Page 365 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

visible, backdrops to lost foregrounds, alone and featureless.
My pace quickened, the curios of a void racing by, growing
more and more ferociously vacant as I went. And then,
footsteps, measured and plain, walking somewhere ahead of
me—the photographer.
At the end of the passage I raced through was a massive
pit, a small carven-stone staircase leading downward
circling the wide mouth. Punctuating the length of stairs,
set out at equidistant intervals, were stone reliefs—nothing
but shallow backgrounds, entirely unpopulated. Around and
around I went, corkscrewing through faceless, subjectless
space. The footsteps continued, undaunted for their
navigation of uneven stairs, and at a brisk space, at that.
Somehow, I found myself beneath the ancient stone
of a cave, clammier and smaller than the one beneath the
house. In addition to all the space I’d cleared, I also felt I’d
descended more than my suitable share of time. The air was
primal, the stone unscarred. I rounded a large promontory of
youthful stone and arrived into a tall space with damp walls.
A small fire knelt in the middle of the room, illuminating
some manner of painting upon the wall. Here was one of
the first attempts at art, where hairy knuckled fingers plied
stone walls with whatever would stick to them, to record
their dreams, their fears, their gods. At least, that’s what
should have populated the crude, stone canvases, smeared
only with the crudest attempts at scenery. But as before, the
occupants of the art were nowhere to be seen. I reached out
to touch the stone, but instantly recalled the photo pinned to
the hanging wire and thought better of it.
When I turned the next corner, the cave opened to an
incredible degree, basaltic pillars lifting the ceiling into
utter, incomprehensible nothingness. But it was the floor, or
lack thereof, that ripped breath from my lungs—as far as
the eye could see, nothing but crisscrossing, rusted iron bars
that made a prison from the spaces under the girding. More
striking was the endless sea of clawed fingers stretching
368 | Mark Anzalone