Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Echo and the Power of Love
"Consider it not so deeply."
--Lady MacBeth, before she went insane.
This is going to get as bad as Jean-Paul Sartre, I am afraid. A confluence. I am ripe for the shaking. And. I am , well, not exactly re-reading. But getting sucked back into the vortex that is House of Leaves. I really did try to avoid all this. Once again, it sat, leering at me from my bedside for the better part of a year. And, I appear to be reading it as I recently did Nausea: not really reading progressively. More like circling. Like an auger, going deeper into the same hole that now looks much less shallow than it once did.
Right now, I've been stuck for days on the pages about Echo and Narcissus. Ch. V, pp. 41-54, for anyone interested. Two halves of a whole, a yin and a yang. The Greek myth that Narcissus, more in love with himself, rejects Echo, who becomes a shade, a mere voice. We know what happens to Narcissus: he drowns in his own self-love. Echo lives for Eternity, but not physically. The sorrowful story of every love. One is more, but which? I quote MZD, who quotes? I don't even know, or care, but this idea fills immensity(Wm.Blake.) :
Narcissus' rejection:" Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri." (May I die before I give you power over me.)
Echo's Reply: "sit tibia copia nostri." (I give you power over me.)
Christ-a-mighty, notice the echo. The dance of all love. Is there always one with more power, or can there be two, both feeling rather helpless in the grip of love? I do know the power can shift from one to the other. I've seen it, lived it.
The Echo is at one point described here as "the Breath of God". No wonder it is so ephemeral , so hard to grasp and hold. " Narcissus stops his ears to the divine voice, or shutts his harte from divine inspirations, through being enamour'd of not himself, but his own shadow. " And the girl, in misery and sorrow, becomes a mere voice, an echo. Proclaiming in its continued existence the ironic power of his desirability, his worthiness of love. Such strange and mind-boggling thoughts.
More later, when it is not such an hour.
I think it relates to this Agata Kristi Song that I have never gotten over, ever since I first heard it:
На точке двух миров
Стояли мы в огне
Пылали облака
И ты сказала:
Давай убьем любовь
Не привыкай ко мне
Давай убьем, пока
Ее не стало
Припев:
Ты лучше, ты круче
Ты сможешь, я в курсе
Давай убьем любовь
Я должен стать сильней
На точке двух миров
Реальный воин
Я должен быть один
Я должен бить больней
Давай убьем любовь
Свободой воли
English translation:
At the point of two worlds
We stood in the fire
blazing clouds
And you said:
Let's kill love
Do not get used to me
Let's kill until
It was not
Chorus:
You better-- you cooler
You can, I know
Let's kill love
I have become stronger
At the point of two worlds
real warrior
I should be the one
I have to beat the more painful
Let's kill love
freewill
Jesus. Is that harsh. And crazy. And super hard. Paranoid? Fear of being controlled? I have to think hard about people who think like this, because I think-- I-- unfortunately, could love them . Insanely. Unconditionally. So , I'm screwed, too.
But the same people wrote: WE 'll be together ToNight-------daaaaaaaaa.
Life's great paradox. When you are not in love--it's all you want. you think it is heaven. It's lack is ruining your life.
When you are in love--you feel the horrors of addiction--the peak lasts in such fleeting, ephemeral seconds. The rest is agony of not achieving the fullness of those small moments. It's made concrete in that John Keat's poem--"Ode on a Grecian Urn"--such a cold name for such a warm poem. It goes,
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
However,
Echo doesn't last in body, but her soul, her voice, goes to eternity, a symbol of the purest kind of love--navsegda.
So , is that garbage--or more important than
Oct 30:
I had to highlight harte because it used to be my name--(I've had way too many names, and I never seem to totally lose my feel of them being a part of me. ) Same spelling, is the heart-twisting thing for me..) Both is and isn't my name anymore. Still my daughter's. (Simultaneously, I now could care less what my name is...I bond with too many words, but I like Трейси best). A representation of love's duality.
Another line from this section, this thematic in the book, is the return to the concept of "God" creating a dual universe---asking why? One answer the book gives? Because he was alone. Paradox? That doesn't resonate the depth I felt as I was reading this last night. I will have to get the exact words from the page to express what it made me think.
