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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The Newtown Pentacle 
If people had their brains in jars, how would they mate?
georgetheatheist . . . heeba hobba
December 19, 2023 at 12:19 pm
Dont kink shame, George
Mitch Waxman
December 19, 2023 at 12:20 pm
Yes, many years ago – roughly 50 to be more exact – and on my birthday, I went down three flights of steps just like those, carrying the garbage from the kitchen of the rooming house I was living in while a student at Ohio State. Coming back up, without the garbage, a cat went up the stairs ahead of me and I could not help thinking how the cat could slip between those open risers and fall. I broke into a sweat and when I reached the second landing, I could go no further. I sat down and considered my options – go back down and around to the front of the house and start ringing the doorbell and hope someone answered before too long or get up and carry on upwards before darkness descended. I finally chose the latter option and forced myself up.
Theresa
December 20, 2023 at 12:31 am
Similar effect on me, excepting it manifests as shooting pains in my legs. Friends walking the Queensboro bridge with me in the ’60s would laugh at me for refusing to look down – the outer lane walkway was see-through grating. Ugh.
dbarms8878
December 21, 2023 at 6:43 pm
Catching up on unread posts, I ran into those stairs! The 1st photo just made them look awfully long and awfully unpleasant; the contextual follow-up shot . . . well, yikes! Extremely height-unfriendly here, and I can’t imagine descending that whole staircase. The tingling I get is in my feet, esp toes.
Kenneth Furie
December 27, 2023 at 2:22 pm