L’Esprit d’Escalier

Upstairs

Downstairs

Stairtrek: The Older Generation

These are the voyages of the Stairship Enterprise: Its five year mission: To boldly go where no man has gone before, one step at a time.

Captain’s log, Stairdate 4523.3. The crew continue to complain about how many stairs there are on this ship. “None of us are getting any younger”, they say. “And it’s hell on the hips and knees”. In the afternoon we received a Mayday call from Mr Scott and Mr Spock. They were stuck on the seventh staircase, intermediate flight, fifteenth step, to Poop Hatch Deck 9, deferred. “For heaven’s sake,” said Mr Scott, when they were brought in, “it’s the 23rd century. You’d have thought they’d have come up with something better than stairs by now!” “It is my belief,” interjected Mr Spock, “that some of these staircases lead nowhere at all. Who designed this spaceship anyway? ...

CUT TO:

Doris Day in a Piranesi prison. She does not care that she must spend her days among wretches dressed in rags, among awful engines, dreadful abutments, pulleys, beams, levers, chains – and oh! those endless staircases. No, with her unwearying fatalism, she climbs those never-ending stairs, and as she trudges she sings: Carceri, -ceri.

(Excuse my flights of fancy.)

The Human Condition

From starry-eyed youth to stary-eyed madman, 'tis but a short distance.

Going out or staying in? he wondered.
The shimmering carpet of stars vs. the stair carpet,
The mysterious starlight vs. the stairlight.

Lastly:

The Stannah Starlift

The moon landing.