Here they are:
" Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Yet, again, I am back to that idea that the world has duality, everything and its opposite exist together--- love. Thin line between love and hate, yes. But that's very surface. Love's opposite is indifference--can one be completely indifferent to someone who loves us, we all being Narcissus, and all. (???) Fire fuel.
Oh, but-- the most important part, that maybe Echo misses--never become a shade of the other. Never chase, be so needy seeming. Never imply you are worthless--might as well be dead without. If you give up your soul to the other--willing to kill all that is You to be loved by Narcissus--that is only a temporary fix, and usually a lie. No one loves a mere echo. Echo doesn't exist. That's why the most tragic loves are ones with two who have opposing and uncompromising essences that are constantly in conflict. Sometimes it's the love that dies rather than either party. " If you truly loved me, understood me, know how I can't live without, you wouldn't go in that terrible hole." "If you loved me, you wouldn't make me give up the ultimate adventure of my life: exploring this very curious hole!" If the love will survive--someone has to believe a valuable person has a real emotion beyond mere need and possession.
But it's weird that we often pick someone who has the very essential quality we are missing. Exacerbating the conflict. Twin paradox.
A different quote , related:
“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Because love gained too easily evaporates. It needs the constant tug of agony to survive, to exist. The Beach Boys' song--"Wouldn't It Be Nice" is only felt because they haven't...it's wistful and sad. Unattained, yet. The quintessential paradox.
Nov1, 2013:
I find this pretty annoying about this book. It gets soooo intellectual and deep in places, it loses its emotional impact. But damn, it does say some deep shit. Then it counterpoints it with all that Johnny Truant, the raw nerve…that can also go much too far the other way. Sometimes I just want it to continue the plot, without all these sideshows. That's when I get bored and quit reading for awhile. But then there's Johnny Truant telling us to skip all this. I guess it's the nature of how this book was put together. It has that " more- is -more" organic evolution. But it's sometimes too overstimulating. Another writer who makes me feel that way is Tom Robbins. Could do with some editing. Yet, taken as a whole, I am so glad I read the whole thing.
I sometimes just have to rest my irritated nerves before I can move forward with this thing.
Bt I sense what it really has to do with is my dreams, my subconscious. That doroga/corridor/tunnel/hole is the gateway to the underworld. And the continuing descent is like going further inside my own psyche. It reminds me, once again, that I rarely remember the beginning of my dreams--how I got to the moment that occurs right before waking. Which is like the surface opening of the closet---getting to the rest requires much more effort, danger, potential madness. One has the feeling there is some great pravda at the center, that if you knew--you would finally know yourself. But..the truth is extremely scary, somehow. I'm pretty sure there is some pretty scary shit at the base of my brain, my dreams …stuff I don't wanna say. Or write. Maybe why this book bothers me so much. I feel Hamlet when he says, "Now I can drink hot blood." Somewhere down deep, I have the potential for that, Jim Morrison- style, but my version has sex rather than murder at its core.
Funny, I forget what the splintered floor was about. Or was it ever explained? I am skimming this stupid cat part of Johnny's(p.78?) seems totally useless..although I get his desire to be as mindless as Koshka. (I used to think cats were smart until I live with one..or maybe mine is exceptionally dumb) This part seems to be trying to be Faulkner or Joyce, but it doesn't have that drain vortex pull they have.. I don't feel its collective conscience the way I do with them. Hah, just remembered a childhood fear, being sucked down the drain of my Gran-ma's old fashioned tub, just because it didn't have a filter like ours at home. Instead, it had one of those rubber stoppers on a chain--seemed so primitive to such a modern child as myself- h-yuck. Somehow THAT image has to do with my feelings about this book. That has to say something about it.
ITS SORT OF STRANGE BUT I FEEL LIKE I HAVEN'T FULLY COMMITTED TO REREADING THIS BOOK. It's like I'm just toying with the idea. Yet, I keep progressing. It reminds me of when I tried to quit smoking: It took like 5? 10? Somewhere between- attempts before I went all the way. Or, even more, it's like when I STARTED smoking--never once bought a carton for myself--never fully committed to being a smoker?!! somehow that's how I quit? Man, was I living in the moment those days.
