Karen immediately goes out and buys a compass-this while the men are in the midst of Exploration #2. Upon returning home, however, she is astonished to find the compass refuses to settle on any one direction inside the house. Assuming it must be broken, she drives back to town and exchanges it for a new one. Apparently this time she tests it in the store. Satisfied, she returns to the house only to discover that once again the compass is useless. [100-Rosemary Park considers Karen's dilemma highly emblematic of the absence of cultural polarities: "In this case, Karen's inability to determine a direction is not a fault but a challenge, requiring tools more capable than compasses and reference points more accurate than magnetic fields." See "Impossible Directions" in Inside Out (San Francisco: Urban B-light, 1995), P. 91.]
No matter what room she stands in, whether in the back or the front, upstairs or downstairs, the needle never stays still. North it seems has no authority there. Tom confirms the strange phenomenon, and during Exploration #3 Holloway, who up till then has relied solely on neon arrows and fishing line to mark their path, demonstrates how the same holds true for a compass read within those ash-like halls.
"I'll be damned," Holloway grunts as he stares at the twitching needle. [101-David Lettau wrote an amusing if ultimately pointless essay on the compass' behavior. He asserted that the minute fluctuations of the needle proved the house was nothing less than a vestibule for pure energy which if harnessed correctly could supply the world with unlimited power. See The Faraday Conclusion (Boston: Maxwell Press, 1996). Rosie O'Donnell, however, offered a different perspective when she wryly remarked on Entertainment Tonight: "The fact that Holloway waited that long to use a compass only goes to show how men - even explorers - still refuse to ask for directions."]
"I guess all we've got now is your sense of direction," Wax jokingly tells Jed, which as Luther Shepard wrote: "Only helps to emphasize how real the threat was of getting lost in there." [102-See Luther Shepard's chapter entitled 'The Compass School" in The Complete Feng Shui Guide for The Navidson Record (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996), p. 387.]
In light of this new development and in preparation for Exploration #4, Tom makes several trips into town to purchase more fishing line, neon markers, and anything else that might serve to mark the team's path. Since Holloway's plan is to spend at least five nights inside, Tom also picks up extra food and water. On one of these excursions, he even takes Daisy and Chad along. No Hi 8 records their trip but the way Chad and Daisy relate to their mother the details of their shopping spree reveals how fond they have become of their uncle.
Unfortunately, Tom also has to buy a ticket back to Massachusetts. With the exception of a few weeks in July, he has not worked in over three months. As Tom explains to Karen and Navidson, "the time's come for me to put ass in gear and get on with my life." He also tells them the time has come for them to contact the media and find a new house.
Originally Tom had intended to leave right after Exploration #3 but when Navidson begs him to stay through Exploration #4, he agrees.
Reston also sticks around. He had briefly considered taking a leave of absence from the university but managed instead to somehow arrange for a week off, despite the fact that it is late September and the fall semester has already begun. He and Tom both live at the house, Tom in the study, [103-Neekisha Dedic's "The Study: Tom's Place" Diss. Boston University, 1996, examines the meaning of "study" when juxtaposed with the ritual of territory, sleep, and memory.] Reston crashing on the pull-out in the living room, while Holloway, Jed, and Wax-at least up until Exploration #4-stay at a local motel.
From all the clips leading up to Exploration #4, we can see how both Navidson and Holloway expect to gain a great deal of fame and fortune. Even if Holloway's team does not reach the bottom of the staircase, both men agree their story will guarantee them national attention as well as research grants and speaking opportunities. Holloway's company will more than likely thrive, to say nothing of the reputations of all those involved.
This kind of talk, on the day before Exploration #4 is scheduled to start, actually manages to bring Navidson and Holloway a little closer together. There is still a good deal of unspecified tension between them but Holloway warms to discussions of success, especially to the idea of, to use Navidson's words, "going down in history." Perhaps Holloway imagines himself joining Navidson's world, what he perceives as a place for the esteemed, secure, and remembered. Nevertheless, what these short clips do not show is the paranoia growing within him. As we are well aware, future events will ultimately reveal how much Holloway feared Navidson would get rid of him and thus deprive him of the recognition he had a spent a lifetime trying to obtain, the recognition the house seemed to promise.
