House Of Leaves - House of Leaves Part 14
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House of Leaves Part 14

I've got to stop blinking in the face of my fear.

I must hear what I scream.

I must remember what I dream.

I pick up the sedatives, these Zs without Z, and one by one crush them between my fingers, letting the dust fall to the floor. Next I locate all the alcohol I have buried around my studio and pour it down the sink. Then I root out every seed and bud of pot and flush it down the toilet along with the numbers of all suppliers. I eventually find a few tabs of old acid as well as some Ecstasy hidden in a bag of rice. These I also toss.

The consumption of MDMA, aka Ecstasy, aka E, aka X, has been known to bring on epilepsy especially when taken in large quantities. Eight months ago, I ingested more than my fair share, mostly White Angels, though I also went ahead and invited to the party a slew of Canaries, Stickmen, Snowballs, Hurricanes, Hallways, Butterflies, Tasmanian Devils and Mitsubishis, which was a month long party, all of it pretty much preceding Thanksgiving, and a different story altogether.

There are so many stories...

Perhaps I'll be lucky and discover this awful dread that gnaws on me day and night is nothing more than the shock wave caused by too many crude chemicals rioting in my skull for too long. Perhaps by cleaning out my system I'll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace.

Then again perhaps in finding my clearing I'll only make myself an easier prey for the real terror that tracks me, waiting beyond the perimeter, past the tall grass, the brush, that stand of trees, cloaked in shadow and rot, but with enough presence to resurrect within me a whole set of ancient reflexes, ordering a non-existent protrusion at the base of my spine to twitch, my pupils already dilating, adrenaline flowing, even as instinct commands me to run.

But by then it will already be too late. The distance far too great to cover. As if there ever really was a place to hide.

At least I'll have a gun.

I'll buy a gun.

Then I'll crouch and I will wait.

Outside shots are fired. Lots. In fact one sounds like an artillery cannon going off. Suddenly the city's at war and I'm confused. When I go to my window a spray of light sets me straight, though the revelation is not without irony.

Somehow the date escaped me.

It's July 4th.

This country's birthday. Wow.

Which I realize means I forgot my own birthday. A day that came and passed, it turns out, in of all places Hailey's arms. How about that, I can remember the beginnings of a nation that doesn't give a flying fuck about me, would possibly even strangle me if given half the chance, but I can't remember my own beginnings-and I'm probably the only one alive willing to at least attempt on my behalf that tricky flying fuck maneuver.

Which might be worth some sort of smile, if I hadn't already come to realize that irony is a Maginot Line drawn by the already condemned-which oddly enough still does make me smile.

Fortunately Reston's nausea does not last long, and he and Navidson can spend the rest of the day pushing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

Initially, they follow the scant remains of the first team and then continue on by following their instincts. Based on the fact that there was very little evidence of the first team's descent remaining on the stairs, Navidson determines that the neon markers and fishing line last at most six days before they are entirely consumed by the house.

When they finally make camp, both men are disheartened and exhausted. Nevertheless, each agrees to alternately serve as watch. Navidson takes the first shift, spending his time removing the dark blotched gauze around his toes-clearly a painful process-before reapplying ointment and a fresh dressing. Reston spends his time tinkering with his chair and the mount on the Arriflex.

Except for their own restlessness, neither one hears anything during the night.

Toward the end of their second day inside (making this the ninth day since Holloway's team set out into the house), both men seem uncertain whether to continue or return.

It is only as they are making camp for the second night that Navidson hears something. A voice, maybe a cry, but so fleeting were it not for Reston's confirmation, it probably would have been shrugged off as just a high note of the imagination.

Leaving most of their equipment behind, the two men head out in pursuit of the sound. For forty minutes they hear nothing and are about to give up when their ears are again rewarded with another distant cry. Based on the rapidly changing video time stamp, we can see another three hours passes as they weave in and out of more rooms and corridors, often moving very quickly, though never failing to mark their course with neon arrows and ample amounts of fishing line.

At one point, Navidson manages to get Tom on the radio, only to learn that there is something the matter with Karen. Unfortunately, the signal decays before he can get more details. Finally, Reston stops his wheelchair and jabs a finger at a wall. On Hi 8, we witness his gruff assertion: "How we get through it, I don't have a clue. But that crying's coming from the other side."

