Stairs

[poliphilo]

Alfred Hitchcock loved staircases. They're everywhere in his work. Suspicion, Vertigo, Psycho, Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot (I'm only listing movies I've seen recently) all feature important and/or climactic sequences involving stairs.

Nothing is more suspenseful (and Hitchcock's business was suspense) than a person on the stairs. Ooh, don't go up there! Ooh, don't go down there! Stairs are transitional. Uncanny. In Limbo. As Christopher Robin says of
his special place halfway down the stairs-

"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

Unsurprisingly a lot of hauntings focus on staircases. You lie in bed and hear the footsteps come creaking up- to stop (if you're lucky) just outside your bedroom door. One of Hans Holzer's "true" stories has a woman turning on the stairs to see the bloodstained figure of a man below her reaching out his hand for help.

I remember crouching at the top of the stairs to hear my mother and father arguing at the bottom. "You are the most selfish person I have ever known," she said. In that moment I realized that they and I were separate. They could tear one another to pieces and it didn't have to affect me. My heart stopped hammering and I felt peaceful. I had a soul of my own. There were stairs between us.

My grandmother told me of a flight of stone steps going down to the river in her home town of Maidstone. Folklore said that it you climbed it 13 times you would be doused with a bucket of blood. Of course, no-one had ever actually put this to the test...

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

rebirth- renewal. Would that make sense

Yes, and it was also about, I think, my dad--I never felt I could connect with him. I never felt I could please him. And it seemed I always irritated him.

I remember now that I hit him with a stick, and it transformed him into a living being, but harmless and vulnerable, not that horribly unapproachable, dead Wooden Man.

At the time of my dream I was beginning therapy to deal with my marriage at last. The dream reached back farther, to my sad relationship with my father.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My father crops up in my dreams quite a bit. The last one I remember he was breezing through the house, singing cheerily, and I roared at him to "Shut up!"

I don't quite understand it. There are many times I should, perhaps, have shouted at him- but because of his silence, not because he was too forthcoming.

It sounds like our fathers were somewhat alike.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

There are many times I should, perhaps, have shouted at him- but because of his silence, not because he was too forthcoming.

That was the barrier for me--the endless light politeness, nothing real ever said, no gloves ever off, no real honesty. He and I might have been strangers.

Forcing real meaning into a relationship is hard--you yelled "Shut up!" and I hit my Wooden Man with a stick, both to force a reaction, I guess.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My father was very withdrawn. There was no deep connection, but neither was there any light banter.

My sister managed him better. She stayed close to home and compelled him to have a relationship with her.

I, on the other hand, fled to the furthest corner of this too-tiny island.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

"Withdrawn" is the worst.

If someone's mad, you can yell back. If they're polite and surface all the time, at least they're trying.

"Withdrawn" feels neutral, like nothing--how can you find a way in?

I'm sorry.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

He and I had something like a reconciliation the very last time we met. He was quite ill and said how it was maybe time for him "to take a walk in the woods."

Most of the time I think of him fondly.