Of course, Karen will have nothing to do with such talk. Upon hearing what the men are discussing, she angrily withdraws to the periphery of the house. She clearly despises anything that might suggest a longer, more protracted relationship with the oddities of their home. Daisy, on the other hand, keeps close to Navidson, picking at tiny scabs on her wrists, always sitting on her father's shoulders or when that proves impossible on Tom's. Chad turns out to be the most problematic. He spends more and more time outside by himself, and that afternoon returns home from school with a bruised eye and swollen nose.
Navidson breaks off his conversation with Holloway to find out what happened. Chad, however, refuses to speak.
[104-Which is not really a good response. And you know changing the details or changing the subject can be just the same as refusing to speak. I guess I've been guilty of those two things for a long time now, especially the first one, always shifting and re-shifting details, smoothing out the edges, removing the corners, colorizing the whole thing or if need be de-colorizing, sometimes even flying in a whole chorus of cartoon characters, complete with slapstick Biff I Blam! Pow! antics,-this time leave in the blam-which may have some appeal, can't underrate the amusement factor there, even though it's so far from the truth it might as well be a cartoon because it certainly isn't what happened, no Bugs Bunny there, no Thumper, no Biff I Blami Powl either, no nothing of the kind. And fuck, now I know exactly where I'm going, a place I've already managed to avoid twice, the first time with a fictive tooth improv, the second time with that quick dart north to Santa Cruz and the troubles of a girl I barely know, though here I am again, right at this moment too, again heading straight for it, which I suppose I could still resist. I am resisting. Maybe not. I mean I could always just stop, do something else, light up a joint, get swollen on booze. In fact doing virtually anything at all, aside from this, would keep me from relating the real story behind my broken tooth, though I don't know if I want to, not relate that story I mean, not anymore. I actually think it would do me some good to tell it, put it down here, at least some of it, so I can see the truth of it, see the details, revisit that taste, that time, and maybe re-evaluate or re-understand or re- I don't know.
Besides, I can always burn it when I'm done.
After my father died I was shipped around to a number of foster homes. I was trouble wherever I went. No one knew what to do with me. Eventually-though it did take awhile-I ended up with Raymond and his family. He was a former marine with, as I've already described, a beard rougher than horse hide and hands harder than horn. He was also a total control freak. No matter the means, no matter the cost, he was going to be in control. And everyone knew if push came to shove he was as likely to die for it as he was to kill for it.
I was twelve years old.
What did I know?
I pushed.
I pushed all the time.
Then one night, late at night, much closer to dawn than dusk, while ice still gathered outside along the window frames and tessellated walks, I woke up to find Raymond squatting on my bed, wearing his black dirt-covered boots, chewing on a big chunk of beef jerky, jabbing me in the face with his fingers, murdering all remnants of sterno or park dreams.
"Beast," he said when he was satisfied sleep was completely dead. "Let's get an understanding going. You're not really in this family but you're living with this family, been living'n us for near a year, so what does that make you?"
I didn't answer. The smart move.
"That makes you a guest, and being a guest means you act like a guest. Not like some kind of barnyard animal. If that doesn't suit you, then I'll treat you like an animal which'll have to suit you. And what I'm saying 'bout your behavior don't just go for here either. It goes for that school too. I don't want no more problems. You clear?"
Again I didn't say anything.
He leaned closer, forcing on me that rank smell of meat clinging to his teeth. "If you understand that, then you and I aren't going to cross no more." Which was all he said, though he squatted there on my bed for a while longer.
The next day I fought in the schoolyard until my knuckles were bloody. And then I fought the following day and the day after that. A whole week, fifteen faceless assailants racing after me right when school rang out, mostly eighth graders but a few ninth graders too, always bigger than me, telling me no seventh grade newcomer ever gets a say back, but I always said back, I bounced all of it right back, back- off whenever they gave me even the slightest bit of shit, and they finally hurt me for doing it, hurt me enough to make me give up and die, just curl up and cry, kicking the ground, my face all puffy, balls bashed and ribs battered, though something would always just pick me up from that fetal hold, maybe in the end it was all the nothing I had to hold, and it would throw me again after whoever was winning or just wanted to go next.
After the tenth fight, something really poisonous got inside me and turned off all the pain. I didn't even register a hit or cut anymore. I heard the blow but it never made it far enough along my nerves for me to even feel. As if all the feel-meters had blown. So I just kept hacking back, spending everything I was against what I still didn't know.