Searching out more hallways, more turns, Navidson eventually leads the way down a narrow corridor ending with a door. Navidson and Reston open it only to discover another corridor ending with another door. Slowly they make their way through a gauntlet of what must be close to fifty doors (it is impossible to calculate the exact number due to the jump cuts), until Navidson discovers for the first and only time a door without a door knob. Even stranger, as he tries to push the door open, he discovers it is locked. Reston's expression communicates nothing but incredulity. [212-See Gaston Bachelard's La Poetique de L'Espace (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), p. 78, where he observes: Francoise Minkowska a expose une collection particulierement emouvante de dessins d'enfants polonais ou juifs qui ont subi les sevices de l'occupation allemande pendant La demiere guen. Telle enfant qui a vecu cache, a Ia moindre alerte, dans une annoire, dessine longtemps apres les heures maudites, des maisons etroites, froides et fermees. Et c'est ainsi que Francoise Minkowska pane de "maisons imrnobiles," de maisons immobilisees clans leur raideur: "Cette raideur et cette immobilite se retrouvent aussi bien a Ia fumee que dans les rideaux des fenetres. Les arbres autour d'elle sont droits, ont l'air de Ia gander."...

A un detail, Ia grande psychologue qu'etait Francoise Minkowska teconnaissait le mouvement de la maison. Dans Ia maison dessinee par un enfant de huit ans, Francoise Minkowska note qu'a Ia porte, ii y a "une poign&; on y entre, on y habite." Ce n'est pas simplement une maisonconstruction, "c'est une maison-habitation." La poignee de Ia porte designe evidemment une fonctionnalite. La kinesthdsie est marquee par ce signe, Si souvent oublid dans les dessins des enfants "rigides."

Remarquons bien que Ia "poignCe" de La porte ne pourrait guere etre dessinee a l'echelle de La maison, C'est sa fonction qui prime tout souci de grandeur. Elle traduit une fonction d'ouverture. Seal un esprit logique peut objecter qu'elle sert aussi bien a fermer qu'a ouvrir. Dans le regne des valeurs, la clef ferme plus qu'elle n'ouvre. La poignee ouvre plus qu'elle ne ferme.

[203-See also Dr. Helen Hodge's American Psychology: The Ownership Of Self (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), p. 297 where she writes: What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson's comdors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Mysr-like discoveries f see Chad; p. 99.] thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? or better yet: what is exciting? While the degree varies, ' are always excited by anything that engages us, influences us or more simply involves us. In those endlessly repetitive hallways and stairs, there is nothing for us to connect with. That pennanently foreign place does not excite us. It bores us. And that is that, except for the fact that there is no such thing as boredom. Boredom is really a psychic defense protecting us from ourselves, from complete paralysis, by repressing, among other things, the meaning of that place, which in this case is and always has been horror.

See also Otto Fenichel's 1934 essay "The Psychology of Boredom" in which he describes boredom as "an unpleasurable experience of a lack of impulse." Kierkegaard goes a little further, remarking that "Boredom, extinction, is precisely a continuity of nothingness." While William Wordsworth in his preface for Lyrical Ballads (1802) writes: The subject is indeed important! For the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability... [A] multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves.

See Sean Healy's Boredom, Self and Culture (Rutherford, NJ.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984); Patricia Meyer Spacks' Boredom: The Literary I-f istory of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and finally Celine Arlesey's Perversity In Dullness ... and Vice- Versa (Denver: Blederbiss Press, 1968).]

See also Anne Balifs article in which she quotes Dr. F. Minkowska's comments on De Van Gogh er Seurat aux dessins d'enfants, illustrated catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musee Pedagogique (Paris) 1949.]

As Navidson pulls away to re-examine the obstacle, he hears a whimper coming from the other side. Taking two steps back, he throws his shoulder into the door. It bends but does not give way. He tries again and again, each hit straining the bolt and hinges, until the fourth hit, at last, tears the hinges free, pops whatever bolt held it in place, and sends the door cracking to the floor.

Reston keeps the chair mounted Arriflex trained on Navidson and while the focus is slightly soft, as the door breaks loose, the frame gracefully accepts Jed's ashen features as he faces what he has come to believe is his final moment.

This whole sequence amounts to a pretty ratty collection of cuts alternating between Jed's Hi 8 and an equally poor view from the 16mm camera and Navidson and Reston's Hi 8s. Nevertheless what matters most here is adequately captured: the alchemy of social contact as Jed's rasp of terror almost instantly transforms itself into laughter and sobs of relief. In a scattering of seconds, a thirty-three year old man from Vineland, New Jersey, who loves to drink Seattle coffee and listen to Lyle Lovett with his fiancee, learns his sentence has been remitted.

