Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  In all these images there is a wonderful sense of security. The labs are clean, well-lit, and ordered. Computers seem to print with a purpose. Various instruments promise answers, even guarantees. Still in order to make sure all this apparatus does not come across as too sterile, Navidson also includes shots of the life-support system: a Krups coffee maker hissing and bubbling, an Oasis poster taped to the vending machine, Homer Simpson on the lounge TV saying something to his brother Herbert.

  As a favor to Reston, petrologist Mel O'Geery, up at the Princeton geology department, has agreed to donate his spare time and oversee the examination of all the wall samples. Prone toward bird like gestures, he is a slight man who takes great delight in speaking very quickly. For nearly four months, he has analyzed every piece of matter, all the way from A (taken a few feet into the first hallway) to XXXX (taken by Navidson when he found himself alone at the bottom of the Spiral Staircase). It is not an

  inexpensive undertaking, and while the university has agreed to fund most of it, apparently Navidson also had to throw in a fair amount himself.[157]

  Setting out all the sample bottles on a long table, Dr. O'Geery provides the camera with a summation of his findings, casually gesturing to various groupings while he sips coffee from a Garfield mug.

  "What we have here is a nice banquet of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic samples, some granular, possibly gabbro and pyroxenite, some with much less grain, possibly trachite or andesite. The sedimentary group is fairly small, samples F through K, mainly limestone and marl. The metamorphic group predominates with traces of amphibolite and marble. But this group here, it's composed primarily of siderites, which is to say heavy in iron, though you also have aerolites rich in silicon and magnesium oxides."

  [2 pages missing]

  338Radiometric dating includes work with carbon-14 (from a few hundred years to 50,000 years ago), potassium-argon (for dates ranging from 100,000 years to 4.5 x 109 years ago), rubidium-strontium (from 5 x 107 to about 4.5 x 109 years ago), lead isotopes (from 108 to 4.5 x 109 years ago) as well as fission- tracks (a few million to a few hundred million years ago) and thermoluminescence dating (used to date clay pottery). 339Table 1:

  Parent Isotope Daughter Isotope Half-life

  Carbon-14 Nitrogen-14 5730

  Potassium-40 Argon-40 xxxxx

  Rubidium-87 Strontium-87 4.88 x 1010

  Samarium-147 Neodymium-143 1.06 x 10"

  Lutetium-176 Hafnium-176 3.5 x 1010

  Thorium-232 Lead-208 1.4 x 10'°

  Uranium-235 Lead-207 7.04 x 108

  Uranium-238 Lead-206 4.47 x 109

  340Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny341—a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang"—approximately 1.3-2 x 10io years ago. 341Typo: "destiny" should read "density."

  [1]The age of the earth lies somewhere between 4.43-4.57 x 109 years (roughly around the time our solar system formed). With a few exceptions, most meteors are younger. Micrometeorites, however, with high levels of deuterium, suggest evidence of interstellar material predating our solar system. See F. Tera, "Congruency of comformable galenas: Age of the Earth" 12 th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 1981, p. 1088-1090; and I.D.R. Mackinnon and F.J.M. Rietmeijer, "Mineralogy of chondritic interplanetary dust particles" Rev. Geophys. 1987, 25:1527-1553. See also those particle age-related studies carried out by Klaus Bebblestein and Gunter Polinger, published in Physics Today, v.48, September 1995, p. 24-30, as well as by the Oxford University Press, 1994, under the title Particle Exam which includes in Chapter Sixteen fascinating data generated at the Deutsch Electron Synchrotron (DESY; pronounced "Daisy") in Hamburg and even input from the HERMES collaboration which at the time was using the HERA electron-proton collider to study nucleon spin. Bebblestein and Polinger have also written extensively on the recent though highly speculative claim that accurate algorithms must now exist which are in keeping with Wave Origin Reflection Data Series as currently set forth by the VEM™ Corporation.

  [1](BGC) Berkeley Geochronology Center. Paul Renne. See Science August 12, 1994. p. 864.