Last night I read the part (about pp.80-85?) where the explorers are getting prepped for the journey down the hallway--into the hole. There's all this stuff about Karen being unfaithful, and flirting rather strongly with one in particular. This leads to a lot of useless, stupid, over-the-top scholarship by the "audience-inside the audience". Well that's sort of a strange angle--Hamlet, and others who copy it, have a play within a play---this thing has multiple layers of audience, all giving conflicting, and frequently useless points of view on the action--there's the narrator's view, Zampono's view, Johnny Truant's, then that explosion of scholars, movie goers, casual internet voyeurs who passed around the movie, plus the various versions of said movie, commentary on the movies, interviews within the movie ( and novel) of various people giving their opinion of what it all means (Tom, for example). What a mind screw. I see what people say who are dismissive of this novel, that it's cold, clinical, a joke, literature gone mad with pretension. Yes, yes. But, I'm still reading. Hoping this time I'm gonna figure out what's in that goddamm hole.
Yet, there seems to be something, ( an underground world?) in this crack between Navidson's and Karen's needs.
You know, I don't know if I really am a half-step from сумашестая, or if I just like the romance of that. At least crazy isn't boring. Kill me when boring. Speaking of which, it's about time my сексуальная жизнь stopped being. But that was because I made it all up in my head;)..it's easier that way, I suppose. Brains, heads, dreams, good for something. But sometimes it all just gets in the way. I have always related, tight up, to this Kurt Cobain line:
"Wish I was like you…….easily amused."
Nov 17:
Reading the part where they are getting serious about the exploration, and I think it hints Karen will leave? So, the story develops the elements of Navidson as the artist, the storyteller with pictures. How he frames the descent by first staying at the surface level, with the guy trapped in a wheelchair--who never-the-less has an explorer's mindset. This is somehow addressing the frustrations of all of us who fear taking the leap, or have circumstances that make us hesitate: either other people, morality, (that's my addition), lack of a true death wish, need for double-vision. The wheelchair guy is as obsessive as the explorers themselves. It implies Navidson knows it is actually impossible to take a picture of the dark, so the pictures/movie must be of something else that only implies the dark-- represents its opposite even. It's sort of an interesting portrait of the artist at work, I suppose. Hitchcock did this--never showed the murder: framed it in windows (Rear Window), in ambiguous colored water circling a drain, in specious speculation , "How would one go about cutting up a human body?" This is why his movies will last longer than all the Bloody Saws and Hostels that are so popular now. Context is needed to make the story sing. We all have a murderer, an explorer, a witch, an artist, inside. How to evoke that as if by an incantation? Does this story succeed at doing that? It sure does plagiarize great stuff.
Nov 19:
I think I know what it wrong with this story. This is supposed to be about a relationship, da? A house that embodies the relationship of a modern, perhaps neurotic couple with children, who are having trouble sustaining the love they have because their goals in life are so divergent. One is an adventurer, one is semi-domesticated, or at least wants life to be all about nurturing. There are hints that they have a pretty passionate sex life, or had, or that it comes and goes, but doesn't quite seem sustainable. Maybe the whole problem people have with this story is how outside the story the perspective stays--you never really get inside the heads of the two central characters, to see if there are anythings worthwhile in their relationship that will close the rift in their conjoined souls. Yeah, that makes it a pretty modern, realistic commentary on modern relationships. But I don't really like or believe in "modern relationships"…all that cold, clinical psychoanalysis that goes on. Love, or not? How deep does the love go? That's what I want to see in that hole. I don't mean one of those cheesy, Twilight-y love things---I'll give up my human soul to be with you forever--I'll give up sex to be with you (so I don't kill you) forever. I think I want an Idiotanswer---or something more like. Layers. Human layers.