He will live.

As diligent as any close analysis of the Zapruder film, similar frame by frame examination carried out countless times by too many critics to name here [214-Though still see Danton Blake's Violent Verses: Cinema's Treatment of Death (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).] reveals how a fraction of a second later one bullet pierced his upper lip, blasted through the maxillary bone, dislodging even fragmenting the central teeth, (Reel 10; Frame 192) and then in the following frame (Reel 10; Frame 193) obliterated the back side of his head, chunks of occipital lobe and parietal bone spewn out in an instantly senseless pattern uselessly preserved in celluloid light (Reel 10; Frames 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, & 205). Ample information perhaps to track the trajectories of individual skull bits and blood droplets, determine destinations, even origins, but not nearly enough information to actually ever reassemble the shatter. Here then- the after math of meaning.

A life ume finished between the space of two frames.

The dark line where the eye in something that was never there To begin with [215-Typo. "T" should read "t" with a period following "with."]

Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: "Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact. Watch how the frame does not, cannot anticipate the action. Jed's in the lower left hand corner of the frame! Nothing's predetermined or foreseen. It's all painfully present which is why it's so painfully real." [216-you probably guessed, not only has Ken Burns never made any such comment, he's also never heard of The Navidson Record let alone Zampano.]

Jed crumples, his moment of joy stolen by a pinkie worth of lead, leaving him dead on the floor, a black pool of blood spilling out of him.

In the next shots-mostly from the Hi Ss-we watch Navidson dragging Wax and Jed out of harm's way while trying at the same time to get Tom on the radio.

Reston returns fire with an HK .45.

"Since when did you bring a gun?" Navidson asks, crouching near the door.

"Are you kidding me? This place is scary."

Another shot explodes in the tiny room.

Reston wheels back to the edge of the doorway and squeezes off three more rounds. This time there is no return fire. He reloads. A few more seconds pass.

"I can't see a fucking thing," Reston whispers.

Which is true: neither one of their flashlights can effectively penetrate that far into the black.

Navidson grabs his backpack and pulls out his Nikon and the Metz strobe with its parabolic mirror.

Thanks to this powerful flash, the Hi 8 can now capture a shadow in the distance. The stills, however, are even more clear, revealing that the shadow is really the blur of a man, standing dead centre with a rifle in his hand.

Then just as the strobe captures him lifting the weapon, presumably now aiming at the blinding flash, we hear a series of sharp cracks. Neither Navidson nor Reston have any idea where these sounds are coming from, though gratefully the stills reveal what is happening: all those doors behind the man are slamming shut,

one.

after another after another, which still does not prevent the figure from firing.

"Awwwwwwwwwww shit!" Reston shouts.

But Navidson keeps his Nikon steady and focused, the motor chewing up a whole roll of film as the flash angrily slashes out at the pre- vailing darkness, ultimately capturing this dark form vanishing behind a closing door, even though a hole the size of a fist punches through the muntin, the round powerful enough to propel the bullet into the second door, though not powerful enough to do more than splinter a before this damage along with even the sound from the blast disappears behind the roar of more slamming doors, the last one finally hammering shut, leaving the room saturated in silence.

Navidson sprints down the corridor to the first door but can find no way to lock it.

"He's alive" Reston whispers. "Navy, come here. Jed's breathing."

The camera captures Navidson's P.O.V. as he returns to the dying young man.

"It doesn't matter Rest. He's still dead."

Whereupon Navidson's eye quickly pans from the thoughtless splatter of grey matter and blood to more pressing things, the groan of the living calling him away from the sigh of the dead.

Despite his shoulder wound and loss of blood, Wax is still very much alive. As we can see, a fever-probably due to the onset of an infection-has marooned him in a delirium and although his rescuers are now at hand his eyes remain fixed on a horizon that is both empty and meaningless. Navidson's shot of Jed, though brief, is not nearly as short as this shot of Wax.

In the next segment, taken at least fifteen minutes later at a new location, we see Navidson elevating Wax's legs, cleaning the wound, and gently feeding him half a tablet of a painkiller, probably meperidine. [217-i.e. Demerol.]

