Mark Z Danielewski
Page 39
Returning to Ash Tree Lane meant removing the other. It meant photographing something unlike anything he had ever encountered before, even in previous visits to the house, a place without population, without participants, a place that would threaten no one else's existence but his own.
No one should brave the underworld alone. — Poe
"The walls are endlessly bare. Nothing hangs on them, nothing defines them. They are without texture. Even to the keenest eye or most sentient fingertip, they remain unreadable. You will never find a mark there. No trace survives. The walls obliterate everything. They are permanently absolved of all record. Oblique, forever obscure and unwritten. Behold the perfect pantheon of absence." — [Illegible] — Ed.
On the first day of April, Navidson set out on the last exploration of those strange hallways and rooms. The card introduces this sequence as nothing more than Exploration #5.
For recording the adventure, Navidson brought with him a 1962 H16 hand crank Bolex 16mm camera along with 16mm, 25mm, 75mm Kern-Paillard lenses and a Bogen tripod. He also carried a Sony microcas- sette recorder, Panasonic Hi 8, ample batteries, at least a dozen 120 minute Metal Evaporated (DLC) tapes, as well as a 35mm Nikon, flashes, and a USA Bobby Lee camera strap. For film, he packed 3000 feet of 7298 16mm Kodak in one hundred foot loads, 20 rolls of 35mm, including some 36 frame Konica 3200 speed, plus 10 rolls of assorted black and white film. Unfortunately the thermal video camera he had arranged to rent fell through in the last minute.
For survival gear, Navidson took with him a rated sleeping bag, a one man tent, rations for two weeks, 2 five-gallon containers of water, chemical heat packs, flares, high intensity as well as regular intensity lightsticks, plenty of neon markers, fishing line, three flashlights, one small pumper light, extra batteries, a carbide lamp, matches, toothbrush, stove, change of clothes, an extra sweater, extra socks, toilet paper, a small medical kit, and one book. All of which he carefully loaded into a two wheel trailer which he secured to an aluminum-frame mountain bike.
For light, he mounted a lamp on the bike's handlebars powered by a rechargeable battery connected to a small optional rear-wheel generator. He also installed an odometer.
As we can see, when Navidson first starts down the hallway he does not head for the Spiral Staircase. This time he chooses to explore the corridors.
Due to the weight of the trailer, he moves very slowly, but as we hear him note on his microcassette recorder: "I'm in no hurry."
Frequently, he stops to take stills and shoot a little film.
After two hours he has only managed to go seven miles. He stops for a sip of water, puts up a neon marker, and then after checking his watch begins pedaling again. Little does he understand the significance of his offhand remark: "It seems to be getting easier." Soon, however, he realizes there is a definite decrease in resistance. After an hour, he no longer needs to pedal: "This hallway seems to be on a decline. In fact all I do now is brake." When he finally stops for the night, the odometer reads an incredible 163 miles.
As he sets up camp in a small room, Navidson already knows his trip is over: "After going downhill for eight hours at nearly 20 mph, it will probably take me six to seven days, maybe more, to get back to where I
started from."
When Navidson wakes up the next morning, he eats a quick breakfast, points the bike home, and begins what he expects will be an appalling, perhaps impossible, effort. However within a few minutes, he finds he no longer needs to pedal.
Once again he is heading downhill.
Assuming he has become disoriented, he turns around and begins pedaling in the opposite direction,which should be uphill. But within fifteen seconds, he is again coasting down a slope.
Confused, he pulls into a large room and tries to gather his thoughts: "It's as if I'm moving along a surface that always tilts downward no matter which direction I face."
Resigned to his fate, Navidson climbs back on the bike and soon enough finds himself clipping along at almost thirty miles an hour.
For the next five days Navidson covers anywhere from 240 to 300 miles at a time, though on the fifth day, in what amounts to an absurd fourteen hour marathon, Navidson logs 428 miles.
Nor does this endless corridor he travels remain the same size.
Sometimes the ceiling drops in on him,
getting
progressively
lower
and
lower
until it begins to graze his head, only to shift a few minutes later,
until
and
higher
rising
higher
it disappears altogether. 430
Sometimes
the hallway
widens, until at one
point Navidson
swears he is moving
down some
enormous plateau:
"An infinitely large billiard table or the smooth face of some incredible mountain," he tells us hours later while preparing a modest meal. "One time 1 stopped and set out to the right on what I thought would be a traverse. Within seconds I was heading downhill again."