  [1]0ne must not forget the crater created by a meteor in the Arizona desert 50,000 years ago: Canyon Diablo with a diameter of 1207 meters and a depth of 174 meters.

  [1]Internal isochron measurements of Rb-Sr ages have shown the Norton County meteorite in the Aubrite group to have an age of 4.70 ± 0.13 Ga(l Ga= 109 years). The Krahenberg meteorite in the LL5 group has an estimated age of 4.70 ±0.01 Ga. As O'Geery indicates to Navidson, several of the XXXX samples also appear to have ages predating the formation of the earth. (Though the accuracy of those claims remains hotly contested). See D. W. Sears, The Nature and Origin of Meteorites (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 129; and Bailey Reims, Formation vs. Metamorphic Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), p. 182-235.

  [1]Robert T. Dodd, Meteorites: A Petrologic-Chemical Synthesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Dodd also explains on page 161: "A chondrite's first isotopic equilibration is usually called its formation. The time period between nucleosynthesis and formation is called the formation interval and that between formation and the present formation age. The time difference between a later isotopic disturbance and the present is called a metamorphic age. We have known for a quarter century that all chondrites are approximately 4.55 billion years old (Patterson, 1956) and for a decade that their history up to and including metamorphism encompassed no more than 100 million years (Papanastassiou and Wasserburg, 1969). What parts of this brief high-temperature history were occupied by chondrule formation, accretion, and metamorphism has been and remains unclear, for it is not always easy to tell which stage a particular isotopic system records."

  347Meteoritics: Asteroids, Comets, Craters, Interplanetary Dust, Interstellar Medium Lunar Samples, Meteors, Meteorites, Natural Satellites, Planets, Tektites Origin and History of the Solar System, Derek W. G. Sears, editor. Donald E. Brownlee, Michael J. Gaffey, Joseph I. Goldstein, Richard A. F. Grieve, Rhian Jones, Klaus Keil, Hiroko Nagahara, Frank Podosek, Ludolf Schultz, Denis Shaw, S. Ross Taylor, Paul H. Warren, Paul Weissman, George W. Wetherill, Rainer Wieler, associate editors. Published by The Meteoritical Society, v. 30, n. 3, May 1995. p. 244.

  [1]A possible solution to the date line scheme detailed by Navidson and O'Geery. It certainly lends weight to those theories favoring the historical significance of the samples, though it does nothing to resolve the presence of extraterrestrial and possibly even interstellar matter.

  349Therefore Navidson's conclusion seems the only conclusion. Based on the evidence, sample A thru sample XXXX appear to make up an exact chronological map, which though simple, nevertheless still shows that....................................................................................................

  Inexplicably, the remainder of this footnote along with seventeen more pages of text vanished from the manuscript supplied by Mr. Truant. — Ed.

  350j wish i could say this mass of black X's was due to some mysterious ash or frantic act of deletion on Zampano's part. Unfortunately this time I'm to blame. When I first started assembling The Navidson Record. I arranged the various pages and scraps by chapter or subject.

  Eventually I had numerous piles spread out across my room. I usually placed a book or some heavy object on them to keep the isolated mounds from flying apart if there were a draft or I happened to bump one with my foot. On top of this particular chapter I stupidly placed a bottle of German ink, 4001 brillant-schwarz or something. Who knows how long ago either, probably when I was still sketching pictures and tinkering with collages, maybe in August, maybe as far back as February. Anyway, there must have been a hairline crack in the glass because all of the ink eventually tunneled down through the paper, wiping out almost forty pages, not to mention seeping into the carpet below where it spread into a massive black bloom. The footnotes survived only because I hadn't incorporated them yet. They'd all been written out separately on a series of green i
ndex cards held together by a yellow rubber band.

  [17 pages missing]

  Navidson asks.

  Dr. O'Geery mulls this over, takes another sip of his coffee, eyes the samples again, and then finally shrugs, "Not much really, though you've got yourself a nice range here."