This one kid, he must have been fourteen too, hit me twice and figured I was down for good. I clawed up his face pretty bad then, enough for the blood to get in his eyes, and I don't think he expected it was ever going to get to that. I mean there were rivulets on his parka and on alot of the snow and he kind of froze up, frightened I guess, I don't know, but I apparently fractured his jaw and loosened a couple of his teeth then, split three of my knuckles too. Gloves were not an option in this kind of fighting.
Anyway, he's the kid that got me expelled, but since the fight had taken place after school, it took all the next day for the administrators to put the pieces together. In the meantime, I fought three more times. Right at noon recess. Friends of the ninth grader came after me. I couldn't punch too well with my broken knuckles and they kept pushing me down and kicking me. Some teachers finally pulled them off, but not before I got my thumb in one of the kid's eyes. I heard he had blood in it for weeks.
When I got home Raymond was waiting for me. His wife had called him at the site and told him what had happened. Over the last week, Raymond had seen the bruises and cuts on my hands but since the school hadn't called and I wasn't saying anything, he didn't say anything either.
No one asked me what happened. Raymond just told me to get in the truck. I asked him where we were going. Even a question from me made him mad. He yelled at his daughters to go to their room.
"I'm taking you to the hospital," he finally whispered.
But we didn't go directly to the hospital.
Raymond took me somewhere else first, where I lost half my tooth, and alot more too I guess, on the outskirts, in an ice covered place, surrounded by barbed wire and willows, where monuments of rust, seldom touched, lie frozen alongside fence posts and no one ever comes near enough to hear the hawks cry.]
Holloway, for his part, does not permit these domestic tensions and concomitant stresses to distract him from his preparations. The ever oblique Leon Robbins in attempting to adequately evaluate these efforts has gone so far as to suggest that "Operation" would in fact be a far more appropriate word than "Exploration": Holloway in many ways resembles a conscientious medical practitioner in pre-op. Take for example how meticulously he reviews his team's supplies the evening before-what I like to call-" Operation #4." He makes sure flashlights are all securely mounted on helmets and Hi 8s properly attached to chest harnesses. He personally checks, re-checks, packs, and re-packs all the tents, sleeping bags, thermal blankets, chemical heat packs, food, water, and First-Aid kits. Most of all, he confinns that they have ample amounts of neon markers, lightsticks (12 hours), ultra high intensity lightsticks (5 minutes), spools of 4 lb testl 3,100 yard monofilament fishing line, flares, extra flash lights, including a pumper light (hand generator), extra batteries, extra parts for the radios, and one altimeter (which like the compass will fail to function). [105-Leon Robbins' Operation #4: The Art of Internal Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1996), p. 479.]
Robbins' medical analogy may be a little misguided, but his emphasis on Holloway's deliberate and careful planning reminds one of the technical demands required in this journey-whether an "Operation" or "Exploration."
After all, spending a night in an enclosed lightless place is very uncommon, even in the world of caving. The Lechugilla Crystal Cavern in New Mexico is one exception. Typically Lech visits last twenty-four to thirty-six hours. [106-See "The Crystal Cavern" chapter in Michael Ray Taylor's Cave Passages (New York: Scribner, 1996).] Holloway, however, expects to take at least four, possibly five nights exploring the Spiral Staircase.
Despite the detailed preparations and Holloway's infectious determination, everyone is still a little nervous. Five nights is a long time to remain in freezing temperatures and complete darkness. No one knows what to expect.
Though Wax puts his faith in Jed's unerring sense of direction, Jed admits to some pre-exploration apprehensions: "How can I know where to go when I don't know where we are? I mean, really, where is that place in relation to here, to us, to everything? Where?"
Holloway tries to make sure everyone stays as busy as bees, and in an effort to keep them focused, creates a simple set of priorities: "We're taking pictures. We're collecting samples. We're trying to reach the bottom of the stairs. Who knows, if we do that then maybe we'll even discover something before Navidson starts all the hoopla involved with raising money and organizing large scale explorations." Jed and Wax both nod, unaware of the darker implications inherent in what Holloway has just uttered.
As Gavin Young later writes: "Who could have predicted that those two words 'discover something' would prove the seeds to such unfortunate destruction? The problem, of course, was that the certain 'something' Holloway so adamantly sought to locate never existed per se in that place to begin with. [107-Gavin Young, Shots In The Dark (Stanford: University of California Press, 1995), p. 151.]