Soon the walls and doorways recede and
v a n i s h,
then sight
of
the
out
ceiling
completely
is
out
lifts
too
completely
it is of
too
until
sight
"direction no longer matters."
Navidson stops and lights four magnesium flares which he throws as far as
he can to the
right and left.
Then he bikes down a hundred yards and lights four more flares.
After the third time, he turns around and
relying on a timed exposure photographs
the twelve flares.
The first image captures twelve holes of light.
In the second image, however, the flares seem much farther away.
By the third image, they appear only as streaks, indicating that either
Navidson
or
the
flares
are
m
0v
1
n
g
However,
Navidson's comments on the microcassette recorder indicate his camera was firmly
fixed on the tripod.
Having little choice, Navidson continues on. The hours sweep by. He tries to drink as little water as many thousands of miles he has traveled. He just continues to ride, lost in a trance born out of motion describing the ash floor in front of him before it is already behind him, until all of a sudden, although "As if all along, during the last week, I had sensed something out there" Navidson stutters into the
possible. The odometer breaks. Navidson does not care. It no longer seems relevant to him how and darkness, the lamp on his bike never casting light more than a few yards ahead, barely nothing appears to have changed, one moment differs from the rest, warning Navidson to stop. Hi 8 an hour later. "And then all at once it was gone, replaced by — *
vO m
Navidson tries to stop, hammering down on the brakes, rubber pads failing to hold the wheels, shrieking, even though he is still seconds before the pale light thrown by the bike lamp will finally catch sight of the end. "At that point I just yanked my bike to the ground," he says, pointing the video camera at his left thigh. "My leg's pretty torn up. Still bleeding a little. The trailer's completely wrecked. I think that's what finally stopped me. I slid right to the edge. My legs were hanging over. And I could feel it too. I don't know how. There was no wind, no sound, no change of temperature. There was just this terrible emptiness reaching up for me."
No sooner does he start up this new staircase than the floor below him vanishes along with the bike, trailer, and ever
ything else he left behind, including additional water, food, flares, and lenses. Navidson sprints upwards, trying to distance himself as quickly as possible from that gaping pit. Unfortunately the winding stairs offer no landings or exits. After who knows how many hours, he reaches the last step, finding himself in a small circular chamber without doorways or passages. Just a series of black rungs jutting out of the wall, leading up into an even narrower vertical shaft.
admits he will bar, Navidson
high-caloric energy have a bite of some
gulp of water or stops to take a
with only brief of climbing,
hours and hours after presumably
the ladder. But pulls himself up
Navidson hand over hand,
Slowly but surely,
Erich Kastner in Olherge Wein- berge (Frankfurt, I960, p. 95) comments on the force of vertical meanings:
The climbing of a mountain reflects
redemption. That is due to the force of
the word 'above,' and the power of
the word 'up.' Even those who have
long ceased to believe in Heaven
and Hell, cannot exchange the words
'above' and 'below.'
An idea Escher beautifully subverts in House of Stairs; disenchanting his audience of the gravity of the world, while at the same time enchanting them with the peculiar gravity of the self.
tie himself to a probably have to
sleep. This idea, rung and try to
unappealing he however, is so
for a little longer. His continues to push on
Thirty minutes later, tenacity is rewarded.
rung. A few more he reaches the last
standing inside a very* seconds and he is
small room with
one door which
he cautiously opens.
On the other side, we find a narrow cor ridor sliding into darknes s. "These w alls are actua lly a relief," Navidson co mments after he has been walking for a while. "I ne ver thought t his labyrinth would beap leasant thin g to return to." Excep t the futhe r he goes, t he smaller t he hallway gets, unti 1 he has t o remove his pack and crou ch. So on he i son all fours p ushing his pac k in fro ntofhi
m. Another hundred yar ds and he h
as to crawl on hi s belly. As we c an see, the pain f rom his already i njured leg is excru ciating. At one poi
nt, he is unable t o move another i
nch.The jump cut suggests ne may h
ave rested or slept . When he begins dragging himself forw ard again, the pain has still not diminished. E ventually though, he e merges inside a v ery large room w
here everything about the house suddenly
"I'm afraid it'll vanish if I move closer. It's almost worth spending an hour just basking in the sight. I must be nuts to enjoy this so much."
But when Navidson finally does move forward, nothing changes.
