House of Leaves (35 page)

When revisiting places we once frequented

as children, it is not unusual to

observe
how much smaller everything seems.

This experience has too often been attributed

to the physical differences between a child

and an adult. In fact it has more to do with

epistemological dimensions than with bodily

dimensions: knowledge is hot water on wool.

It shrinks time and space.

(Admittedly there is the matter where

boredom, due to repetition,
stretches
time and

space. I will deal specifically with this problem

in a later chapter entitled “Ennui.”)

[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).]

When Holloway’s team traveled down

the stairway, they had no idea if they would

find a bottom. Navidson, however, knows

the stairs are finite and therefore has far less

anxiety about the descent.

Unlike the real world, Navidson’s jour-

ney into the house is not just figuratively but

literally shortened. [204—Missing.
—
Ed.]

This theme of structures altered by perception is not uniquely observed
in
The Navidson Record
.
Almost thirty years ago, Günter Nitschke described what he termed “experienced or concrete space”:

It has a centre which is perceiving man, and it

therefore has an excellent system of directions

which changes with the movements of

the human body; it is limited and in no sense

neutral, in other words it is finite, heterogeneous,

subjectively defined and perceived;

distances and directions are fixed relative to

man…

[
205—Gunter Nitschke’s “Anatomie der gelebten Umweit”
(Bauen
+
Wohnen
,
September 1968
)] [206 Which you are quite right
to
observe makes no sense at all.]

Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that “architecture comes into being only when experienced.” [207—Christi Norberg-Schulz,
Existence, Space & Architecture, p.
13.]

Norberg-Schulz asserts: “Architectural space certainly exists independently of the casual perceiver, and has centres and directions of its own.” Focusing on the constructions of any civilization, whether ancient or modem, it is hard to disagree with him, it is only when focusing on Navidson’s house that these assertions begin to blur.

Can Navidson’s house exist without the experience of itself?

Is it possible to think of that place as “unshaped” by human perceptions?

Especially since everyone entering there finds a vision almost completely—though pointedly not completely—different from anyone else’s?

Even Michael Leonard, who had never heard of Navidson’s house, professed a belief in the “psychological dimensions of space.” Leonard claimed people create a
“sensation
of space” where the final result “in the perceptual process is a single sensation—a ‘feeling’ about that particular place…” [208—Michael Leonard’s “Humanizing Space,”
Progressive Architecture,
April 1969.]

In his book
The Image of the City,
Kevin Lynch suggested emotional cognition of all environment was rooted in
histoiy,
or at least
personal
history:

[Environmental image, a generalized mental

picture of the exterior physical world] is the

product both of
immediate
sensation
and
of

the
memory
of past experience,
and
it is used

to interpret information and to guide

action.

[Italics
added
for emphasis]

[209—Kevin Lynch’s
The Image of the City
(Cambridge, Massachusetts;
The MIT Press,
1960), p. 4.]

Or as Jean Piaget insisted: “It is quite obvious that the perception of space involves a gradual construction and certainly does not exist ready-made at the outset of mental development.” [210—J.
Piaget and B. Inhelder’s
The
Child’s Conception of Geometry
(New York; Basic Books, 1960), p. 6]
Like Leonard’s attention to
sensation
and Piaget’s emphasis on constructed perception, Lynch’s emphasis on the importance of the past allows him to introduce a certain degree of subjectivity to the question of space and more precisely architecture.

Where Navidson’s house is concerned, subjectivity seems more a matter of degree. The Infinite Corridor, the Anteroom, the Great Hall, and the Spiral Staircase, exist for all, though their respective size and even layout sometimes changes. Other areas of that place, however, never seem to replicate the same pattern twice, or so the film repeatedly demonstrates.

No doubt speculation will continue for a long time over what force alters and orders the dimensions of that place. But even if the shifts turn out to be some kind of absurd interactive Rorschach test resulting from some peculiar and as yet undiscovered law of physics, Reston’s nausea still reflects how the often disturbing disorientation experienced within that place, whether acting directly upon the inner ear or the inner labyrinth of the psyche, can have physiological consequences.

[
211—No doubt about that. My fear’s gotten worse. Hearing Bailey describing my screams on the radio like that has really upset me. I no longer wake up tired. I wake up tired and afraid. I wonder if the morning rasp in my voice is just from sleep or rather some inarticulate attempt to name my horror. I’m suspicious of the dreams I cannot remember, the words only others can hear. I’ve also noticed the inside of my cheeks are now all mutilated, lumps of pink flesh dangling in the wet dark, probably from grinding, gritting and so much pointless chewing. My teeth ache. My head aches. My stomach’s a mess.

I went to see a Dr. Ogelmeyer a few days ago and told him everything I could think of about my attacks and the awful anxiety that haunts my every hour. He made an appointment for me with another doctor and then prescribed some medication. The whole thing lasted less than half an hour and including the prescription cost close to a hundred and seventy-five dollars.

I tore up the appointment card and when I got back to my studio I grabbed my radio! CD player and put it out on the street with a For Sale sign on it. An hour later, some guy driving an Infiniti pulled over and bought it for forty-five dollars. Next, I took all my CDs to Aaron’s on Highland and got almost a hundred dollars.

I had no choice. I need the money. I also need the quiet.

As of now, I still haven’t taken the medicine. It’s a low—grade sedative of some kind. Ten flakes of chalk-blue. I hate them. Perhaps when night comes I’ll change my mind. I arrange them in a tidy line on the kitchen counter. But night finally does come and even though my fear ratchets towards the more severe, I fear those pills even more.

Ever since leaving the labyrinth, having had to endure all those convolutions, those incomplete suggestions, the maddening departures and inconclusive nature of the whole fucking chapter, I’ve craved space, light and some kind of clarity. Any kind of clarity. I just don’t know how to find it, though staring over at those awful tablets only amps my resolve to do something, anything.

Funny as it sounds—especially considering the amounts of drugs I’ve been proud to consume—those pills, like dots, raised & particular, look more and more like some kind of secret Braille spelling out the end of my life.

Perhaps if I had insurance; if one hundred and seventy-five dollars meant I was twenty—five over my deductible, I’d think differently. But it’s not and so I don’t.

As far as I can see, there’s no place for me in this country’s system of health, and even if there were I’m not sure it would make a difference. Something I considered over and over again while I was sitting in that stark office, barely looking at the
National Geographic
or
People
magazines, just waiting on the bustle of procedure and paper

work, until the time came,
quite a bit of time too, when I had to answer
a call, a call made by a nurse, who led me down a hail and then another hall and still another hail, until I found myself alone in a cramped sour smelling room, where I waited again, this time on a slightly
different set of procedures and routines carried out by these white draped ministers of medicine, Dr. Ogelmeyer & friends, who by their very absence forced me to wonder what would happen if I were really unhealthy, as unhealthy as I am now poor, how much longer would
I
have to wait, how much more cramped and sour would this room be, and if I wanted to leave would I? Could I? Perhaps I wouldn’t even know how to leave. Incarcerated forever within the corridors of some awful facility. 5051. Protective custody. Or just as terrifying: no 5051, no protective custody. Left to wander alone the equally ferocious and infernal corridors of indigence.

To put it politely: no fucking way.

I know what it means to go mad.

I’ll die before I go there.

But first I have to find out if that’s where I’m really heading.

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.