If this is your first time reading Susanne Bacon’s and my feature, Double Take, an explanation is in order. My writing partner, Susanne Bacon, and I select one idea, word, photo, or concept. After agreeing on the single thought and title, we move to our respective secret writing places. During our writing time as our fingers tap on our keyboards, we each discover what words flow from each of us on our chosen Double Take topic.
It is fun to see the take each of us has on the same subject. I am from America. Susanne is from Germany. I am a man, and she is a woman. I am old. She is young. The combination of our differences, especially the personal life experience each of us have accumulated, blend to create two separate takes on our chosen single subject. Thus, Double Take.
For almost a month both Susanne, and I have been short on time and thus short on ideas for our next Double Take feature.
At the last minute, we agreed on an idea for Double Take, which is the photo below. Voila, Double Take.
Susanne and I shared only the photo and the title, Stairs To Nowhere. Let the writing begin.
When I happened upon the lonely stairs, located on Canyon Road East, about a mile south of 72nd Street East, the scene captured my imagination.
I got my camera out without knowing what I was going to do with a photo of this infinitesimal part of our entire globe.
The scene makes my thinker spring into action on four levels.
THINKER LEVEL 1: STATUS & HISTORY:
A variety of thoughts and questions pass through my mind.
How long ago were these concrete steps laid? They remind me of the 1930s and 1940s.
Who built them and why? They look like old house stairs to me.
Who were all the people that lived in the house? What stories would they have to share?
Why were the stairs not demolished when the house was removed?
Were the steps left as a part of a vast cosmic plan designed for only me to discover so Susanne and I would have a Double Take topic? That last stair question naturally leads to, is there a God?
Oh, how I wish steps could talk.
I have driven past this sane location thousands of times during the past 61 years. Still, I cannot, for the life of me, remember anything about the original scene.
THINKER LEVEL 2: IMAGE & CONCEPT:
The stairs are like life. Most of us start at the bottom, and work our way up through a series of steps. We grow up. We complete our education, followed by getting a job. Marriage often comes next, and then children. We buy a house for our newly established family. Working hard and maintaining a good job only years later to be followed by retirement. The last step which the stairs and vacant land depict, is our final step, death.
For some, the stairs to nowhere may parallel their life, which because of adverse circumstances and / or a wrong decision, make them end up nowhere. Life experiences such as divorce, bankruptcy, disability, unemployment, arrest, prison time, lousy health can all be a part of ending up nowhere.
THINKER LEVEL 3: BOTTOM TO TOP OR TOP TO BOTTOM:
For an unexplained reason, my eyes, thoughts, and concepts move from the bottom to the top step and then beyond. There really is not much of a beyond; just grass, trees, and shrubs.
Life can be like that too. Anyone of us can be born with a silver spoon in their mouth. That is like landing on the top step in the beginning. The silver spoon is an image meaning being born wealthy and privileged. Following a wonderfully advantageous start, any human being can throw it all down the stairs because of bad business decisions, a bad marriage, criminal victimization, divorce, or alcohol and drug problems.
Yes, life, like the stairs, can go both ways, up or down.
THINKER LEVEL 4: TURN-A-ROUND:
If we find ourselves down and out, perhaps burdened with a variety of problems, we can turn-a-round and take a step upward, thereby climbing out of our drab and problematic existence.
Our photo shows stairs to nowhere, but stairs can always take you somewhere if you are prepared to take the first upward step.
Care to read Bacon’s Double Take? Click here.
Joe Boyle, author of the Suburban Times’ column “Westside Story”, and Susanne Bacon, novelist and author of the Suburban Times’ column “Across the Fence”, are sharing their thoughts about a variety of topics in their joint project of double features called “Double Take”. Comments are more than welcome, as they know that the world has more than their two angles – the more the merrier.
Awesome topic and your insights! Your analogy of these steps to the steps of life is truly insightful – of how each person progresses (hopefully) up the steps, one milestone at a time. And how one could end up doing a u-turn and regressing down those steps of life, heading the wrong way. But I wonder if the destination – what lies beyond the top step – is actually nothing? It may look like an empty lot with overgrowth from the perspective of the steps, but once there it could be full of hidden gems – maybe even heaven itself.
Your “old” age, and your taking of your own steps of life, have given you many sights that you wonderfully share with us readers. Thanks SO MUCH for sharing!
Judy Price,
Thanks for your wonderfully supportive and encouraging comments.
Your point of view is perceptive. The fact that you say the stairs to nowhere may in fact be leading to somewhere is a concept heavily reinforced by my Double Take writing partner, Susanne Bacon. In her half of our Double Take project, she closes her story with these words, ” Stairs to nowhere are leading us somewhere. Which means nowhere doesn’t exist.”
You two have given me thoughts to ponder.
Joseph Boyle
Stairs to Nowhere is a very intriguing concept. Our imaginations can soar in any direction. As I child growing up in an area rich with early American history I wondered did a Native American ever climb that huge glacial erratic in the park that I wasn’t able to. Did George Washington’s coach clamor over the dirt road I was walking on. Who was the spy that was hung at this corner. Was the battle fought on the ground I walked and lived on.
At Mt Vernon as a child first visiting and walking the path behind the mansion I pictured all the workers and wondered about them along the stables.
Later in life hiking in the Cascades each 500ft climb, then 1,000ft climb brought new geologic wonders to view and when to tired to continue the thought of another view point drove me on. What was at the next turn, the next vista exposing more beauty. Winter or Spring there was always something new every time. The same with life and Joe you phrased it so perfectly beginning to end. This is timely as we ponder the now and future of America
Joan Campion,
Yours are wonderful words to read and to ponder. Thanks for adding to the momentum of my article.
Joseph Boyle
I disagree – it seems to me that it’s a very sane location. Almost a part of nature. Is anyone trying to get a piece of earth back to what it was five hundred years ago? Besides me