And You. Who Are You?

And You. Who Are You?

“And You.

“Who are You?

“Who is it that I am writing for? Are You a traveller who has cheated Tides and crossed Broken Floors and Derelict Stairs to reach these Halls?”

I yelp and drop the book, caught in the act of voyeurism. I did not yet understand that this book would recognize me before I had time to recognize myself in it. I am reading Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. Piranesi exists in a landscape of infinite halls, filled with thousands upon thousands of statues, and flooded by periodic tides.

I am in chapter one, utterly mesmerized by the descriptions that are in some ways alien, yet completely familiar, like deja vu—a glimpse from the corner of my mind. Examined directly, the connection fades, but the feeling persists.

I read on, navigating the soaring labyrinth of hallways through Piranesi’s eyes. I thought I had remained undetected as we wade together through ankle-deep water while he points out different statues and how they speak to him through their postures and items they hold.

He’s been journaling a list of everyone in existence in his world. There is him, the Other, and thirteen sets of bones. Fifteen people all together. But he senses another. The Sixteenth Person. I wonder, along with him, who the sixteenth might be. He clearly perceives there is another just out of view.

Then he reaches through the page and grabs me by the collar, “And You. Who are You?”

I have been seen. We’ve recognized one another across time and space. I weep with joy at finally being understood in a world that has no eyes for the rooms within the mind. It speaks to me that it is okay to be in my own skin, to see from behind my own eyes.

My rooms are not as grand as Piranesi’s classically built architecture, nor populated with statuary of unimaginable beauty. But they are there. Rooms with defined purposes for tracking time, distance, memories, and every thought I have. Rooms with autonomous characters that either speak to me or convey thoughts through their posture or actions.

What Piranesi gave me was not a metaphor, but permission to notice the architecture I had been living inside all along. Some of my Rooms were built in childhood. The Number Room has the characters 1-10. Though fixed in formation, they are living. They have genders, colors, and personalities. They argue with one another in childlike squabbles. They speak to me.

My Calendar Room contains a monolithic wheel arcing through space—counterclockwise—that I walk along as the months pass and seasons turn. I cannot push forward ahead of time, but I can fly back and hover over time past. When I think of a specific event in my past, I navigate to that date, then examine the folders stored there to see the events that occurred. It is the scrapbook of my life.

If I want to go farther into the past—before I was born—my timeline switches to a coatrack with pegs. The pegs are labeled with dates, and corresponding events hang there. I can see associations and connections at a glance. I don’t remember events as much as I know how to locate them.

There are dozens of Rooms that were constructed in my childhood. But some are no longer accessible. I don’t know what is in them, though I can feel the tether still tying me to them. The longing.

I feel this longing as I look through Piranesi’s eyes. Show me your world, Piranesi! And he does, chapter after chapter. Like me, he is alone but never lonely. He seeks to uncover new Halls he hasn’t yet reached. He teaches me how to navigate the labyrinth persistently, patiently, and intentionally. This is new to me. My Rooms have operated just a hair’s breadth beneath awareness much of my life. Like a heartbeat—you know it’s there, but you never actually pay attention to it.

I’m paying attention now. The intentional unveiling of the Rooms is staggering and often overwhelming—the height, the depth, the architecture, the function. Room after Room. The wonder!

Piranesi finds Halls that have crumbled, the floors heaved up, the statues broken. I have Rooms with closed doors. I place my palm upon the doors, and I feel the tugging, the longing, the grief of a thing I can no longer access. The child has grown.

I watch as Piranesi navigates the derelict Halls. Some he bypasses because they are dangerous. Some he finds alternate entrances–maybe through a different door, maybe lowering himself into it from above. I need to consider this idea. Are my closed-off Rooms inaccessible because they are now dangerous? Or are they just neglected? Maybe the path through has changed and leads elsewhere—the door is now a false entry. These are things I still need to examine.

Throughout the book, I am constantly overwhelmed by the beauty of the Halls, and more specifically, the beauty of Piranesi inhabiting the halls. The outside world understands none of this. There is no language to truly convey it. In my life, the Rooms have been considered by others as a deficit. Twice in school, teachers recommended me for gifted testing. Twice I failed. The tests measured linear thinking—follow the sequence, complete the pattern. I couldn't sequence pictures correctly. The counselor told my parents I must have never looked at comic books as a kid. But I read only comic books—obsessively—because my Letter Room made regular reading difficult. Letters asserted their personalities; colors distracted, obscuring the meaning of the word composed of those letters. But with comics, I'd spend hours on each frame, navigating into the backgrounds, examining the landscape behind the characters, reading the word bubbles from beneath. I knew those comics inside and out. I just didn't read them in sequence. I read them as spaces to explore. But Piranesi shows me there is nothing to apologize for. Those who don’t understand haven’t experienced the soaring heights, the craftsmanship of the statues, the power of the thundering tides.

I live within an architecture they cannot fathom. I speak literal truth, and they see metaphor. I experience the real thing every moment of every day. Why would I wish for it to be different? Why would I wish to be what the world considers normal?

Closing my eyes, I wander through my Rooms. I wonder if I can find Piranesi there. He has shown me his Halls are endless, stretching into infinity. My Rooms, too, have no bounds, no restrictions. A world of adventure awaits me. My architects are building it right now.

I smile as I close the book.