Reston, meanwhile, finishes converting their two-man tent into a makeshift stretcher. Having already arranged the tent poles in a way that will provide the most support, he now uses some pack straps to create two handles which will enable Navidson to carry the rear end more easily.

"What about Jed?" Reston asks, as he begins securing the front end of the stretcher to the back of his wheelchair.

"We'll leave his pack and mine behind."

"Some habits die hard, huh?"

"Or they don't die," replies Navidson. [218-A bit of dialogue which of course only makes sense when Navidson's history is taken into account.] [219-See page 332-333.]

A little later, Navidson gets Tom on the radio and tells him to meet them at the bottom of the stairs.

XI.

La poete au cachot, debraille, maladif, Roulant un manuscript sous son pied convulsive Mesure d'un regard que la terreur enflame L'escalier de vertige ou s'abime son ame.

-Charles Baudelaire [220-Something about the terror of the staircase.] [221- "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.]

While Karen stayed home and Will Navidson headed for the front line, Tom spent two nights in no man's land. He even brought his bag and papers, though in the long run the effects of the weed would not exactly comfort him.

More than likely when Tom first stepped foot in that place, every instinct in his body screamed at him to immediately get out, race back to the living room, daylight, the happy median of his life. Unfortunately it was not an impulse he could obey as he was needed near the Spiral Staircase in order to maintain radio contact.

By his own admission, Tom is nothing like his brother. He has neither the fierce ambition nor the compulsion for risk taking. If both brothers paid the same price for their parents' narcissism, Will relied on aggression to anchor the world while Tom passively accepted whatever the world would give or take away. Consequently Tom won no awards, achieved no fame, held no job for more than a year or two, remained in no relationship for longer than a few months, could not settle down in a city for longer than a few years, and ultimately had no place or direction to call his own. He drifted, bending to daily pressures, never protesting when he was deprived of what he should have rightfully claimed as his own. And in this sad trip downstream, Tom dulled the pain with alcohol and a few joints a day-what he called his "friendly haze."

Ironically though, Tom is better liked than Will. Physically as well as emotionally, Tom has far fewer edges than his famous brother. He is soft, easy-going and exudes a kind of peacefulness typically reserved for Buddhist monks.

Anne Kligman's essay on Tom is nearly poetic in its brevity. In only one and a half pages, she condenses fifty-three interviews with Tom's friends, all of whom speak warmly and generously of a man they admittedly did not know all that well but nonetheless valued and in some cases appeared to genuinely love. Will Navidson, on the other hand, is respected by thousands but "has never commanded the kind of gut- level affection felt for his twin brother." [222-Anne Kligman's "The Short List" in Paris Review, spring, 1995, p. 43-44.]

A great deal of exegesis exists on the unique relationship between these two brothers. Though not the first to make the comparison, Eta Ruccalla's treatment of Will & Tom as contemporary Esau & Jacob has become the academic standard. Ruccalla finds the biblical tale of twins wrestling over birthright and paternal blessing the ideal mirror in which to view Will & Tom, "who like Jacob and Esau sadly come to share the same conclusion- yipparedu. [223- "[ [They] shall be separated." - Ed.] [224-Eta Ruccalla's exemplary Nor True, Man: Mi Ata Beni? (Portland: Hineini Press, May 1995), p. 97. It probably should be noted that while Ruccalla equates Jacob with Navidson, "the clean-shaven intellectual aggressively claiming his birthright," and Esau with Tom, "unkempt and slightly lethargic, lumbering through life like some obtuse water buffalo," Nam Eurtton in her piece "All Accurate" in Panegyric, v. 18, July 30, 1994 draws the opposite conclusion: "Isn't Navidson a hunter like Esau, actively shooting with his canra? And doesn't Tom's calm, in fact a Zen-like calm, make him much more similar to Jacob?"]

Incredible as it may seem, Ruccalla's nine hundred page book is not one page too long. As she says herself, "To adequately analyze the history of Esau and Jacob is to painstakingly exfoliate, layer by layer, the most delicate mille-feuille." [225-Eta Ruccalla's Not True, Man: Mi Ata Beni? p. 3.]

