Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  ""But here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear." As translated by Stephen Mitchell. — Ed.

  "3Navidson's camera work is an infinitely complex topic. Edwin Minamide in Objects of a Thousand Facets (Bismark, North Dakota: Shive Stuart Press, 1994), p. 421, asserts that such "resonant images," especially those in this instance, conjure up what Holloway could never have achieved: "The fact that Navidson can photograph even the dirtiest blue mugs in a way that reminds us of pilgrims on a quest proves he is the necessary narrator without whom there would be no film; no understanding of the house." Yuriy Pleak in Semiotic Rivalry (Casper, Wyoming: Hazard United, 1995), p. 105, disagrees, claiming Navidson's lush colors and steady pans only reveal his competitiveness and bitterness toward Holloway: "He seeks to eclipse the team's historical descent with his own limited art." Mace Roger-Court, however, finds In These Things I Find, Series #18 (Great Falls, Montana: Ash Otter Range Press, 1995) that Navidson's posture is highly instructive and even enlightening: "His lonely coffee cups, his volcanic bowl

  118Tasha K. Wheelston's "M.O.S.: Literal Distress," Film Quarterly, v. 48, fall 1994, p. 2-11.

  x"Here is the toil of that house, and the inextricable wandering" Aeneid 6. 27. "The house difficult of exit" (Ascensius (Paris 1501)); "difficult to enter" (Trevet (Basel 1490)).135 See H. J. Thomson's "Fragments of Ancient Scholia on Virgil Preserved in Latin Glossaries" in W. M. Lindsay and H. J. Thomson's Ancient Lore in Medieval Latin Glossaries (London: St. Andrews University Publications, 1921).120

  l20In fact all of this was quoted directly from Penelope Reed Doob's The Idea of the Labyrinth: From Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990) p. 21, 97, 145 and 227. A perfect example of how Zampan6 likes to obscure the secondary sources he's using in order to appear more versed in primary documents. Actually a woman by the name of Tatiana turned me onto that bit of info. She'd been one of Zampand's scribes and—'lucky for me* she told me over the phone— still had, among other things, some of the old book lists he'd requested from the library.

  I do have to say though getting over to her place was no easy accomplishment. I had trouble just walking out my door. Things are definitely deteriorating. Even reaching for the latch made me feel sick to my stomach. I also experienced this awful tightening across my chest, my temples instantly registering a rise in pulse rate. And that's not the half of it. Unfortunately I don't think I can do justice to how truly strange this all is, a paradox of sorts, since on one hand I'm laughing at myself, mocking the irrational nature of my anxiety, what I continue in fact to perceive as a complete absurdity—"I mean Johnny what do you really have to be afraid of?*— while on the other hand, and at the same time mind you, finding myself absolutely terrified, if not of something in particular—there were no particulars as far as I could see—then of the reaction itself, as undeniable unimpeachable as Zampand's black trunk.

  I know it makes no sense but there you have it: what should have negated the other only seemed to amplify it instead.

  Fortunately, or not fortunate at all, Thumper's advice continued to echo in my head. I accepted the risk of cardiac arrest, muttered a flurry of fucks and charged out into the day, determined to meet Tatiana and retrieve the material.

  Of course I was fine.

  Except as I started walking down the sidewalk, I watched a truck veer from its lane, flatten a stop sign, desperately try to slow, momentarily redirect itself, and then in spite of all the brakes on that monster, all the accompanying smoke and ear puncturing shrieks, it still barreled straight into me. Suddenly I understood what it meant to be weightless, flying through the air, no longer ruled by that happy dyad of gravity

  In terms of spontaneous perception, man's space is 'subjectively centered.' The development of schemata, however, does not only mean that the notion of centre is established as a means of general organization, but that certain centres are 'externalized' as points of reference in the environment. This need is so strong that man since remote times has thought of the whole world as being centralized. In many legends the 'centre of the world' is concretized as a tree or a pillar symbolizing a vertical axis mundi. Mountains were also looked upon as points where sky and earth meet. The ancient Greeks placed the 'navel' of the world (omphalos) in Delphi, while the Romans considered their Capitol as caput mundi. For Islam ka'aba is still the centre of the world. Eliade points out that in most beliefs it is difficult to reach the centre. It is an ideal goal, which one can only attain after a 'hard journey.' To 'reach the centre is to achieve a consecration, an initiation. To the profane and illusory existence of yesterday, there succeeds a new existence, real, lasting and powerful.' But Eliade also points out that 'every life, even the least eventful, can be taken as the journey through a labyrinth.'132

  See Christian Norberg-Schulz's Existence, Space Architecture (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 18 in which he quotes from Mircea Eliade's Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed (London: Sheed and Ward, 1958), p. 380-382.

