House of Leaves (56 page)

POST-EXPOSURE EFFECTS RATING

0-1: Alicia Rosenbaum: sudden migraines.

0-2: Audrie McCullogh: mild anxiety.

2-3: Teppet C. Brookes: insomnia.

3-4: Sheriff Axnard: nausea; suspected ulcer. [No previous history of stomach ailments.]

4-5:
Billy Reston: enduring sensation of cold.

5-6:
Daisy: excitement; intermittent fever; scratches; echolalia.

6-7: Kirby “Wax” Hook: stupor; enduring impotence. [Neither the bullet wound nor the surgery should have
effected
potency.]

7-8: Chad: tangentiality; rising aggression; persistent wandering.

9: Karen Green: prolonged insomnia; frequent unmotivated

panic attacks; deep melancholia; persistent cough. [All of which radically diminished when Karen began work on
What Some Have Thought
and
A Brief History Of Who I Love.
The Haven-Slocum Theory ™ — 1]

10: Will Navidson: obsessive behavior; weight loss; night terrors vivid dreaming accompanied by increased mutism.

The Haven-Slocum Theory does not lightly pass over Karen’s remarkable victory over the effects of the house: “With the eventual exception of Navidson, she was the only one who attempted to process the ramifications of that place. The labor she put into both film shorts resulted in more moderate mood swings, an increase in sleep, and an end to that nettlesome cough.”

Navidson, however, despite his scientific inquiries and early postulations, finds no relief. He grows quieter and quieter, often wakes up seized by terror, and through Christmas and the New Year starts eating less and less. Though he frequently tells Reston how much he longs for Karen and the company of his children, he is incapable of going to them. The house continues to fix his attention.

So much so that back in October when Navidson first came across the tape of Wax kissing Karen he hardly responded. He viewed the scene twice, once at regular speed, the second time on fast forward, and then moved on to the rest of the footage without saying a word. From a dramatic point of view we must realize it is a highly anticlimactic moment, but one which, as The Haven-Slocum Theory argues, only serves to further emphasize the level of damage the house had a]ready inflicted upon Navidson: “Normal emotional reactions no longer apply. The pain anyone else would have felt while viewing that screen kiss, in Navidson’s case has been blunted by the grossly disproportionate trauma already caused by the house. In this regard it is in fact a highly climactic, if irregular moment, only because it is so disturbing to watch something so typically meaningful rendered so utterly inconsequential. How tragic to find Navidson so bereft of energy, his usual snap and alacrity of thought replaced by such unyielding torpor. Nothing matters anymore to him, which as more than a handful of people have already observed, is precisely the point.”

Then at the beginning of March, “while tests on the wall samples progressed,” as The Haven-Slocum Theory observes, Navidson begins to eat again, work out, and though his general reticence continues, Reston still sees Navidson’s new behavior as a change for the better: “I was blind to his intentions. I thought he was starting to deal with Tom’s death, planning to end his separation with Karen. I figured he had put the Fowler letters behind him along with that kiss. He seemed like he was coming back to life. Hell, even his feet were on the mend. Little did I know he was stock-piling equipment, getting ready for another journey inside. What everyone knows now as
Exploration #5
.”
[
378—Inter,iiew with Billy Reston. KTWL, Boulder, Colorado,
January
4, 1996.]

Where The Bister-Frieden-Josephson Criteria made Navidson’s letter to Karen the keystone of its analysis, The Haven-Slocum Theory does away with the document in a footnote, describing it as “drunken babble chock-full of expected expressions of grief, re-identification with a lost object, and plenty of transference, having less to do with Navidson’s lost brother and more to do with the maternal absence he endured throughout his life. The desire to save Delial must partly be attributed to a projection of Navidson’s own desire to be cradled by his mother. Therefore his grief fuses his sense of self with his understanding of the other, causing him not only to mourn for the tiny child but for himself as well.”
[
379—See pages 22—23.]