Unlike Explorations #1 thru #3, for Exploration #4 Holloway decides to take along his rifle. When Navidson asks him "what the hell" he plans to shoot, Holloway replies: "Just in case."
By this point, Navidson has settled on the belief that the persistent growl is probably just a sound generated when the house alters its internal layout. Holloway, however, is not at all in accordance with this assessment. Furthermore, as he pointedly reminds Navidson, he is the team captain and the one responsible for everyone's safety: "With all due respect, since I'm also the one actually going in there, your notions don't really hold much water with me." Wax and Jed do not object. They are accustomed to Holloway carrying some sort of firearm. The inclusion of the Weatherby hardly causes them any concern.
Jed just shrugs.
Wax though proves a little more fractious.
"I mean what if you're wrong?" he asks Navidson. "What if that sound's not from the wall's shifting but coming from something else, some kind of thing? You wanna leave us defenseless?"
Navidson drops the subject.
The question of weapons aside, another big point of concern that comes up is communication. During Exploration #3 the team discovered just how quickly all their transmissions deteriorated. Without a cost effective way of rectifying the problem-obviously buying thousands of feet of audio cable would be impossible-Holloway settled the issue by simply announcing that they should just plan on losing radio contact by the first night. "After that, it'll be four to five days on our own. Not ideal but we'll manage."
That evening, Holloway, Jed, and Wax move from their motel and camp out in the living room with Reston. Navidson briefs Holloway for the last time on the most efficacious way to handle the cameras. Jed makes a brief call to his fiancee in Seattle and then helps Reston organize the sample jars. Tom in an effort to cheer up a bruised and unnaturally quiet Chad winds up reading both him and Daisy a long bedtime story.
Somehow Wax ends up alone with Karen. [108-Again Florencia Caizatti's The Fraying of the American Family proves full of valuable insight. In particular see "Chapter Seven: The Last Straw" where she decries the absolute absurdity of end-series items: "There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay."]
If Holloway's hand on Karen had upset Navidson, it is hard to imagine what his reaction would have been had he walked in on this particular moment. However when he finally did see the tape so much had happened, Navidson, by his own admission, felt nothing. "I'm surprised, I guess" he says in The Last Interview. "But there's no rage. Just regret. I actually laughed a little. I'd been watching Holloway all the time, feeling insecure by this guy's strength and courage and all that, and I never even thought about the kid. (He shakes his head.) Anyway, I betrayed her when I went in there the first time and so she betrayed me. People always say how two people were meant for each other. Well we weren't but somehow we ended up together anyway and had two incredible children. It's too bad. I love her. I wish it didn't have to turn out like this." [109-See Exhibit Four for the complete transcript of The Last Interview.]
The clip of Karen and Wax did not appear in the first release print of The Navidson Record but apparently was edited in a few months later. Miramax never commented on the inclusion nor did anyone else. It is a little strange Karen did not erase the tape in the wall mounted camcorder. Perhaps she forgot it was there or planned to destroy it later. Then again perhaps she wanted Navidson to see it.
Regardless of her intentions, the shot catches Karen and Wax alone in the kitchen. She picks at a bowl of popcorn, he helps himself to another beer. Their conversation circles tediously around Wax's girlfriends, intermittently returning to his desire to get married someday. Karen keeps telling him that he is young, he should have fun, keep living, stop worrying about settling down. For some reason both of them speak very softly.
On the counter, someone has left a copy of the map Navidson drew following Exploration A. Karen occasionally glances over at it.
"Did you do that?" she finally asks.
"Nah, I can't draw."
"Oh," she says, letting the syllable hang in the air like a question.
Wax shrugs.
"I actually don't know who made it. I thought your old Navy man did."
Based on the film, it is impossible for us to tell if Holloway, Jed, or Wax were ever explicitly told not to mention to Karen Navidson's illegal excursion. Wax, however, does not seem to recognize any trespass in his admission.
Karen does not look at the map again. She just smiles and takes a sip of Wax's beer. They continue talking, more about Wax's girl troubles, another round of "don't worry, keep living, you're young" and then out of nowhere Wax leans over and kisses Karen on the lips. It lasts less than a second and clearly shocks her, but when he leans over and kisses her again she does not resist. In fact the kiss turns into something more than a kiss, Karen's hunger almost exceeding Wax's. But when he knocks over his beer in an effort to get still closer, Karen pulls away, glances once at the liquid spilling onto the floor and quickly walks out of the room. Wax starts to follow her but realizes before he takes a second step that the game is already over. He cleans up the mess instead.
