on the up.

Sometimes on stairs or in elevators I think about the concept of up and also down, seeing as those are the choices, and how often I take the latter or occasionally neither, not moving any which way at all. Because down is easy and standing easier still, especially when it's cold outside and getting darker every day, winter on a tight winch lowering the sky and lengthening shadows, winter with her weakening wiles.

But then I think of the boy that once, he told me, encountered a staircase with a sign UP ONLY it said, UP ONLY, there underground in the deepest dark honeycombed echo of a parking garage, rock bottom as it were, and what if we chose that to be our only choice? What if we decided to go UP, he said, if we decided to always go UP? And he illustrated this interrogative with his hands in the air, reaching, pushing not only higher but more widely, clouds crumbling open above him. I just think we'd all be happier, he said. You know?