What The Haven-Slocum Theory treats with greater regard are the three dreams [380—As such a great variety of written material outside of The Haven-Slocum Theory has been produced on the subject of Navidson’s dreams, it seems imprudent not to at least mention here a
few
of the more popular ones: Calvin Yudofsky’s “D-Sleep/S-Sleep Trauma: Differentiating Between Sleep Terror Disorder and Nightmare Disorder” in
(N) REM
(Bethel, Ohio: Besinnung Books, 1995); Ernest Y. Hartniann’s
Terrible Thoughts:
The
Psychology and Biology of Navidson ‘s Nightmares
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1996); Susan Beck’s “Imposition On The Hollow” published in the
T.S. Eliot Journal
v. 32, November 1994; chapter four in Oona Fanihdjarte’s
The Constancy of Carl Jung
(Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1995);
Gordon Kearns, L. Kajita, and M.K. Totsuka’s
Ultrapure Water, the Super
Kamiokande
Detector
and
Cherenkov
Light
(W.H. Freeman and Company, 1997); also see www-sk.icrr .u-tokyo.ac.jp/doc/sk/; and of course Tom Curie’s essay “Thou Talk’st of nothing. True, I talk of dreams” (Mab Weekly, Celtic Publications, September 1993).] Navidson described for us in the Hi 8 journal entries he made that March. Again quoting directly from the Theory: “Far better than words influenced by the depressive effects of alcohol, these intimate glimpses of Navidson’s psyche reveal more about why he decided to go back and what may account for the profound physiological consequences that followed once he was inside.”

Mia Haven entitles her analysis of
Dream #1:
“Wishing Well: A Penny For Your Thoughts..
.
A Quarter For Your Dreams
…
You For The Eons.” Unfortunately, as her treatment is difficult to find and purportedly exceeds 180 pages, it is only possible to summarize the contents here.

As Haven recounts, Navidson’s first dream places him within an enormous concrete chamber. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all veined with mineral deposits and covered in a thin ever-present film of moisture. There are no windows or exits. The air reeks of rot, mildew, and despair.

Everywhere people wander aimlessly around, dressed in soiled togas. Toward the centre of this room there lies what appears to be a large well. A dozen people sit on the edge, dangling their feet inside. As Navidson approaches this aperture, he realizes two things: 1) he has died and this is some kind of half-way station, and 2) the only way out is down through the well.

As he sits on the edge, he beholds a strange and very disconcerting sight. No more than twenty feet below is the surface of an incredibly clear liquid. Navidson presumes it is water though he senses it is somewhat more viscous. By some peculiar quality intrinsic to itself, this liquid does not impede but actually clarifies the impossible vision of what lies beneath: a long shaft descending for miles ultimately opening up into a black bottomless pit which instantly fills Navidson with an almost crippling sense of dread.

Suddenly next to him, someone leaps into the well. There is a slight splash and the figure begins to sink slowly but steadily toward the darkness below, Fortunately after a few seconds, a violent blue light envelops the figure and transports it somewhere else. Navidson realizes, however, that there are other figures down there who have not been visited by that blue light and are instead writhing in fear as they continue their descent into oblivion.

Without anyone telling him, Navidson somehow understands the logic of the place: 1) he can remain in that awful room for as long as he likes, even forever if he chooses—looking around, he can tell that some people have been there for thousands of years
—
or he can jump into the well. 2) If he has lived a good life, a blue light will carry him to some ethereal and gentle place. If, however, he has lived an “inappropriate life,” (Navidson’s words) no light will visit him and he will sink into the horrible blackness below where he will fall forever.

The dream ends with Navidson attempting to assess the life he has led, unable to decide whether he should or should not leap.

Haven goes to great lengths to examine the multiple layers presented by this dream, whether the classical inferences in the togas or the sexless “figure” Navidson observes immolated by the blue light. She even digresses for a playful romp through Sartre’s
Huis Cbs,
hinting how that formidable work helped shape Navidson’s imagination.