What do I know about Karen? She's beautiful, she was a model, bad family history?she may have had drug issues? She's flirtatious with most men. She's neurotic and clingy. There is a hint that there is something deeper, which you only see in descriptions of her on camera--the one where she seems to be constantly checking the door for Will's arrival, but then feigns indifference when he does arrive. I don't know, I don't see where she'd be the great love of anyone's life--the story isn't daring enough to show why. In many ways she seems like a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out. There's the weakness in the story, perhaps. Do I love her, or find her interesting as a character? Not sure she seems all that real to me--I can't even picture who would play her in a movie. Maybe that's the thing---if someone made this into a movie , they could add that additional layer, if they get a great actress. But, she wouldn't have much to go on from the story.
Will is more interesting, more conflicted--his identity is wrapped up in being a guy who can solve problems that have never before been solved, or needed to be. ( Also had family problems, but doesn't everyone, nowadays--too much analysis along the Freudian ditch. ) Plus, he has an artist's eye. But, there are artists with cold eyes, and those whose work seems consumed in fire. Not sure which type he is--he is definitely passionate about his work--does that feed his love for Karen or merely take away from it? I'm not mad for him, the way I am for Holden Caufield--he doesn't rip my soul apart, because, for all his claim to being a great artist, I feel I never get a really focused picture of him. Something makes me keep looking? I think the writer was actually afraid to go to that place --the one Dostoyevski is not afraid of.
This story doesn't have anywhere to go . Does it? I keep thinking I'm just missing something in the labyrinth of details. I need to talk to someone who read it, who's insightful…..bye.
Nov 22, 2013 :
(Consequently, the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. BTW--here's yet another odd harmonic. I figure no point in making much of this to my students, especially the Chinese. Only half of them were there, anyway, because it was a half-day and before Thanksgiving break. So, I show movies after quizzes etc were finished. Let the kids pick off this website I found. They picked Forrest Gump. Guess who appears in Forrest Gump? Kennedy, and mentions of his demise. Then next class, we watch Dr. Who--I did not plan this..but the freaking Kennedy Assassination is in the first Chris Eccleston episode, too! How crazy is that??)
I think I'm starting to make some sense of this --this time through, just like JPS. And like JPS, it's about the same thing….was the girl really there?? Pages 132-33, I think are central to the story, just like Sartre's story tries to decide if Anny is the real deal, the "music of love" frozen into the form of a human body, so to speak. Johnny Truant's new girl, though, is Ashley, (not Thumper, although Thumper haunts him too) who haunts his mind and is perhaps the source of his removal from reality, sanity. Come on---- ASHley, House on ASH Tree Lane, Ashes to Ashes, Bodies aren't important--there's something else: the haunting is real. Love is real. All Johnny's girls keep disappearing from him because he only believes in their bodies. (??? Maybe??) But what does that mean for Will and Karen, as this is really the story of their love, in spite of all the parallel lines in this thing. Echo and Narcissus.
Haha. I remember this weird moment in my life. My scrupulously logical son, who claims to be an atheist, even when he was pretty young, once came to me, telling me this wild story about his friend, who, during show-and-tell, told a story about another friend--his best friend-- that died. The show- and- tell kid said that he now thought his dead friend was haunting him in a friendly way. Claimed he was at that moment holding the dead kid's hand, which my son believed. I said, but Joe, aren't you an atheist? He said--yeah. "But you believe in Ghosts." "Yeah." Does that make sense, I said? And you know, I wanna know--can that make sense? This started a rather intense period where frequently Joseph wanted me to watch those paranormal shows with him on Cable TV.
P. 162: "The woman you never want to meet." The one you relinquish all power to? Making yourself "echo"? I think it's kind of in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, who has those narrators who obsess about/ are haunted by ideal women who maybe aren't really there--or are they? And then all the real women that don't measure up, or, do they? You never really want to meet her cos she's not safe for you, your sense of identity , your soul. It's easier to think of her as a figment of imagination.
Nov 23: I'm up to page 206. I've made it through the labyrinth chapters (Ch. 9, 10), so I think I may finish---it goes really fast through this part. I started, in this part, to get some minor respect for Johnny Truant because he's trying to clean himself up, won't even take doctor prescribed pills. Thinks maybe his fear and paranoia is from excessive drug-related indulgences. But, I think he's starting to work out his--I'll call it sex addiction--girl problems. Why he can't stick with one, etc. He's freaked because he heard Hailey, yet another girl, talking about him on the radio (weird modern life possibility, haha) --about his screaming night terrors that he can't remember. It's his epiphany--his I Must Remember What I Dream--moment. That seems like one of the first insightful, logical things he's said since the beginning of the story. I mean, he's not supposed to be unintelligent or uneducated--many of his ideas display both intelligence and education. It's just his perspective that is so wack. And now he's figuring out how to maybe fix himself, and he seems to have a pretty good idea about what is wrong. THE GIRLS. LOVE. His avoidance of it. The woman he never wants to meet. The echo?
