Bone Pattern

Following the Map- August 31 to September 1 2014

Okay.  So that was a day.  Couple of days.  I must thank August for that map.  

After I updated my blog last night, I went onto Google Maps to see if I could track down what it might be referring to.  I only had the shape of the streets to go by.  The way two different angles thrust themselves together and resulted in the closest Denver gets to a confusing tangle.  This logical, grid city of mine only fails where two long-ago towns came together.  And it was near this almost-tangle that the map matched.  At 24th and Curtis. There was even a bus stop close by.

I left early yesterday morning.  Before dawn.  Tracking these things down is best done at a liminal time.  Dawn or dusk.  And at dawn, hardly anyone would be around on a holiday weekend.  I took the Zero part of the way, but walked for most of it.  Searching for the deep, when you don't know what you are looking for, is best done on foot.  You are half looking for something, and half courting it.  Avoid the shadows of shallow things.  Turn your face toward trees and the scrubby city grasses.  Look for dropped bits of paper on the sidewalk.  The correct music in your ears can help.  You are trying to drop out of sync with the shallow world.

So I walked along, took an irregular and unpredictable path as the sun rose over Denver.  Out there, you can really see that Denver really is an arid place, caught between the plains and the mountains.  With one thing and another, I kept myself distracted until I came to the place in the map.

It used to be a synagogue.  Now, artists use the upper floors and supposedly they are turning the ground floor into a theater.  As soon as I saw the building I knew that it was the place on the map.  Tall and worn, cream colored stone and brick.  Broken windows boarded up and steel doors to keep the world from seeing its decay.  In the chill pre-dawn light I circled the building.  Crossed next to the Greyhound station.  I knew there was something there.  Something to link the map to the building.

It was near the foundation of the building.  Stones that didn't look right.  Cracks and scratches that did not line up with the ones around them.  I took a step back.  A rough square outline, about four feet on an edge, of stones that did not match.  All of them unmortered.   I would not have seen it if I had not been looking.

My pry bar was out of my bag before I realized I was searching for it.  I did remember to make sure no one saw me before I lifted the false bricks away.  The panel was surprisingly light.  No more than a veneer to hide a secret.

I slid through a narrow gap and into the darkness beyond.  As I replaced the panel behind me, even the narrow slash of blue dawn light vanished, and I stood in an unknown place.  My flashlight was in my bag, where it is meant to be, but I stood and groped for it for a long time.  Eyes open into black, and by the time I found the light, I could still only make out a deeper dark below me.  The world fell away down a flight of steep concrete stairs.  Crumbling steps for my uncertain feet.

I went down, blessing the strong beam of my flashlight.  Down to a landing where the stairs doubled back and continued.  Looking back, there was only the palest halo of light to show where I had come from. From somewhere above me, perhaps a broken pipe in the synagogue, water fell.  A regular, slow splash.

Past the first landing, down to a second. Below this, this narrow descending world ended in a wooden door.  Heavy boards, once painted a deep blue but now peeling.  The iron knob stained with rust.

I might have gone down there uninvited, following a map found on ebay, but I am not totally without manners.  I knocked on the door.  Knocked and waited and listened for I know not what.  But there was only silence.  Nothing stirred beneath the street.  Minutes passed, and I didn't realize how fast my heart was going until I saw my hand shake as I turned the knob.  

The door was unlocked.  The door opened.  Someone had left the room beyond for me, somehow.  An impossible gift.

Something soft shifted against the door as I pushed it open.  My light light illuminated the room in patches.  Showed me scattered papers on the floor, newspapers and envelopes, cloth heaped in corners.  Shelves lined the walls, a jumble wet specimens in jars, books, cardboard boxes, antlers, herbs.  One bookcase had been turned onto its side in the middle of the floor, smashed some of its jars.  Alcohol and decay mingled with mildew and dust in that room.  And, on the far wall, another door stood ajar. A padlock could have secured the door on the inside, but it had been left open for me.

A bedroom barely large enough to contain the stained mattress.  A porcelain basin covered by a cloth in the corner, and an oil lamp next to it.  Dust on the floor was very thick.

I searched through those rooms for hours.  Lost track of the time.  There is so much there. Fragments of poetry.   Books I'm sure August will want.  Boxes of letters from unknown people to others equally mysteries.  Stones etched with symbols that do not look like any language I know.  Worn pieces of chalk wrapped in fraying fragments of silk.  I was there all that day and much of this one, and I still don't know all of it. 

I don't know who lived there.  The clothing was a confusing mix.  Long wool skirts, embroidered with poppies at the hem and a military jacket that looks like its from WWII, but I really don't know.  Black mens t-shirts and womens saddle shoes.  Scarves and shawls.  The only thing I could tell was that no one had been there for a long time.  

It will take me a long time to catalog all of this.  To figure out how to put it to use.  

I can still smell the ancient dust of that place.

There was one thing, though.

I almost didn't notice.

Beneath the mattress was a trapdoor.

Things go deeper.

I must go back.