The Great Stone Wall

There was a great stone wall that stretched impossibly high into the sky, and stretching all the way to the horizon in either direction. There at the base was a wooden door that could only be opened from the opposite side. Where along the wall the door was didn't matter, because it didn't matter where a person was along its length when he approached. The door could best be described as “near.” Starting just beside the door, one would find a stairwell leading up along the wall from it. Narrow stone slabs jutted out from the wall, rising hundreds of feet into the air and ending at a recession and a wooden door that opened perpendicular to the great stone face. When one made the climb and went through the wooden door, one found himself standing on the grass beside a stairwell stretching hundreds of feet into the air along the flat side of an impossibly tall stone wall that stretched to the horizon in either direction, and if one were to allow the wooden door to close behind them, they would find that it could only be opened from the other side. Perhaps they would climb the stairs again in hopes of going through the next door to return to the other side, where they might climb back down. And if one did, he would find himself standing on the grass beside a stairwell stretching hundreds of feet into the air along the flight side of an impossibly tall stone wall that stretched to the horizon in either direction. And if one were to turn away from the wall and go home, one would find that the world was right where they left it, regardless of how many stairs they had climbed. And one would develop an uneasy reassurance that they were, in fact, safe and sound in their own beds on their own streets, but every time they misremembered something—Did Sir Ian McKellan sign my picture with silver ink or black? Was Marsha's phone number 0918 or 0981? Are the lyrics “Bye bye, baby” or “Bye my baby—one would always wonder whether one made it home after all.


- Originally mailed to J. Womack of Brooklyn, New York