Escher Staircase
Sometimes I feel that I am living inside a vortex — a strange whirlpool of force like the one in Oregon where “The House of Mystery” has been attracting visitors since the 1930s. Or maybe our old house is actually an M.C. Escher lithograph or woodcut. Especially our dining room. And if you have ever been here, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
Partly, it’s that the floor slants rather sharply to the northwest. It’s not a problem with the floor joists or with the foundation. Not exactly. We’ve had our underpinnings checked and rechecked. It’s that our foundation, once as firm as could be, is built on the shifting sands of this Peninsula sandspit we call home. Drop a pencil on the south side of the dining room and it travels neatly toward the north side of the kitchen — sometimes stopped by the threshold between the two rooms, sometimes not, depending upon the shape of the implement and the momentum it picks up enroute.
House Of Mystery in Gold Hill, Oregon
Today we had a new vortex experience. The Cranberry Museum had ordered 18 of my Arcadia Oysterville books and I brought them from the storage area into the dining room and stacked them on the table. Two piles of nine books each. But one pile was clearly an entire book higher than the other.
I recounted. Nine books in each pile. So I left them there until my Business Manager (that would be Nyel) had time to write up an invoice. As he wheeled his chair by the table, he said to me: “You’ve only got 17 books there.” And a discussion ensued, culminating in several countings and re-stackings. No matter how we divided the eighteen, the stacks were never even in height. Period.
Optical Illusion?
We considered that the paper used for some of the books (in a different print run?) might be of a thinner quality. But… no. Or that pages had been inadvertently left out of some books. No again. It was the Vortex Effect, pure and simple. Even though the table looked level and even though we put the stacks in different spots on said table, two piles of an equal number of books was never the same height. Vortex, I tell you.
And no wonder I am often half a bubble off! Or more.
What about lining spine back piles to spine back piles? Maybe spine back pile to end page pile is the problem?
Yep! Great Minds! We tried it this way, that way, this end to that end and vice-versa, spine to spine, etc. etc. and it was always one book off. It didn’t even seem to matter which direction the piles were facing or where on the table. It was totally weird.