£9V
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Hans Staker from Geneva, Switzerland has researched the Navidson-match question. By carefully analyzing one black white print which briefly appears after the flare vignettes, Staker managed to magnify the matchbook just visible in the lower left hand corner. Navidson's thumb obscures most of the design but the Latin words Fuit Ilium can still be made out along with the English words Thanks To These Puppies.
Based on this scant evidence, Staker successfully determined that the matches came from of all places a pub outside of Oxford, England, run by a former classics professor and amateur phillumenist by the name of Eagley "Egg" Learned who, as it turned out, had designed the matchbook himself.
"Most British septuagenarians have their gardens to putter about in. I have my pub," Learned told Staker in an interview. "I tinker constantly with my ale selection the way the incontinent fret about their tulips. The matches came out of that sort of tinkering. There's actually a factory not too far from here. I merely applied twenty years of Latin to come up with the cover. Call it an old man's hat tip to anarchy. A touch more incendiary than the old Swan Vestas, I think. Designed to keep the goraks away."L
Staker goes on to trace how the matchbook got from Learned's pub to Navidson's steady hands. Learned actually stopped ordering the matches back in '85 which was right after Navidson visited England and presumably the pub.
It is highly unlikely Navidson ever intended to use a book of ten year old matches on a journey as important as this one. In fact, he packed several boxes of recently purchased matches which he lost along with the trailer and bike. Probably some private history caused him to carry the matchbook on him.
To Learned's credit, they are good matches. The heads ignite easily and the staffs burn evenly. Staker located one of these matchbooks and after recreating the conditions in the house (namely the temperature) found that each match burned an average of 12.1 seconds. With
only 24 matches plus the matchbook cover, which Staker figured out would burn for 36 seconds, Navidson had a total of five minutes and forty-four seconds of light.
The book, however, is 736 pages long. Even if Navidson can average a page a minute, he will still come up 704 pages short (he had already read 26 pages). To overcome this obstacle, he tears out the first page, which of course consists of two pages of text, and rolls it into a tight stick, thus creating a torch which, according to Staker, will burn for about two minutes and provide him with just enough time to read the next two pages.
Unfortunately Staker's calculations are really more a form of academic onanism, a jerk of numeric wishful thinking, having very little to do with the real world. As Navidson reports, he soon begins falling behind. Perhaps his reading slows or the paper burns unevenly or he has bungled the lighting of the next page. Or maybe the words in the book have been arranged in such a way as to make them practically impossible to read. Whatever the reason, Navidson is forced to light the cover of the book as well as the spine. He tries to read faster, inevitably loses some of the text, frequently burns his fingers.
In the end Navidson is left with one page and one match. For a long time he waits in darkness and cold, postponing this final bit of illumination. At last though, he grips the match by the neck and after locating the friction strip sparks to life a final ball of light.
First, he reads a few lines by match light and then as the heat bites his fingertips he applies the flame to the page. Here then is one end: a final act of reading, a final act of consumption. And as the fire rapidly devours the paper, Navidson's eyes frantically sweep down over the text, keeping just ahead of the necessary immolation, until as he reaches the last few words, flames lick around his hands, ash peels off into the surrounding emptiness, and then as the fire retreats, dimming, its light suddenly spent, the book is gone leaving nothing behind but invisible traces already dismantled in the dark.
Perhaps it is worthwhile to mention here the response to what serves essentially as the climax to Navidson's documentary. After all, the film does not provide an even remotely coherent synthesis of Navidson's fall. There is a still photograph of the window, a few hundred feet of flares dropping, hovering, shooting up into the void, and several pictures of Navidson reading/ burning the book. The rest is a jumble of audio clips recording Navidson's impressions as he begins to die from exposure. All of which comes down to one incredible fact: nearly six minutes of screen time is black.
In Rolling Stone (November 14, 1996, p. 124) columnist James Parshall remarked:
Horrific, true, but also amusing. Even to this day, I can't help smiling when I think about the audience squirming in their seats, squinting at that implacable screen, now and then glancing over at those luminous red exit signs in order to give their eyes a rest, while somewhere behind them a projector continues to spew out darkness.
Michael Medved was appalled. In his mind, six minutes of nothing spelled the end of cinema. He was so shocked, indignant, even incoherent, he failed to consider that The Navidson Record might have absolutely nothing to do with cinema. S
tuart Deweltrop in Blind Spot (v.42, spring, 1995, p. 38) described it as "a wonderful fiasco—n'est-ce pas?" Kenneth Turan called it "a stunt." Janet Maslin, however, had a completely different reaction: "At last a picture with cojones!"