A few months later Navidson saw the kiss.
By that time Karen was gone along with everyone else.
Nothing mattered.
VIII.
SOS. . . A wireless code-signal summoning assistance in extreme distress, used esp. by ships at sea. The letters are arbitrarily chosen as being easy to transmit and distinguish. The signal was recommended at the Radio Telegraph Conference in 1906 and officially adopted at the Radio Telegraph Convention in 1908 (See G. G. Blake Hist. Radio Telegr., 1926, 111-12).
- The Oxford English Dictionary ... _ _ _ ....
Billy Reston glides into frame, paying no attention to the equipment which Navidson over the last few weeks has been setting up in the living room, including though not limited to, three monitors, two 3/4" decks, a VHS machine, a Quadra Mae, two Zip drives, an Epson colour printer, an old PC, at least six radio transmitters and receivers, heavy spools of electrical cord, video cable, one 16mm Arriflex, one 16mm Bolex, a Minolta Super 8, as well as additional flashlights, flares, rope, fishing line (anything from braided Dacron to 40 lb multi-strand steel), boxes of extra batteries, assorted tools, compasses twitching to the odd polarities in the house, and a broken megaphone, not to mention surrounding shelves .
already loaded with sample jars, graphs, books, and even an old microscope.
Instead Reston concentrates all his energies on the radios, monitoring Holloway as he makes his way through the Great Hall. Exploration #4 is underway and will mark the team's second attempt to reach the bottom of the staircase.
"We hear you fme, Billy" Holloway replies in a wash of white noise.
Reston tries to improve the signal. This time Holloway's voice comes in a little clearer.
"We're continuing down. Will try you again in fifteen minutes. Over and out."
The obvious choice would have been to structure the segment around Holloway's journey but clearly nothing about Navidson is obvious. He keeps his camera trained on Billy who serves now as the expedition's base commander. In grainy 7298 (probably pushed one T-stop), Navidson captures this crippled man expertly maneuvering his wheelchair from radio to tape recorder to computer, his attention never wavering from the team's progress.
[checkmark]
... _ _ _ ....
By concentrating on Reston at the beginning of Exploration #4, Navidson provides a perfect counterpoint to the murky world Holloway navigates. Confining us to the comforts of a well-lit home gives our varied imaginations a chance to fill the adjacent darkness with questions and demons. It also further increases our identification with Navidson., who like us, wants nothing more than to penetrate firsthand the mystery of that place. Other directors might have intercut shots of the 'Base Camp' or 'Command Post' [110-There's something weird going on here, as if Zampano can't quite make up his mind whether this is all an exploration (i.e. 'Base Camp') or a war (i.e. 'Command Post')?] with Holloway's tapes but Navidson refuses to view Exploration #4 in any other way except from Reston's vantage point. As Frizell Clary writes, "Before personally permitting us the sight of such species of Cimmerian dark, Navidson wants us to experience, like he already has, a sequence dedicated solely to the much more revealing details of waiting." [111-Frizell Clary's Tick-Tock-Fade: The Representation of Time in Film Narrative (Delaware: Tame An Essay Publications, 1996), P. 64.]
Naguib Paredes, however, goes one step further than Clary, passing over questions concerning the structure of anticipation in favor of a slightly different, but perhaps more acute analysis of Navidson's strategy: "First and foremost, this restricted perspective subtly and somewhat cunningly allows Navidson to materialize his own feelings in Reston, a man with fearsome intelligence and energy but who is nonetheless-and tragically I might add-physically handicapped. Not by chance does Navidson shoot Reston's wheelchair in the photographic idiom of a prison: spokes for bars, seat like a cell, glimmering brake resembling some kind of lock. Thus in the manner of such images, Navidson can represent for us his own increasing frustration. [112-Naguib Paredes' Cinematic Projections (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. 84.]