Of course it is also an act that could in the end deprive the reader of all taste for the subject. Ruccalla accepts this risk, recognizing that an investment in such a complex, and without exception, time consuming [Note: Regardless of your take on who's Navidson and who's Tom, here's a quick summary for those unfamiliar with this biblical story about twins. Esau's a hairy, dimwitted hunter. Jacob's a smooth-skinned, cunning intellectual. Daddy Isaac dotes on Esau because the kid always brings him venison. When the time finally comes for the paternal blessing, Isaac promises to give it to Esau as soon as he brings him some meat. Well while Esau's off hunting, Jacob, with help from his mother, covers his hands with goat hair so they resemble Esau's and then approaches his blind father with a bowl full of stew. The ruse works and Isaac thinking the son before him is Esau blesses Jacob instead. When Esau returns, Isaac figures out what's happened but tells Esau he has no second blessing for him. Esau bawls like a baby and vows to kill Jacob. Jacobruns off and meets god. Years later the brothers meet up again, make up, but don't hang together for long. It's actually pretty sad. See Genesis, chapters 25-33.]

array of ideas will in the end yield a taste far superior to anything experienced casually. In the chapter entitled "Va-yachol, Va-yesht, Vayakom, Va-yelech, Va-yivaz" Ruccalla reevaluates the meaning of birthright by treating its significance as nothing more than [226-What follows here is hopelessly incomplete. Denise Neiman who is now married and lives in Tel Aviv claims to have worked on this section when it was intact. The whole thing was really quite brilliant," she told me over the phone. "I helped him a little with the Hebrew but he really didn't need my assistance, except to write down what he said, this incredible analysis about parental blessings, sibling rivalry, birthright, and all the time quoting from memory entire passages from the most obscure books. He possessed a pretty uncanny ability to recite verbatim almost anything he'd read, and let me tell you, he'd read alot. Incredible character.

"It took us about two weeks to write everything he had to say about Esau and Jacob. Then I read it back to him. He made corrections, and we eventually got around to a second draft which I felt was pretty polished." She took a deep breath. I could hear a baby crying in the background. "Then one day I arrived at his place and the pages had vanished. Also all his fingers were bandaged. He mumbled something about falling, scraping up his hands. At first, he ignored me when I asked him about our work, but when I persisted he muttered something like 'What difference does it make? They're dead anyway, right? Or not-alive, however you want to look at it.' I told him I didn't understand. So he just said it was 'too personal' 'an unrealized theme' 'poorly executed' 'a complete mess.'

"He did grunt something about there never having been a blessing to begin with, which I thought was pretty interesting. No birthright, all of it a misleading ploy, both brothers fools, and as for the comparison to the Navilson [sic] twins he suddenly claimed it was justifiable only if you could compare pair of siblings to Israel and his brother.

"Zaxnpano was clearly upset, so I tried fixing him something to eat. He eventually came around and we read some books on meteors.

"I figured that was that, except when I went to the bathroom I found the pages. Or I should say I found what was left of them. He had torn them to shreds. They were in the wastebasket, some strewn on the floor, no doubt a fair share lost down the toilet.

"As I started to pick them up, I also discovered that most of the pieces were stained with blood. I never learned what seizure caused him to rip it all apart but for whatever reason I was overcome by my own impulse to save what was left, not for me really, but for him.

"I stuffed all the crumpled bits into my pockets and later transferred them to a manila envelope which I placed at the bottom of that chest. I guess I hoped he'd find it one day and realize his mistake."

Unfortunately Zampano never did. Though for what it's worth I did. Bits of bloodstained paper, just like Denise Neiman said, all suggesting the same theme but somehow never quite fitting back together.

On more than a few occasions I even considered excluding all this. In the end though, I opted to transcribe the pieces which I figured had enough on them to have some meaning even if that meant not meaning much to me.

One thing's for sure: it did disturb me. There's just something so creepy about all the violence and blood. I mean over what? This? Arcane, obtuse and way over-the-top wanna-be scholarship? Is that what got to him? Or was it something else?

Maybe it really was too personal. Maybe he had a brother. A son. Maybe he had two sons. Who knows. But here it is. All that's left. Incoherent scrap.

Too bad so much of his life had to slip between the lines of even his own words.]

rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz but the Lord Yahweh-that too oft accused literalist- instructs Rebekah in the subtler ways of language by using irony: And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

(Genesis 25: 23-24) [Chalmer' s underline]

On one hand Yahweh announces a hierarchy of age and on the other hand claims the children are the same age. [227-Tobias Chaliner's i's Ironic Postures (London University Press, 1954), p. 92. Chalmer, however, fails to take into account Genesis 25:25-26.]