The seventh floor

Once upon a time there was a floor. Legend calls it the seventh floor.

There have been, there still are thousands, nay, millions of other floors in the world. Primitive, Gothic, baroque, Cubist, futurist, ziggurat, virtual – what have you. But this one, pun or no pun (just be warned that all work and no pun would make Nolledo a dull wordboy) floored you for sheer polish and elevation. It was wooed, worshipped, sung by all the coconut husks, brooms, dust pans, mops, vacuum cleaners, elevators, witchbrooms and mopheads in history.

For the seventh floor was deadlier than the seven deadly sins, sweeter than the seventh stranger, more epic than The Seven Samurai, more cinematic than Siete Infantes de Lara, more Fred Panopio than Pitong Gatang, more mathematically exact than Woman Times Seven, higher than the seventh floor of the seventh heaven.

Earlier to come to the office than the seventh dawn, the seventh floor wanted to be the first to say hello to 2001 – which of course was doomed. For it was written in the seven stars that the seventh floor would never be first in anything, nor even second, nor third. It will always be the seventh.

But if it was an exile in the millennium that has just passed (the second) and an alien in the present one (the third), it shall most certainly reign supreme in the seventh. Exact point being, in that millennium, the seventh year of the seventh century, July seven, seven minutes and seven seconds after seven o’clock a.m. and then seven o’clock p.m. I’ll see you there.

Not to mention that whatever its real gifts were, these were not in simple arithmetic. Once asked what was one plus one, it answered brightly: "Equals seven!" It is said to have told Einstein to his face, "God plays seven-eleven!" Einstein wobbled as if from an earthquake, but it was only the seventh floor.

Asked to define what love is, it said, with infinite sadness, love is a septuagenarian.

The seventh floor was where you slept rocked by seven seas that ran high. The seventh floor was where you fell in love just saying the word. I met you on the seventh floor, on the occasion of your return from the seven wonders.

Be wary though. The seventh floor is where you are but you do not see it.

The seventh floor is in the heart, where it went straightaway after the Fall.

The seventh floor was where Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk who wrote the unforgettable autobiography The Seven-Storied Mountain, was trapped.

The seventh floor is the tender trap.

God rested on the seventh day and the seventh floor.