if I had someplace
treehouse away from the world
I might just stay there
Where ever I have worked, I always go walk about and explore the building I am working in.
I have found my way onto rooftops, garages, basements and storage areas that had not been visited in years.
Often I would use these out of the way places to hide during the day.
For those moments when I needed a moment to myself.
At WZZM13 in Grand Rapids, there were restrooms off of what was then the main conference room.
These restrooms had a back door.
If you went through the back door, you were in a small room with a desk and a lit make up mirror.
All it needed was a star nailed on the door and it would have been a museum example of the ‘dressing room’ in every TV sitcom.
Two odd things about these rooms.
There were one floor away from the studio with no real clear path to the get there.
And, they were along the front building so one wall was a glass window looking out over the parking lot.
Not what you would expect in a ‘dressing room’.
As far as I know, at the time I was with WZZM13, they were never used.
I would sit in there and hide often.
My favorite hidden place though, was the attic of the Grand Rapids Public Library.
I worked at the GRPL before the remodeling that took place at the turn of the century when much of the main or Ryerson building was restored.
At the time, the Ryerson had been ‘modernized’ and there were odd doors, stairs, cupboards and closets everywhere.
One day I took the keys and went through a door and up a stairway to another door that opened to an almost vertical stairway ladder.
Something like you would see in a ship.
I went up the ladder and into a small room, about 12 x 12, that was dark except for the light that poured in from a doorway opposite from where I was standing.
The light was, for lack of a better word, thick.
It poured through this doorway which was a rough opening cut through a brick wall.
The light was almost solid somehow.
I walked across the dark room towards the light and went through the doorway.
I had found Oz.
The Ryerson had been built in 1904 and designed to be used WITHOUT electric light.
The center of the building was a three story open well or atrium beneath a leaded glass skylight.
I was in the attic.
When I walked through that doorway I was looking DOWN at the surface of atrium skylight.
Above me was the roof of the building.
The roof was one massive skylight.
The quality of light in that room stays with me to this day.
It defies description.
You had to be there.
You had to experience it.
Somehow, the light, made you feel better or maybe, out of your skin.
The attic was silent.
The stillness was eerie.
It wasn’t a flat empty room, but a tangle of cables and piper and conduits going this way and that.
There was no ‘floor’ but the surface of the skylight.
The walls rose about 20 feet all around.
From the top of the walls was the peaked roof structure of iron girders that supported the thick glass of the skylight.
A rickety wooden cat walk was built over the skylight to the other side of the attic.
There was a wooden railing that ran along the catwalk and the railing had been covered with names.
Names of other library staff that had found this place away.
Aside from those names, there was no evidence that anyone had been up there for years.
Time didn’t stand still here.
Time stopped.
Time did not exist.
I need a place like that.
I need a place where time stops.
A place away.
If I find it, I might stay all day.
Do You Remember by Jack Johnson
Do you remember when we first met? I sure do
It was some time in early September
Though you were lazy about it, you made me wait around
I was so crazy about you I didn’t mind
So I was late for class, I locked my bike to yours
It wasn’t hard to find, you painted flowers on it
I guess that I was afraid that if you rolled away
You might not roll back my direction real soon
Well I was crazy about you then and now
The craziest thing of all is over ten years have gone by
And you’re still mine, we’re locked in time
Let’s Rewind
Do you remember when we first moved in together?
The piano took up the living room
You played me boogie-woogie I played you love songs
You’d say we’re playing house now you still say we are
We built our getaway up in a tree we found
We felt so far away but we were still in town
Now I remember watching that old tree burn down
I took a picture that I don’t like to look at
Well all these times they come and go
And alone don’t seem so long
Over ten years have gone by
We can’t rewind, we’re locked in time
But you’re still mine
Do you remember?
No Haiku For You 