Mark Z Danielewski
Page 51
After a detailed examination, both our resident doctor, Thomas Janovinovich M.D., as well as the county coroner, confirmed the cause of death was the result of self-inflicted asphyxiation achieved with bed linen hung from a closet hook. Ms. Lifevre was 59.
Please permit us to express our sincere condolences over your terrible loss. Perhaps it will be of some solace to know that despite the severity of her mental affliction, your mother managed to show much humor in her last year and attendants said she often spoke fondly of her only son.
While this will be a difficult time, we urge you to contact us as soon as possible to make arrangements for her burial. The conditions of her enrollment here already provide for a standard cremation. However for an additional $3,000, we would happily provide a proper casket and service. For another $ 1,000, a burial plot may also be secured at the nearby Wain Cemetery.
Again we wish to extend our sympathies over the death of Ms. Livre. [sic] If we can be of any help during this time of need, whether by answering questions or assisting you with funeral plans, please feel free to contact us directly at .
Respectfully yours,
David J. Draines, M.D. Director
The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute
#669-951381-6634646-94 #162-111231-1614161-23
This receipt indicates that on September 8, 1989, the following article previously owned by Ms. Pelafina Heather Lifevre was claimed by her son John : one jewelry.
F.
Various 9uotes
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Anonymous
Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connatt point.[215]
Blaise Pascal Pensees
We have to describe and to explain a building the upper story of which was erected in the nineteenth century; the ground-floor dates from the sixteenth century, and a careful examination of the masonry discloses the fact that it was reconstructed from a dwelling-tower of the eleventh century. In the cellar we discover Roman foundation walls, and under the cellar a filled-in cave, in the floor of which stone tools are found and remnants of glacial fauna in the layers below. That would be a sort of picture of our mental structure.
C. G.Jung
"Mind and the Earth"
Je ne vois qu 'infini par toutes les fenetres.[216]
Charles Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mai
A professor's view: "It's the commentaries on Shakespeare that matter, not Shakespeare."
Anton Chekhov Notebooks
Un livre est un grand cimetiere oil sur la plupart des tombes on ne peut plus lire les noms effaces,[217]
Marcel Proust
[1]The Greek (Homer), Italian (Rosa Calzecchi Onesti), German (Johann Heinrich Voss), Russian (Gnedich), and French (Paul Mazon) all refer to the same passage: "On this he turned and led the way from council,/ and all the rest, staff-bearing counselors,/ rose and obeyed their marshal. From the camp/ the troops were turning now, thick as bees/ that issue from some crevice in a rock face/ endlessly pouring forth, to make a cluster/ and swarm on blooms of summer here and there,/ glinting and droning, busy in bright air./ Like bees innumerable from ships and huts/ down the deep foreshore streamed those regiments/ toward the assembly ground—and Rumor blazed/ among them like a crier sent from Zeus. Turmoil grew in the great field as they entered/ and sat down, clangorous companies, the ground/ under them groaning, hubbub everywhere./ Now nine men, criers, shouted to compose them:/ 'Quiet! Quiet! Attention! Hear our captains!'/ Then all strove to their seats and hushed their din." As translated by Robert Fitzgerald. The Iliad (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1975), p. 38. — Ed.
Dicamus et labyrinthos, vel portentosissimum humani inpendii opus, sed non, ut existimari potest, falsum,[218]
Pliny
Natural History
36.19.84
Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
Galileo
II Saggiatore
Others apart sat on a hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.
John Milton
Paradise Lost
It is the personality of the mistress that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how much happiness they may find there.
Elise De Wolfe
The House in Good Taste
La maison, c'est la maison de famille, c'est pour y mettre les enfants et les hommes, pour les retenir dans un endroit fait pour eux, pour y contenir leur egarement, les distraire de cette humeur d'aventure, de fuite qui est la leur depuis les commencements des ages.444
Marguerite Duras
Practicalities
[1]"Men think they're heroes—again just like children. Men love war, hunting, fishing, motorbikes, cars, just like children. When they're sleepy you can see it. And women like men to be like that. We mustn't fool ourselves. We like men to be innocent and cruel; we like hunters and warriors; we like children." Duras again, as translated by Barbara Bray, p. 51. — Ed.