In the end though, her most important insight concerns Navidson’s relationship to the house. The concrete chamber resembles the ashen walls, while the bottomless pit recalls both the Spiral Staircase and the abyss that appeared in his living room the night Tom died. Still what matters most is not some discovery made within those walls but rather within himself. In Haven’s words: “The dream seems to suggest that in order for Navidson to properly escape the house he must first reach an understanding about his own life, one he still quite obviously lacks.”

For
Dream #2,
Lance Slocum provides the widely revered analysis entitled “At A Snail’s Place.” Since his piece, like Haven’s, is also impossible to locate and reportedly well over two hundred pages long, summary will again have to suffice.

Slocum retells how in the second dream Navidson finds himself in the centre of a strange town where some sort of feast is in progress. The smell of garlic and beer haunts the air. Everyone is eating and drinking and Navidson understands that for some undisclosed reason they will now have enough food to last many decades.

When the feast finally comes to an end, everyone grabs a candle and begins to march out of the town. Navidson follows and soon discovers that they are heading for a the hill on which lies the shell of an immense snail. This sight brings with it a new understanding: the town has slain the creature, eaten some of it and preserved the rest.

As they enter the enormous wind (as in “to wind something up”), their candlelight illuminates walls that are white as pearl and as opalescent as sea shells. Laughter and joy echoes up the twisting path and Navidson recognizes that everyone has come there to honor and thank the snail. Navidson, however, keeps climbing up through the shell. Soon he is alone and as the passageway continues to get tighter and tighter, the candle he holds grows smaller and smaller. Finally as the wick begins to sputter, he stops to contemplate whether he should turn around or continue on. He understands if the candle goes out he will be thrust into pitch darkness, though he also knows finding his way back will not be difficult. He gives serious thought to staying. He wonders if the approaching dawn will fill the shell with light.

Slocum begins with an amusing reference to
Doctor Dolittle
before turning to consider the homes which ancient ammonites [381—See
Edouard
Monod-Herzen’s
Principes de morphologie gënerale,
vol. I (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1927), p. 119.] constructed around an almost logarithmic axis, a legacy they would eons later bestow upon the imagination of countless poets and even entire cultures. [382—For example, even today the Kitawans of the South Pacific view the spiral of the
Nautilus Pompilius
as the ultimate symbol of perfection.] Primarily Slocum concentrates on chapter
5
of Bachelard’s
The Poetics of Space
as translated by Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), choosing to allow Navidson’s dream the same consideration literature of its kind receives.

For example, Slocum views the question of Navidson’s personal growth in terms of the enigma posed by the snail before it was eventually solved. Here he quotes from the translated Bachelard text:

How can a little snail grow in its stone prison? This is a
natural
question, which can

be asked quite naturally. (I should prefer not to ask it, however, because it takes me back

to the questions of my childhood.) But for the Abbé de Vallemont it is a question that remains unanswered, and he adds: “When it is a matter of nature, we rarely find ourselves on familiar ground. At every step, there is something that humiliates and mortifies proud minds.” In other words, a snail’s shell, this house that grows with its inmate, is one of the marvels of the universe. And the Abbé de Vallemont concludes that, in general shells are “sublime subjects of contemplation for the mind.” [383—The original text:

Comment le petit escargot dans sa prison de pierre peut-il grandir? Voilà tine question
naturelle,
tine question qul se pose naturellement, Nous n’aimons pas a Ia faire, car elle nous renvoie a nos questions d’enfant. Cette question reste sans réponse pour l’abbé de Vallemont qui ajoute: “Dans Ia Nature on est rarement en pays de connaissance. Ii y a a chaque pas de quoi humilier et mortifier les Esprits superbes.” Autrement dit, Ia coquille de l’escargot, Ia maison qui grandit a Ia mesure de son hôte est une merveille de l’Univers, Et d’une manière genérale, conclut I ‘abbé de Vallemont ([Abbé de Vallemont’s
Curiosités de Ia nature et de I ‘art sur Ia végétation ou I ‘agriculture et le jardinage dans leur perfection,
Paris, 1709,
1re
Partie], p.
255),
les coquillages sont “de sublimes sujets de contemplation pour l’esprit.”