The Stairs Beyond The Basement (Grey Basement)
When the crisp air of the outside world drifted through the windows above the clouds, I could dream long hours, and explore. There it was again, the house with the basement. In this dream it was brightly lit. The sun was outside, and the interior all concrete.
Two large rooms and the grey color was as bland as one would expect. Non-eventful and even forgetful. Again more stairs into further depths under the house. I only went as far as the first two sets of stairwells this time. There seemed to be something down there. However the impression I felt was that as I avoided it, it avoided me.
I tried to grasp things in these rooms, to set up 'markers' but couldn't seem to move in the same way as I would when I was awake and I had to re-establish the movement in this place because there was a slight fog and it made the atmosphere thicker somehow. The markers were for but one purpose, and that was to have recall or some recollection to mark that way back, if I should go venturing into the dark.
I stopped before the door, then I thought of when I was outside I'd go through cities and towns that I knew and everything had changed. I'd search endlessly, just going in circles, round to the same points. Thousands of miles and going much too fast to pick up on small details that I knew were there. Areas themselves would still be as I remembered from somewhere else before, but there was change. There was always a different 'light' and something else was marked. Perhaps by someone else.
So I stood by the grey basement door and I thought how odd that these other places always changed to such a degree that there were no recollections of them that I could name. That not even the furniture and other objects could be in the slightest of corners of memory. But I still remembered them and couldn't figure why I knew the place.
I backed away from the basement door. The door was open but the other passageway below was locked tight with iron bolts. I searched the house and went outside and everything was all wrong, all bent, all distorted. I traveled through the ways outside, out in the light but there died in me the desire to find whatever it was I started to seek. I would go on like some aimless robotic dreamer with no goal. No markers. All these changed familiar places.
I looked back and yet I was glad that I was on the other side of the outer structure rather than on the inside where iron bolts held what, to me, felt like death. The grey basement faded and was no longer 'marked'.
Regarding “ to grasp things in these rooms, to set up 'markers'”,not in my dreams, but for a long time now I have enjoyed a technique of doing this very thing through the use of something called “cat eyes”...yes(smile), I thought you may like and appreciate that one... These are a 3D element of highly reflective material taped to a very small elongated post extending from a thumbtack type end. These are easily push-pinned into trees, branches or anything a thumb tack would go into, and when even a very small amount of light contacts them from almost any direction they light up like a small signal flare. Often, one quick burst of light will illuminate an entire trail of these at once allowing for a fairly rapid transit even on the darkest of nights. Sometimes used as a way to back track as you were seeking to employ here, or used as a pre-set way to navigate to a known source, general set up during the light of day as the easiest transit path to a specific destination.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if those could be brought with you in your dreams, but hopefully could be employed to travel areas like this in the future. If so or not, I’d love to travel those paths with you ;)
As an aside, these reflective “targets” I’ve utilized to perform photogrammetry, which is an old technique first used during the Civil War timeframe from hot air balloons, but there is an entirely new system born out of the use of these targets that have enabled crucial verification measurements be taken of some rather important shapes let’s say...
*enabled crucial verification measurements be taken of some rather important shapes let’s say...*
DeleteLike what?
Reflectors that needed to meet very strict dimensional tolerances at all temperatures, but especially at very low Kelvin temperatures as our thermal models predicted we would encounter at LaGrange Point 2, for instance.
DeleteThese reflectors we made out of very low cte material to not change shape when changing temperature to extremes, and they were very large and needed to also be very lightweight as well. Oh, and they had to be very closely matched in dimension to one another also. Always fun trying to meet multiple opposing requirements... Requires using a lot of tricks out of the toolbox.
DeleteThese reflectors though were just one set of elements that were part of differencing assemblies we designed and built.