At the same time, the explorer boys are having a crisis moment…trying to track down a cry in the dark labyrinth. My speculation is they can hear Karen, who Tom tells them on the radio, from upstairs, that there is something the matter with her. They go back to trying to follow the cry (Echo?), end up at a locked door with no knob. This feels like a climactic moment in the story. What's on the other side? They bust it down… find Jed, who thought he was about to die. Relief. But 15 pages later?
Dec 2:
Lord, I almost forgot about this. Navidson's Dream, p.398+
The most intense , quintessential image, perhaps ever. I need to broadcast this because it doesn't get enough attention. You could almost convince me I once had this dream…that we all have..but just don't remember.
The Wishing Well.
Setting; Inside a large, enclosed, concrete chamber. People mill about in soiled togas. The well is in the center, with many people sitting around it, dangling their feet. Contemplating--something. This is the afterlife, but only the gateway to heaven/hell. There is still a chance, a choice, this late in the primordial stew.
The well is full of clear liquid that does not obscure the depths of the well, but intensifies it. There is a bottom, that leads to? Dread perambulates the well. Someone leaps into the well. This is what must go next. Eventually. The leaper is encapsulated in blue light--success? Others do not get the blue light but sink. It is not necessary to jump in any specific amount of time. Navidson's dream ends without leap.
You can stay at the edge of the well, dangling your feet, forever, if you wish. It's like purgatory. Or you take the leap of faith, that you deserve reward.
Yeah, yeah, we can do a whole JPSartre on this, but I want to make it bigger, about every, single moment of everyone's life.
p. 400-01:
The dream of the snail: Nautilus Pompilius--the symbol of perfection, the golden mean. This Music is Eternal. Also, not so ironically, an image relating to the inner ear canal--the cochlear (cockle shell) where music goes deep. Navison wants to make perfect art..so he goes back.
Dec 8: only about 100 pages left, and most of those are those squirrelly, one line, twisty quick things. Unless I decide to read the letters etc in the appendix, which right now I'm not too keen on doing. Here's one of the central images of this book that makes it's confusion with reality so…real.
Delial:
I thought I had remembered seeing this somewhere and that it was real, although I had remembered the image differently. The real photographer , Kevin, as the caption says if you can't read it, committed suicide not long after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the picture.
http://100photos.time.com/photos/kevin-carter-starving-child-vulture
Just as well to hide this in a link:it's pretty awful.
pp. 466-67 and 492-93: Good Night!!! Manuscripts Don't Burn!! Harmonic harmonies so crazy. Did I really say that or am I imagining??? I KNOW I didn't consciously remember this.
So, to sum up, maybe, since this didn't get as wild as Jean-Paul Sartre, this book is full of copious amounts of intellectual ideas...it's a great source, maybe, to spin things from, a pretty deep well. But, I wasn't so taken with its characters, on the whole. Does it all actually tie up, or...? I think it should attach to people a little better, somehow, since ideas generally come from people. I want more connections than this has, so maybe this should go on my "Art I Want To See" blog. Still, glad I re-read.
Now that I'm reading Infinite Jest I realize how much of the ideas in this book (that I was impressed with for originality) were first done in IJ. The footnote idea, the disappearing film with a larger meaning. IJ has much more warmth to it, character wise, though and is surprisingly less intellectual. However, it is also annoyingly dense and random--definitely not JUST telling a story. I'm just taking it as I can, without being too serious.
феб 4 2014: Deadness of the deadest, darkest void. тоска без начала. O конца. I wish I knew what I wanted, and where the edges of my sanity lies. Send me a telling dream---please, I beg.
Дес 1 2014: Look at that/\. Been here be4. Oh, life's crazy cycles.