  "Nothing peculiar or out of the ordinary?" Navidson presses.

  O'Geery shakes his head.

  "Well except maybe the chronology."

  "Meaning?" Reston eases his wheelchair forward.

  "Your samples all fall into a very consistent scheme. Sample A is pretty young, a few thousand years old, while K is a few hundred thousand. Q over here is in the millions and these—" referring to MMMM through XXXX " — well, in the billions. Those last bits there are clearly meteoric."

  "Meteors?" Navidson shoots a look at Reston.

  O'Geery nods, picking up the sample marked WW. "In my opinion Rubidium-87/strontium-87 is the best dating method we have, yielding formation ages anywhere from 4.4 to 4.7 billion years old. If we place the age of the earth at around four and a half billion years old, it's pretty obvious these had to come from someplace other than here. I doubt lunar but maybe interplanetary. XXXX, your last sample, is by far the oldest and most interesting. A composite of younger material, 4.2 billion years old, combined with deuterium rich particles suggesting that possibly, now I want to stress possibly here, but this deuterium could indicate matter older than even our solar system. Interstellar perhaps. So there you have it—a very nice little vein of history."

  Reston wheels back around to the table, as if Dr. O'Geery's explanation should now somehow cast the samples in a new light. Nothing about them, however, has changed. As Gillian Fedette exclaimed on August 4th, 1996 at The Radon Conference in St. Paul, Minneapolis: "Not surprisingly, despite [O'Geery's] analysis, the samples continue to remain obdurate and lifeless."

  " Where did you say you got all this from?" O'Geery asks." Antarctica?"

  Primarily thanks to O'Geery's conclusions, some fanatics of The Navidson Record assert that the presence of extremely old chondrites definitively proves extra-terrestrial forces constructed the house. Others, however, claim the samples only support the idea that the house on Ash Tree Lane is a self-created portal into some other dimension.351 As Justin Krape dryly remarked: "Both arguments are probably best attributed to the persistent presence of schizophrenia plaguing the human race."352

  Keener intellects, however, now regard scientific conjecture concerning the house as just another dead end. It would seem the language of

  35'A Lexicon of Improbable Theories, Blair Keepling, ed. (San Francisco: Niflheim Press, 1996). In chapter 13, Keepling credits The Navidson Record with the revival of the Hollow Earth Movement. Tracing this implausible theory from the wobbly ratiocinations of John Cleaves Symmes (1779-1829) through Raymond Bernard's The Hollow Earth.The Greatest Geographical Discovery in History (1964) to Norma Cox's self-published pro-Nazi piece Kingdoms Within Earth (1985), Keepling reveals yet another bizarre subculture thriving in the Western world. Of course even if this planet were truly a hollow globe—an absolute impossibility—Tom's dropped quarter still describes a space far greater than the earth's radius (or even diameter).

  352Justin Krape's Pale Micturitions (Charleston, West Virginia: Kanawha Press, 1996), p. 99.

  objectivity can never adequately address the reality of that place on Ash Tree Lane.

  Perhaps for us the most significant thing gleaned from this segment is Navidson's persistent use of all the data[158] to deny the internal shattering

  them whisper about my night screams—"He's the one, I'm sure of it." "Shhhh, not so loud."

  For some reason, I've been thinking more and more about my mother and the way her life failed her, humiliated her with impulses beyond her command, broke her with year after year of the same. I never knew her that well. I remember she had amazing hair, like sunlight, extremely fine and whisked with silver, beautiful even when it was uncombed, and her eyes always seemed to brim with a certain tenderness when I visited. And though most of the time she whispered, sometimes she spoke up and then her voice would sound sweet and full like chapel bells caroling in the foreign towns I'd eventually wander at dawn, echoing down those streets where I'd find myself in the spare light, rubbing my cold hands together, hopping around like a lunatic, waiting for the pastry shops to open so I could buy a piece of bread and a cup of hot chocolate.