[1]"Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. 'Let us leave the road while we can still see,' I said, 'or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.' We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room." As translated by Betty Radice, Pliny: Letters and Panegyricus, Volume 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 445. — Ed.
The Mother of the Muses, we are taught, Is Memory: she has left me.
Walter Savage Landor "Memory"
Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls Her wat'ry Labyrinth, whereof who drinks, Forthwith his former state and being forgets, Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Paradise Lost again
The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such coldness, forgetfulness. So your gestures flake off —
Warm and human, then their pink light Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Sylvia Plath "The Night Dances"
Gilgamesh listened and his tears flowed. He opened his mouth and spoke to Enkidu: "Who is there in strong-walled Uruk who has wisdom like this? Strange things have been spoken, why does your heart speak strangely? The dream was marvelous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow. . ."
Again The Epic of Gilgamesh
I am missing innumerable shades—they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words.
Joseph Teodor Korzeniowski Lord Jim
Hige sceal be heardra, heorte t cenre,
mod sceal pe mare, }e ure maegen lytlaS[219]
The Battle of Maldon
I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept of "empty space" loses its meaning.
Albert Einstein
"Note to the Fifteenth Edition" Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Let us space.
Jacques Derrida Glas
L 'odeur du silence est si vieille.44*
O. W. De L. Milosz
For all the voice in answer he c
ould wake Was but the mocking echo of his own From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach He would cry out on life, that what it wants Is not its own love back in copy speech, But counter-love, original response.
And then in the far-distant water splashed, But after a time allowed for it to swim, Instead of proving human when it neared And someone else additional to him, As a great buck it powerfully appeared, Pushing the crumpled water up ahead . . .
Robert Frost "The Most of It"
All that I have said and done, Now that I am old and ill, Turns into a question till I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right. Did that play of mind send out Certain men the English shot? Did words of mine put too great strain On that woman's reeling brain? Could my spoken words have checked That whereby a house lay wrecked?
William Butler Yeats "Man and the Echo"
Have not we too?—yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognised intelligence!
Such rebounds our inward ear Catches sometimes from afar — Listen, ponder, hold them dear; For of God,—of God they are.
William Wordsworth "Yes, It Was the Mountain Echo"
"Love should be put into action!"
screamed the old hermit. Across the pond an echo
tried and tried to confirm it.
Elizabeth Bishop "Chemin de Fer"
When I came back from death
it was morning
the back door was open
and one of the buttons of my shirt had
disappeared.
Derick Thomson Return from Death
Thou Echo, thou art mortal, all men know.
Echo. No.
Wert thou not bom among the trees and leaves?
Echo. Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide?
Echo. Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly.
Echo. Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse?
Echo. Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight? Echo. Light.
George Herbert "Heaven"
L 'amour n 'est pas consolation, il est lumiere.[220]
Simone Weil Cahier VI (K6)
Of what is this house composed if not of the sun.
Wallace Stevens "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"
We tell you, tapping on our brows,
The story as it should be, — As if the story of a house
Were told, or ever could be.
Edwin Arlington Robinson "Eros Turannos"
Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
Henry David Thoreau Walden
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr[221]
Rainer Maria Rilke "Autumn Day"
I have brought the great ball of crystal;
who can lift it? Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me. And I am not a demigod, I cannot make it cohere. If love be not in the house there is nothing.
Ezra Pound "Canto CXVI"
Yeah well, sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.
Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson Cool Hand Luke
Appendix III
Contrary evidence.
— The Editors
The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Volume XXVIII. San Francisco: The History Company. Publishers. 1886.
SINCK WHEN DID AHi 700 EDDDIO IK? YOU BRING A GUN? I THE PLACK18 8CABY.
I CANT SEE A FUCKING THING)
Magoo-Zine October 1993 33
"Rescue: The Navidson Record" designed by Tyler Martin. Magoo-Zine. Santa Fe. New Mexico. October 1993.
"Another Great Hall on Ash Tree Lane" by Mazerine Diasen. First exhibited during The Cale R. Warden Cinema- On-Canvas New York City Arts Festival. 1994.
Sarah Newbery's "Conceptual Model of the Navidson House." Graduate School of Design. Harvard University. 1993.
"Man Looking In/Outward." Titled still-frame from "Exploration #4." The Talmor Zedactur Collection. VHS. 1991.
