I’ll Probably Never know
(It happened during the night of 26/27:03:2000)
It was while I still remembered all the details, even after nearly a whole week, that I decided to record that episode in my life. Who knows, I might yet meet up with such a place in real life. After all I still have plenty of good years to wander around on this world. At least now I have something to keep looking for. A quest in life.
I’ll probably never know how I got to be there, and neither will anybody else. Of that I’m certain.
After all this time I'm still perturbed that I’ll probably never find out how I got to be where I was at that time. But when I reflect upon it in retrospect, I’m somewhat relieved. That should be the most serious worry that I ever have to endure. After all, it was a remarkable adventure. An event that I don’t expect to ever experience again. Not for the rest of my life. But who knows! Every day comes with surprises.
The scene was so strange, yet in some way so familiar that I didn’t even pay attention whether it was day or night, at the time.
Here I was, making my way up the steep incline. Stretching upwards like a seemingly endless hill, with horizontally equidistant ranges of stones, row upon row of rocks, laid, one upon the other, each layer set back from the lower one. Not shapeless boulders or little stones. But elongated stonework that seemed to have been arranged as a very wide staircase. So deep as not to be comfortable enough to take two at a time, but still quite well placed. The stones were rounded off, not only at the corners, but along the length of their edges as well, and stretching off into the distance, both to the right and to the left. I guess I was so engrossed in the ascent that I paid little, if no, serious attention to the width of these stairs. But that they were extremely wide, of that I’m certain.
I don’t remember how it came into to be my hands, but I distinctly remember trying to stuff a large ball of twine into my pocket. In thinking back, it seemed a futile thing to do. To stuff a tightly wound huge ball of string, of about anywhere from fifteen to twenty centimeters in diameter, into a normal pants’ pocket. The string was not cotton. Nor was it jute. It was made of plastic fibers, the type in common use today to tie up packages. It was a ball of twine that had been hand wound, of string that was not new. It had already been used before. I know, because it bore plenty of kinks and knots.
Though I was scrambling up the steep “stair case” at a very fast pace. I don’t remember becoming winded at all. I just kept on going, being drawn to the summit, if one actually existed, I thought to myself. Eventually the hill began flattening out and the flight of steps here, were of a different type. The rounded steps were behind me, and those before me were flat with sharp edges. They had been identical in spacing, between the risers, just as the ones lower down on the hill. Though the steps here were not smooth, their edges were not rounded. As well, each rock was much longer than the rounded ones had been for most of the way up. As if the other ones had been very long, and were broken, but still very smooth and rounded. The difference was noticeable and distinct.
Suddenly a man appeared from behind and handed me the ball of twine that I had dropped some way back down the hill. I thanked him and when examining the ball of string, I found that some of the outer layers of the string had become unwound from the ball. Not an “end”, but a loop of twine. While continuing upwards without pausing, I attempted to rewind the loose string onto the ball.
Boy! If I was clambering up the mountain as quickly as I was, this guy must have been flying.
I was just about to ask the man where the place was, that I was being drawn towards he disappeared from my line of sight. Then I saw a framework that seemed somewhat familiar. It was definitely man made, out of smooth concrete, and its color was still original, clean and gray. The framework was rectangular, easily three times as high as it was wide, and the cross-section of each of the four sides was square. Between the top and bottom rails were a number of conical columns that did not reach from top to bottom, but some were standing upright perpendicularly from the bottom rail, while others were suspended at right angles from the top rail, non touching another. They were definitely not in any way equidistant one from another; neither did they signify any specific design. Not even in any obvious interrelation one to another. For example, in one part towards the left were three such columns close to each other, hanging from the upper rail, then to the right one such column grew in suspension from the top rail, while in the middle, still from the bottom rail rose in a sort of hodge-podge arrangement of additional columns. But none even close to meeting with a counterpart.
I was still following the general path of the man, who had passed me, while I was still trying to fix up the ball of twine that he had returned to me, when I caught a momentary glimpse of his right shoulder when he suddenly disappeared, directly behind that strange artifice at the top of what proved to be a long descending staircase towards the right.
As I reached, just past the, very much out of place, sculpture, my eyes tried to follow the stranger, when I saw that he was on his way down a steep, very narrow staircase, that had been burrowed into the mountain. The way was lit by the blinding glare of a few bare electric bulbs and I could discern that he had made an abrupt left turn, disappearing from my view again, till I also reached that turn myself. Ahead was an even narrower staircase and just as precipitous. I followed him for awhile when suddenly another man came into view. This one, facing me directly, was coming up. The staircase being so narrow, I was unsure about how he planned to pass me as I was on my way down with no obvious passing space. As I progressed, I discerned that he had stopped his progress and paused at one point. The steps themselves seemed to have had reached their end, and I found myself walking over a deep canyon with my legs stretched out sideways, and making my way on two protruding concrete extrusions on either side of it. Then I observed that the man who had hesitated was now approaching in my direction, where he nonchalantly walked up an incline under me, and continued up the stairs that I had just descended.
While I was concerned with this surprising and complex passing maneuver, my first friend, who had returned my ball of twine disappeared, from my sight once more. I wondered where he had gone to now. After shuffling foreword with another couple of steps, out on these protruding extrusions, I turned to see how the second man had been able to descend what appeared to be a long deep narrow recess. In the reflection of the electric lights dimmed by a mist that arose from the depths, I noticed that there were a series of shallow ridges, seemingly embossed and protruding from a long wooden, varnished board. They were straight, but neither horizontally, nor vertical; equally spaced one from another on the diagonal, one above the other. On both sides of this plank were handrails as well, in order to facilitate the ascent maneuver, for anybody who wished to get, out of this huge hole in the ground. I didn't remember ever seeing such an arrangement, nor had I ever imagined such a thing. It was awfully bizarre, but that’s what I saw so vividly. A truly unbelievable adventure, I mused to myself.
But suddenly I reached the end of those projections and the first man was still out of sight. Where could he have, so completely, disappeared to? Aha! So there’s still a lower level to this labyrinth. And way down there, the light was a much stronger. Now I could make out the pole to my left. I guessed that this was the only safe way to get down there, by gripping the pole somewhat loosely, and breaking my descent by pressing my feet sideways, against the smooth sides of the walls on either side of me, I was able to control my speed of descent.
The sight that greeted me, just as my eyes cleared the ceiling of the lower level, revealed a very well illuminated huge chamber with several separating partitions and a large number of desks. Like a huge office.
The thought that permeated my mind at that moment was, and it was just then that I realized why that odd-looking sculpture next to the staircase at the top of the mountain looked so familiar. Though I had never seen such a sight, somewhere in my subconscious mind such a structure had, at one time, and had been stored into my memory. It must have been during some previous dream that I don’t, for the life me, remember.
This is just the way it looked in my dream. The one I didn’t remember.
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