  132What Derrida and Norberg-Schulz neglect to consider is the ordering will of gravitation or how between any two particles of matter exists an attractive force (this relationship usually represented as G with a value of 6.670 X IO-'1 N-m2/ kg2). Gravity, as opposed to gravitation, applies specifically to the earth's effect on other bodies and has had as much to say about humanity's sense of centre as Derrida and Norberg-Schulz. Gravity informs words like 'balance', 'above', 'below', and even 'rest'. Thanks to the slight waver of endolymph on the ampullary crest in the semicircular duct or the rise and fall of cilia on maculae in the utricle and saccule, gravity speaks a language comprehensible long before the words describing it are ever spoken or learned. Albert Einstein's work on this matter is also worth studying, though it is important not to forget how Navidson's house ultimately confounds even the labyrinth of the inner ear.133

  '33This gets at a Lissitzky and Escher theme which Zampan6 seems to constantly suggest without ever really bringing right out into the open. At least that's how it strikes me. Pages 30, 356 and 441, however, kind of contradict this. Though not really.

  DAside from the practical aspect of fishing line—a readily available and cheap way to map progress through that complicated maze—there are of course obvious mythological resonances. Minn-.' daughter. Ariadne. ■.applied I ho'iOLi'. with a thread v,Inch he used I" escape the labyrinth. Thread has repeatedly served as a metaphor for an umbilical cord, for life, and for destiny. The Greek Fates (called Moerae) or the Roman Fates (called Fata or Parcae) spun the thread of life and also cut it off. Curiously in Orphic cults, thread symbolized semen.

  206Which you are quite right to observe makes no sense at all.

  219See page 332-333.

  22'"The poet, sick, and with his chest half bare/ Tramples a manuscript in his dark stall,/ Gazing with terror at the yawning stair/ Down which his spirit finally must fall." As translated by Roy Campbell. — Ed.

  243Wrong. See Genesis 27:29.244

  244Mr. Truant also appears to be in error. The correct reference is Genesis 25:27. — Ed.

  258Also refer back to footnote 212 dealing with Frangoise Minkowska.

  2680n several occasions, Zampano also uses the word "grave."269

  269See Index. — Ed.

  275In the following excerpt from The Last Interview, Navidson sheds some more light on how he managed to emerge from those dark hollows: "I remember I had found Jed's pack so I knew I was okay on water and food for a while. Then I just started climbing up the stairs, one step at a time. At first it was slow going. That roar would frequently rise up the central shaft like some awful wail. At times it sounded like voices. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Calling after me. And then other times it sounded like the wind only there is no wind there.

  "I remember finding The Holloway Tape off one of the landings. I had caught sight of a few bits of neon marker still attached to the wall and wandered over to take a look. A minute later I saw
his pack and the camera. It was all just sitting there. The rifle was nearby too, but there was no sign of him.

  284Inked out as well as burned.

  287Robert J[ ]n Campbell, M.D[ }Psychiatric Dictionary (Oxfo[]d Univ[ ]ity Press, 1981) [ ] 608[]

  310A line for Kyrie, though these days she's a little unapproachable as Gdansk Man is now officially on some kind of Halloween rampage. He apparently cornered Lude at Dragonfly intending to exact some kind of serious physical retribution. Lude smiled and kicked him hard in the balls. The bouncers there, all friends of Lude's, quickly threw the madman into the street. Gdansk Man in turn, being one of this century's truly great logicians, left some yelling message on my machine. A powerful bit of articulation on his part, frequently juxtaposing murder and my name with just the right amount of grunting incoherence. Who cares? Fuck him. As if he's really going to change any of this, which also applies to that scrap of German up there, as if a translation will somehow decrease the shattering effect this whole thing has had on me. It won't. I know that now. There's little else I can do now but copy it all down. And fast.