--Lady MacBeth, before she went insane.
This is going to get as bad as Jean-Paul Sartre, I am afraid. A confluence. I am ripe for the shaking. And. I am , well, not exactly re-reading. But getting sucked back into the vortex that is House of Leaves. I really did try to avoid all this. Once again, it sat, leering at me from my bedside for the better part of a year. And, I appear to be reading it as I recently did Nausea: not really reading progressively. More like circling. Like an auger, going deeper into the same hole that now looks much less shallow than it once did.
Right now, I've been stuck for days on the pages about Echo and Narcissus. Ch. V, pp. 41-54, for anyone interested. Two halves of a whole, a yin and a yang. The Greek myth that Narcissus, more in love with himself, rejects Echo, who becomes a shade, a mere voice. We know what happens to Narcissus: he drowns in his own self-love. Echo lives for Eternity, but not physically. The sorrowful story of every love. One is more, but which? I quote MZD, who quotes? I don't even know, or care, but this idea fills immensity(Wm.Blake.) :
Narcissus' rejection:" Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri." (May I die before I give you power over me.)
Echo's Reply: "sit tibia copia nostri." (I give you power over me.)
Christ-a-mighty, notice the echo. The dance of all love. Is there always one with more power, or can there be two, both feeling rather helpless in the grip of love? I do know the power can shift from one to the other. I've seen it, lived it.
The Echo is at one point described here as "the Breath of God". No wonder it is so ephemeral , so hard to grasp and hold. " Narcissus stops his ears to the divine voice, or shutts his harte from divine inspirations, through being enamour'd of not himself, but his own shadow. " And the girl, in misery and sorrow, becomes a mere voice, an echo. Proclaiming in its continued existence the ironic power of his desirability, his worthiness of love. Such strange and mind-boggling thoughts.
More later, when it is not such an hour.
I think it relates to this Agata Kristi Song that I have never gotten over, ever since I first heard it:
На точке двух миров
Стояли мы в огне
Пылали облака
И ты сказала:
Давай убьем любовь
Не привыкай ко мне
Давай убьем, пока
Ее не стало
Припев:
Ты лучше, ты круче
Ты сможешь, я в курсе
Давай убьем любовь
Я должен стать сильней
На точке двух миров
Реальный воин
Я должен быть один
Я должен бить больней
Давай убьем любовь
Свободой воли
English translation:
At the point of two worlds
We stood in the fire
blazing clouds
And you said:
Let's kill love
Do not get used to me
Let's kill until
It was not
Chorus:
You better-- you cooler
You can, I know
Let's kill love
I have become stronger
At the point of two worlds
real warrior
I should be the one
I have to beat the more painful
Let's kill love
freewill
Jesus. Is that harsh. And crazy. And super hard. Paranoid? Fear of being controlled? I have to think hard about people who think like this, because I think-- I-- unfortunately, could love them . Insanely. Unconditionally. So , I'm screwed, too.
But the same people wrote: WE 'll be together ToNight-------daaaaaaaaa.
Life's great paradox. When you are not in love--it's all you want. you think it is heaven. It's lack is ruining your life.
When you are in love--you feel the horrors of addiction--the peak lasts in such fleeting, ephemeral seconds. The rest is agony of not achieving the fullness of those small moments. It's made concrete in that John Keat's poem--"Ode on a Grecian Urn"--such a cold name for such a warm poem. It goes,
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
The complete act is not as fair as the imagination, as the idea of love---- |
However,
Echo doesn't last in body, but her soul, her voice, goes to eternity, a symbol of the purest kind of love--navsegda.
So , is that garbage--or more important than
Oct 30:
I had to highlight harte because it used to be my name--(I've had way too many names, and I never seem to totally lose my feel of them being a part of me. ) Same spelling, is the heart-twisting thing for me..) Both is and isn't my name anymore. Still my daughter's. (Simultaneously, I now could care less what my name is...I bond with too many words, but I like Трейси best). A representation of love's duality.
Another line from this section, this thematic in the book, is the return to the concept of "God" creating a dual universe---asking why? One answer the book gives? Because he was alone. Paradox? That doesn't resonate the depth I felt as I was reading this last night. I will have to get the exact words from the page to express what it made me think.
