An inverted world

Tray molding

  
   When I was a kid I used to enjoy laying on my back on the hardwood floors of the living room where I grew up. I would stare straight up, examining the molding which outlined the door frames and the geometric shapes which it created on the ceilings. I would imagine what it would be like if what was above me was under me, if the ceiling could become the floor that I would walk on. It always seemed to me that life would be so much better if this part of my world could just be reversed. It didn't suggest to me that everything would suddenly be perfect, but it certainly registered that it would be more interesting and beautiful. It also allowed me to exist in a sort of half-awake, dreamlike state, of the sort when you wake up from a nap and stare off into space without really seeing. I've always enjoyed that feeling.
   I remember thinking that what would then become the floor would be trickier to walk on, as I would have to be careful not to trip on or break those elegant shapes, and I also recall that the different rooms would be extremely difficult to enter and exit, as the entrances would be raised. Still. whatever the practical difficulties, that inverted world offered a kind of parallel life, and a parallel life seems like a great way to escape my own.
   There have been times since those years that I have been laying down, looked up to see molding on walls or ceilings, and tried to recapture that feeling of being able to gently drift into that other place, but have not been able to relive that sensation. Perhaps I don't need to psychically leave my world in the same way that I used to, or maybe that kind of imaginative existence is no longer available to me. Whatever the reason, the closest I seem to get to that invertible world is a bout of vertigo.