As predicted, by the first night Holloway and the team start to lose radio contact. Navidson reacts by focusing on a family of copper-verdigris coffee cups taking up residence on the floor like settlers on the range while nearby a pile of sunflower seed shells rises out of a bowl like a volcano born on some unseen plate in the Pacific. In the background, the ever-present hiss of the radios continues to fill the room like some high untouch .
able wind. Considering the grand way these moments are photographed, it almost appears as if Navidson is trying through even the most quotidian objects and events to evoke for us some sense of Holloway's epic progress. That or participate in it. Perhaps even challenge it. [113-Navidson'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: Hazani 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 of shells, the maze like way equipment and furniture are arranged, all reveal how the everyday can contain objects emblematic of what's lyrical and what's epic in our lives. Navidson shows us how a sudden sense of the world, of who or where we are or even what we do not have can be found in even the most ordinary things."]
Time passes. There are long conversations, there are long silences. Sometimes Navidson and Tom play Go. Sometimes one reads aloud to Daisy [114-Ascher Blootz in her pithy piece "Bedtime Stories" (Seattle Weekly, October 13, 1994, p. 37) claims the book Tom reads to Daisy is Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. Gene D. Hart in his letter entitled "A Blootz Bedtime Story" (Seattle Weekly, October 20, 1994, p. 7) disagrees: "After repeatedly viewing this sequence, frame by frame, I am still unable to determine whether or not she's right. The cover is constantly blocked by Tom's arm and his whisper consistently evades the range of the microphone. That said I'm quite fond of Blootz's claim, for whether she's right or wrong, she is certainly appropriate."] while the other assists Chad with some role-playing game on the family computer." [115-See Corning Qureshy's essay "D & D, Myst, and Other Future Paths" in MIND GAMES ed. Mario Aceytuno (Rapid City, South Dakota: Fortson Press, 1996); M. Slade's "Pawns, Bishops & Castles" http://cdip.ucsd.edu/; as well as Lucy T. Wickramasinghe's "Apple of Knowledge vs. Windows of Light: The Macintosh-Microsoft Debate" in Gestures, v.2, November 1996, p. 164-171.] Periodically Tom goes outside to smoke a joint of marijuana while his brother jots down notes in some now lost journal. Karen keeps clear of the living room, entering only once to retrieve the coffee cups and empty the bowl of sunflower seed shells. When Navidson's camera finds her, she is usually on the phone in the kitchen, the TV volume on high, whispering to her mother, closing the door.
But even as the days lose themselves in night and find themselves again come dawn only to drag on to yet more hours of lightless passage, Billy Reston remains vigilant. As Navidson shows us, he never loses focus, rarely leaves his post, and constantly monitors the radios, never forgetting the peril Holloway and the team are in.
Janice Whitman was right when she noted another extraordinary quality: "Aside from the natural force of his character, his exemplary intellect, and the constant show of concern for those participating in Exploration #4, what I'm still most struck by is [Reston's] matter of fact treatment of this twisting labyrinth extending into nowhere. He does not seem confounded by its impossibility or at all paralyzed by doubt." [116- Janice Whitman's Red Cross Faith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 235.] Belief is one of Reston's greatest strengths. He has an almost animal like ability to accept the world as it comes to him. Perhaps one overcast morning in Hyderabad, India he had stood rooted to the ground for one second too long because he did not really believe an electrical pole had fallen and an ugly lash of death was now whipping toward him. Reston had paid a high price for that disbelief: he would never walk up stairs again and he would never fuck. At least he would also never doubt again.
[117-Though this chapter was originally typed, there were also a number of handwritten corrections. "make love" wasn't crossed out but .
"FUCK" was still scratched in above it. As I've been doing my best to incorporate most of these amendments, I didn't think it fair to .
suddenly exclude this one even if it did mean a pretty radical shift in tone.
By now you've probably noticed that except when safely contained by quotes, Zampano always steers clear of such questionable four-letter language. This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool pseudo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish .
its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower .
lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up .
then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by- .
the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself, immersed in all that word-heat.
Holy fuck, what was that all about?
"Love and fire"? "word-heat"?
Who the hell is thinking up this shit?
Maybe Zampano just wrote "fuck" because he wasn't saying fuck before when he could fuck and now as he waited in that hole on Whitley he wished he would of lived a little differently. Or then again maybe he just needed a word strong enough to push back his doubts, a word .
strong enough to obliterate, at least temporarily, the certain vision of his own death, definitely necessary for those times when he was working .
his way around the courtyard, trying to stretch his limbs, keep his heart pumping, a few remaining cats still rubbing up against his withered legs, reminding him of the years he missed, the old color, the old light. The perfect occasion, if you ask me, to say "fuck." Though if he did say it no one there ever heard him.