We used to go down to this underground area in the shopping centre. It had different products in it, it was sort of like a hall of bargains, or totally random things. I’d often go down there if I was bored. One day I was showing you around the shop aisles on the normal level, and thought it’d be fun to take you down to the basement. When we reached the place where the ramp down used to be, there was just an empty space. I looked left and right, and finally saw a little crack in the wall where I could see through, down the ramp. It was lit still, with those sterile fluorescents, but nothing was down there. It was completely empty. I looked at you like “what were they thinking?” - blank - and then we looked over to the right, and there was a class of people doing aerobics in the entry hall.

Basements are where things are stored, forgotten about, shoved, hidden, and placed when they don’t have high value - the bargain basement. They’re also ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and easily forgotten. They can be scary because they’re dark, or full of things we don’t know, or full of things we do know and don’t want to. Even the passageway to a basement can be hidden or lost. What do you place in the metaphorical basement in your mind?

Going down to a basement for bargains, for the trash and treasure, for the appeal of finding something that has been judged unworthy: where have you gone down to the abandoned or forgotten places and found something wonderful? Has this happened in cities, in crowded suburbs, or in your thoughts?

When have you loved what you found that was unloved, and wanted to share it with someone else? Do you know the way to show someone else in to that forgotten place? Did they recognise it too? Is a part of you loving what you are finding and another part kind of disgusted and impatiently stamping to leave and go back to the shiny area of agreed valuable things?

If you’ve ever explored a hidden, forgotten place, a basement or a place in nature, and come back and found it changed, how was it different? Was there ever a time that you came back and it didn’t exist anymore? What do you do then with your memories of how it was? Have you absorbed what was of value in that space, and are you able to bring it into the ground of daily life, the openness of light and air?

Can you bring life and movement back into your memories and what you collected there, enliven it like the aerobics class?

It seems the movement and energy is in the passageway, the hall, the place of transition, movement and change. Something is now afoot that was previously hidden.

— Thank you reading and following these symbolic explorations. I have a new website where you can explore the ecosystem we’ve traversed so far.

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💛 Lara