Archive for December 19th, 2023
Steps, steps, vertigo, steps
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a recent evening’s ‘short walk,’ here in Pittsburgh, I was trying to incorporate all sorts of verticality into my scuttle. Up a set of municipal stairs, and then down another on the other side of the hill. Particular attention is being paid to the joints in the legs, or as I call them – my roadway interface – at the moment.
I regard most of the body as being a meat carriage for carrying around the sensory stalk and central processing unit found dangling off and above my neck, it should be mentioned. The entire apparatus below just supports the brain and handles interaction with the local vicinity. Consciousness, as in what I’d describe as ‘me,’ is found about two and a half inches behind the eyes and betwixt the ears.
More often than not, this roadway interface of mine is more trouble than it’s worth, but there you are. I’d likely be quite happy as a brain in a jar, attached to a networked computer, but that existential horror would definitely prey upon me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This crazy set of steps actually caused me to experience a bit of vertigo while moving downwards, along the rises and runs of the stairs. Vertigo is another one of those bits of vestigial programming we’ve inherited out of ancestral experience, as the proto humans who didn’t have a healthy fear of heights didn’t live long enough to reproduce and pass that trait along to the future. It’s good to be a bit paranoid, as well.
What actually got me ‘razzed up’ was that these otherwise quite sturdy steel steps had gratings, on the ‘run’ or flat section of the steps,’ and you could see right through them to the sidewalk and street below. I get a tingling sensation in my fingertips and the palms of my hand when confronted with great heights. How about y’all?
One grasped those bannisters pretty tightly, I tell’s ya.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is actually from a walk that I took a few nights later, which gives a bit better POV on the steps. The second shot was captured while standing right at the angled ‘join’ at center left. Brrr.
Regardless of lurking fears and ancestral phobias, one gingerly maneuvered the old meat carriage back down to the street level via the steps without overt incident. I walked away, proud as a pony, with a couple of OK photos and a story to tell, so ‘win.’
Back tomorrow.
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