  31 'Interview with Audrie McCullogh. KCRW, Los Angeles, June 16, 1993.

  317See Clarence Sweeney's Privacy and Intrusion in the Twenty-First Century (London: Apeneck Press, 1996), p. 140, as well as works already mentioned in footnote 15. Also reconsider the moment discussed in Chapter II (pages 10-11) where Navidson opens the jewelry box and then moments later throws out some of the hair he has just removed from Karen's brush.318

  3i8No matter whether you're an electrician, scholar or dope addict, chances are that somewhere you've still got a letter, postcard or note that's meaningful to you. Maybe only to you.

  It's amazing how many people save at least a few letters during their lifetime, leaves of feeling, tucked away in a guitar case, a safety deposit box, on a hard drive or even preserved in a pair of old boots no one will ever wear. Some letters keep. Some don't. I have a few that haven't spoiled. One in particular hides inside a locket shaped like a deer.

  It's actually a pretty clunky thing, supposedly over a hundred years old, made out of polished sterling silver with platinum plated antlers, emerald eyes, small diamonds on the fringe of its mane and a silver latch disguised as the tail. A thread of braided gold secures it to whoever wears it, which in this case has never been me. I just keep it by my bed, in the locked lower drawer of my nightstand.

  My mother was the one who used to wear it. Whenever I saw her, from the time I was thirteen till I was almost eighteen, she always had it around her neck. I never knew what she kept inside. I saw it before I left for Alaska and I guess even back then there was something about its shape I resented. Most lockets I'd seen were small, round and warm. They made sense. Hers I didn't get. It was awkward, ornate and most of all cold, every now and then blinking out odd bits of light, a warped mirror, attempting a reflection when she took care of it. For the most part only achieving a blur.

  I saw it again before I left for Europe. An essay I'd written on the painter Paulus de Vos (1596-1678) had won me an all-paid summer abroad. I lasted two days in the program. By the third day I was heading for the station, looking for something, maybe someone, a bindle on my back, a Eurorail pass in hand, not more than three hundred bucks in traveler checks in my pocket. I ate very little, hustled from place to place, peeking into Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden before looping west so I could race all the way down from Denmark to Madrid where I stalked the halls of the Prado like a pack of hounds howling for a hart. Star stung chess games in Toledo soon gave way to a mad trek east for the littered lore of Naples and eventually a ferry ride to Greece where I made my way among Ionian islands before heading on towards destinations even further south. Back in Rome, I spent almost a week at a whorehouse, talking to the women about the simplest stuff while they waited for their next turn—another story waiting on other days. In Paris I lived at the bistros during the night, occasionally splurging on beer and escargots, while during the day I slept brokenhearted on the quays of the Seine. I don't know why I say brokenhearted. I guess it's the way I felt, all emaciated and without company. Everything I saw in me somehow only reflecting my destitution. I often thought about the

  323Heine?324

  324Freud. — Ed.

  ^ More than likely, an eight minute version of Karen's abridgment became the second short now known as "Exploration #4." However, it remains a mystery who cut out five minutes (which must have included Holloway's suicide) before distributing it. Kevin Stanley in "What Are You Gonna Do Now, Little Man?" and Other Tales of Grass Roots Distribution (Cambridge: Vallombrosa Inc., 1994) points out how easy it would have been for one of the professors or authors who received a copy to make a dupe. As to why

  330While unheimlich has already recurred within this text, there has up to now been no treatment of the English word uncanny. While lacking the Germanic sense of "home," uncanny builds its meaning on the Old English root cunnan from the Old Norse Kunna which has risen from the Gothic Kunnan (preterite- present verbs) meaning know from the Indo-European (see OED). The "y" imparts a sense of "full of' while the "un" negates that which follows. In other words, un-cann-y literally breaks down or disassembles into that which is not full of knowing or conversely full of nat knowing: and so without understanding exactly what repetitive denial still successfully keeps repressed and thus estranged, though indulging in repetition nonetheless, that which is uncanny may be defined as empty of knowledge and knowing or at the same time surfeit with the absence of knowledge and knowing. In the words of Perry Ivan Nathan Shaftesbury, author of Murder's Gate: A Treatise On Love and Rage (London: Verso, 1996), p. 183: "It is therefore sacred, inviolate, forever preserved. The ultimate virgin. The husbandless madonna. Mother of God. Mother of Mother. Inhuman." See also Anthony Vidler's The Architectural Uncanny: Essays In The Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992).

