Building Mysteries*

Sometimes you can be in a building every day for years and never notice something. Or see something, but never investigate it. I work in the library three days a week and have worked here for the past year and a half. There is a stairwell I need to go up in order to use the bathroom (so, I go up a lot), and for a year, I never realized that I could go *down* as well. There is a mysterious bottom floor that I not only never knew about, but never even saw until this year. Even though I've now noticed it, I still haven't gone down to investigate. I don't think there's actually anything down there, but who knows?

In the other building I live in, the one my other job is housed in and where I have all my classes, there is a mysterious *top* floor. No one ever mentions this floor, only one staircase goes all the way up there and I have no idea what's up there. I know there are windows because I can sometimes see light. I think I almost prefer not knowing because the reality will be much more prosaic than my imaginings of an airy, open floor with plenty of windows and maybe some romantic, ancients chests to go through. You know, an attic. Maybe that's actually where they chain up the PhD students toiling away at their dissertations. I think that's more likely.

*With apologies to Sarah McLachlan