Index
A
abandon, 4, 252, 315, 346,
407, 606 abdominal, 523 abort, 124
"A Brief Histoiy of Who I
Love," 354, 367, 396, 523 absence, xiii, 6, 9, 22, 28, 31, 67, 80. 83, 87. 90-91, 121-122, 128, 133, 135, 165, 180, 261, 320, 335, 337, 339-341, 358-359, 381, 397, 423, 464, 517-518, 526, 618, 629 absinthe. 578 abyss, 252, 359, 399, 434,
437, 522, 636 AC, 114,398. 417 accelerate. 59, 285, 296 accordion, 164 accouterments, 594 accurate, xvi, 47, 50, 90, 109,
143, 247, 251, 305, 374 Acheron, 597 acid, 180, 297, 363, 371 acorn, 656
acoustic, 46-47, 50, 103,
128, 131, 317, 337, 522 action, xiv, 11, 68, 70, 120, 125, 136, 142, 176, 206, 317, 339, 344, 359, 379. 496,522, 630 actor, 348-349 adapter, 417
add, xx, 21, 35, 42, 53, 98,
359, 412, 554 addiction, 387 address, iv. xxii, 35, 45, 61, 109, 112, 127, 340, 379-380, 385, 390, 619 adultery, 348 aerolites, 372, 383 affair. 29. 347-349, 351, 495 affection, 56, 61, 247, 266,
511, 601, 606, 638 afraid, xvi, xxiii, 14, 68, 71, 79. 107, 150, 179, 338, 351, 358, 362, 381, 387, 411, 415, 462, 494, 579, 593, 595, 602, 616-617 aftermath, 140, 194-195, 465, 516
again, xxi-xxiii, 4-6, 13, 15. 17, 19-20, 22-23, 30, 36-38, 41-43, 46, 48, 52, 55, 57, 59-62, 64, 67-68, 70. 73, 84, 88, 90. 92-93, 95-97, 99-102, 104-106. 108, 114-115, 117-118, 122, 127-128, 130-131, 135-136, 148, 151, 164, 179-180, 186, 190, 247, 255-256, 258, 265, 267, 270, 272, 299-300, 319-321, 323, 325, 334, 341-346, 349-350, 354-355, 359, 368, 378, 380-381, 384, 387, 391, 395, 397-399, 403-406, 412, 415-417, 419, 424—425, 431^132, 456, 476, 495-497, 500, 503, 505-506, 512, 514-515, 574-575, 578. 590, 596, 599-600, 612, 616, 626, 629, 637-639, 643 aggressor . . . DNE agile, 599, 618 agon, 335
agony, 26, 101, 111, 127 agoraphobia, 125 air, xiv, 4. 26-27, 32, 37, 42, 47. 52, 56, 71-72, 77, 96. 104, 107, 119-121, 144, 149, 188, 253, 262, 298-300, 329, 340, 346, 367, 370, 392. 398-399, 420, 435, 507. 509, 515, 520, 524, 534, 562, 577, 585, 591, 607-608 airplanes, 511 akav. 249 Alabama, 249 Alaska, 20, 103, 105-106,
325, 350, 585, 603, 616 albatross, 17, 138, 394 alchemy, xvi, 192, 561 alcohol. 26. 70. 87. 180, 246.
296, 340, 391, 398 alien, xviii, 28, 381 all, iv, vii, xi, xiii-xxiii, 4-5, 7-17, 19-39, 41-43, 45-55, 58, 60-64, 68-72, 74, 76-78, 80-102,
104-109. 111-112, 114-115, 117-120, 122-124, 127, 129-132, 134-136, 138-139, 141, 144-146,149-150, 165-167, 169, 176, 178-181, 206, 216, 247-249, 251-252, 256-271, 274, 276, 296-300. 305, 313-320, 322-327, 330, 333-348, 350-353, 355, 358, 360-363, 3615-366, 368, 371-372. 375-376, 378-381, 384-387, 389-391, 393-396, 398,
400, 402-405. 407-416,
418- 424, 434-435, 437^138, 447, 464-466, 468, 491-506, 508-520, 522, 524, 526-527, 532-533, 537, 543, 545, 547,554, 574-580, 589, 591-593, 595-599, 601, 603-610, 612-614, 616-617, 621, 623, 625, 629, 631, 635-638, 642
alone, xii-xiv, xx, 5, 7-8,