  She also used to write me these letters, always handwritten and full of strange colored words. They started after my father was killed, loaded with advice and encouragement and most of all faith. I don't know if I would have survived Raymond without them. But she was never that well, and eventually her words soured, until— Well, I wish I could just stick to thoughts of her hair and her brimming eyes and caroling bells in foreign towns at dawn.

  It's never that simple though, is it?

  One day I received a letter in which she apologized for what she'd done. At first I thought she was talking again about the pan of oil she'd accidentally knocked to the floor when I was four but that wasn't it at all, though in an awful way her confession did change the way I began to view my scars, their oceanic swirls now spelling out suspicion and much too much doubt for me to really address properly. Anyhow, she was referring to a completely different event when my father was finally forced to take her away to The Whale, when I was only seven, a day I cannot for the life of me remember.

  As she explained it, her thoughts at that time had entirely deteriorated. The burden of life seemed too much for her to bear and therefore, in her mind, an impossible and even horrible burden to impose upon a child, especially her own. Based on these wild ratiocinations, she gathered me up in her arms and tried to choke me. It was probably a very brief attempt. Maybe even comic. My father intervened almost immediately, and my mother was then taken away for my own safety. I guess I do remember that part. Someone saying "my own safety." My father I imagine. I suppose I also remember him leading her away. At least the shape of him in the doorway. With her. All blurred and in silhouette.

  Raymond knew a little about my mother's history and he used to say it was a bad dream that got her.

  "Nightmares you know," he once told me with a grin. "Can mess you up permanently. I've seen it happen to buddies of mine. That's why you'll never catch me without a gun under my pillow. That'll get any man through the night."

  A week ago I gave myself a Christmas present. I dug up my Visa, which I still try my best to avoid using, and not only picked up a second gun, this time a stainless steel Taurus 605 .357, but also went ahead and ordered a rifle. More specifically I ordered a Weatherby 300 magnum, along with twenty boxes of 180 grain core-locked rounds.

  caused by Tom's death and Karen's flight. He only speculates with Reston about what it could mean that samples A thru XXXX form a timeline extending back before the birth of even the solar system. He uses his camera to embrace the Princeton laboratory equipment, seek out the appeasement of numbers, all the while never openly reflecting on the very real absence continuing to penetrate his life. Similar to the way Karen tried to rely on Feng Shui to mitigate the effects of the house, Navidson turns to the time telling tick of radioactive isotopes to deny the darkness eviscerating him from within.

  Noda Vennard believes the key to this sequence does not exist in any of the test results or geological hypotheses but in the margin of a magazine which, as we can see for ourselves, Navidson idly fills with doodles while waiting for Dr. O'Geery to retrieve some additional documentation:

  Mr. Navidson has drawn a bomb going off. An Atom bomb. An inverted thermonuclear explosion which reveals in the black contours of its clouds, the far- reaching shock-wave, and of course the great pluming head, the internal dimensions of his own sorrow.[159]

  But even if that is indeed the best way to describe the shape of Navidson's emotional topology, it is still nothing compared to the vision the house ultimately prepares for him.

  As professor Virgil Q. Tomlins
on observes:

  That place is so alien to the kingdom of the imagination let alone the eye—so perfectly unholy, hungry, and inviolable—it easily makes a fourth of July sparkler out of an A-bomb, and reduces the aliens of

  The X-Files and The Outer Limits to Sunday morning funnies.356

  , Nothing Saved: By Suggestion Of Science" in Geo v.83.

  Glossary

  A hydrogen isotope twice the mass of ordinary hydrogen. Needed for heavy water.

  Relating to the historical developments and changes occurring in language.

  Deep Structure. The tree providing a place for words as defined by phrase structure rules.

  Rocks formed from magma (molten material). Classified on the basis of texture and mineral composition. Examples: granite, basalt, pumice.

  Originating or occurring among the stars.

  One of two or more forms of an element with the same atomic number and chemical behavior but different atomic mass.

  Study of the structure, sounds, meaning, and history of language.