy.

Maybe reading that made me look at the character of steps. Think about where others had walked and the path they wore there. That there is the world of the past written in footsteps, cracks, watermarks and ivy on the stairs.


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