  354Don't worry that thought crossed my mind too. Unfortunately Exhibit Three doesn't make up for the spillage back there because there is no Exhibit Three. Aside from a few notes, it's missing. I've looked everywhere, especially for the Zero folder. Nothing. Who knows, maybe it's for the best.

  Today, for no reason in particular, I started thinking about Dr.Ogelmeyer, wondering what I might have found out if I'd had the money, if I'd taken the time to see his specialist, if I'd opted for the tests. Of course if if were a fifth I'd be drunk, which I'm definitely not. Maybe that kind of confirmation is unnecessary anyway.

  Still I wonder.

  I grew up on certain words, words I've never mentioned to Lude or anyone for that matter, words orbiting around my mother mainly, sometimes whispered, more often written in letters my father would never have let me read had he lived.

  (Now that I think about it, I guess I've always gravitated towards written legacies (private lands surrounded by great bewildering oceans (a description I don't entirely understand even as I write it down now (though the sense of adventure about words (that little "1" making so little difference), appeals to me—ah but to hell with the closing parent)he)see)s)(sic)

  Before I understood the significance of things like "auditory hallucinations," "verbigeration," "word salad," "derealization," "depersonalization" I sensed in them all kinds of adventure. To reach their meaning would require a great journey, which I eventually found out was in fact true, though the destinations did not exactly turn out to be Edenic places full of gold leaf, opal or intricately carved pieces of jade.

  Count yourself lucky if you've never wandered by the house of Kurt Schnieder or Gabriel Langfeldt, or if the criterias of St. Louis, Taylor and Abrams or Research Diagnostic leave you puzzled. The New Haven Schizophrenia Index should give more than enough away.

  In my case, would Ogelmeyer have turned to those tools or would he have begun first with a biological examination? Look for hyperactivity of dopaminergic systems? Check for an increase in norepinephrine? Or more than likely run an MRI on my brain to see if the lateral and third ventricles we
re getting larger? Maybe he'd even take a peek at my delta activity on the good old electroencephalogram (EEG)?

  What sort of data streams would be generated and how conclusively could he or his specialists read them?

  I'll never know. Which is not to imply it's the wrong road. Quite the contrary. It's just not mine. All I hope for is a moment of rational thought and one shot at action before I'm lost to a great saddening madness, pithed at the hands of my own stumbling biology.

  As it stands, I've dropped eighteen pounds. A couple of eviction notices lie near my door. I feel like I haven't slept in months. My neighbors are scared of me. Whenever I pass them in that dim brown- walled hall, which happens rarely, only when I have to go out for more tuna, books from the library or to sell blood to buy candles, I hear

  363"Ghostly anticipation." — Ed.

  366Maurice Blanchot translates this as "whoever sees God dies." — Ed.

  385Original text:

  Robinet a pens6 que c'est en roulant sur lui-meme que le limacon a fabriqu6 son "escalier." Ainsi, toute la maison de l'escargot serait une cage d'escalier. A chaque contorsion, l'animal mou fait une marche de son escalier en colimacon. II se contorsionne pour avancer et grandir.

  And of course who can forget Derrida's remarks on this subject in footnote 5 in "Tympan" in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1972), p. xi-xii:

  Tympanon. dionysie, labyrinthe, fils d'Ariane. Nous parcourons maintenant (debout, marchant, dansant), compris et envelopes pour n'en jamais sortir, la forme d'une oreille construite autour d'un barrage, tournant autour de sa paroi interne, une ville, done (labyrinthe, canaux semi-circulaires—on vous prdvient que les rampes ne tiennent pas) enroulee comme un limacon autour d'une vanne, d'une digue (dam) et tendue vers la mer; ferm£e sur elle-meme et ouverte sur la voie de la mer. Pleine et vide de son eau, I'anamnese de la conque r£sonne seule sur une plage. Comment une felure pourrait-elle s'y produire, entre terre et mer?386