Here they are:
" Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Yet, again, I am back to that idea that the world has duality, everything and its opposite exist together--- love. Thin line between love and hate, yes. But that's very surface. Love's opposite is indifference--can one be completely indifferent to someone who loves us, we all being Narcissus, and all. (???) Fire fuel.
Oh, but-- the most important part, that maybe Echo misses--never become a shade of the other. Never chase, be so needy seeming. Never imply you are worthless--might as well be dead without. If you give up your soul to the other--willing to kill all that is You to be loved by Narcissus--that is only a temporary fix, and usually a lie. No one loves a mere echo. Echo doesn't exist. That's why the most tragic loves are ones with two who have opposing and uncompromising essences that are constantly in conflict. Sometimes it's the love that dies rather than either party. " If you truly loved me, understood me, know how I can't live without, you wouldn't go in that terrible hole." "If you loved me, you wouldn't make me give up the ultimate adventure of my life: exploring this very curious hole!" If the love will survive--someone has to believe a valuable person has a real emotion beyond mere need and possession.
But it's weird that we often pick someone who has the very essential quality we are missing. Exacerbating the conflict. Twin paradox.
A different quote , related:
“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Because love gained too easily evaporates. It needs the constant tug of agony to survive, to exist. The Beach Boys' song--"Wouldn't It Be Nice" is only felt because they haven't...it's wistful and sad. Unattained, yet. The quintessential paradox.
Nov1, 2013:
I find this pretty annoying about this book. It gets soooo intellectual and deep in places, it loses its emotional impact. But damn, it does say some deep shit. Then it counterpoints it with all that Johnny Truant, the raw nerve…that can also go much too far the other way. Sometimes I just want it to continue the plot, without all these sideshows. That's when I get bored and quit reading for awhile. But then there's Johnny Truant telling us to skip all this. I guess it's the nature of how this book was put together. It has that " more- is -more" organic evolution. But it's sometimes too overstimulating. Another writer who makes me feel that way is Tom Robbins. Could do with some editing. Yet, taken as a whole, I am so glad I read the whole thing.
I sometimes just have to rest my irritated nerves before I can move forward with this thing.
Bt I sense what it really has to do with is my dreams, my subconscious. That doroga/corridor/tunnel/hole is the gateway to the underworld. And the continuing descent is like going further inside my own psyche. It reminds me, once again, that I rarely remember the beginning of my dreams--how I got to the moment that occurs right before waking. Which is like the surface opening of the closet---getting to the rest requires much more effort, danger, potential madness. One has the feeling there is some great pravda at the center, that if you knew--you would finally know yourself. But..the truth is extremely scary, somehow. I'm pretty sure there is some pretty scary shit at the base of my brain, my dreams …stuff I don't wanna say. Or write. Maybe why this book bothers me so much. I feel Hamlet when he says, "Now I can drink hot blood." Somewhere down deep, I have the potential for that, Jim Morrison- style, but my version has sex rather than murder at its core.
Funny, I forget what the splintered floor was about. Or was it ever explained? I am skimming this stupid cat part of Johnny's(p.78?) seems totally useless..although I get his desire to be as mindless as Koshka. (I used to think cats were smart until I live with one..or maybe mine is exceptionally dumb) This part seems to be trying to be Faulkner or Joyce, but it doesn't have that drain vortex pull they have.. I don't feel its collective conscience the way I do with them. Hah, just remembered a childhood fear, being sucked down the drain of my Gran-ma's old fashioned tub, just because it didn't have a filter like ours at home. Instead, it had one of those rubber stoppers on a chain--seemed so primitive to such a modern child as myself- h-yuck. Somehow THAT image has to do with my feelings about this book. That has to say something about it.
ITS SORT OF STRANGE BUT I FEEL LIKE I HAVEN'T FULLY COMMITTED TO REREADING THIS BOOK. It's like I'm just toying with the idea. Yet, I keep progressing. It reminds me of when I tried to quit smoking: It took like 5? 10? Somewhere between- attempts before I went all the way. Or, even more, it's like when I STARTED smoking--never once bought a carton for myself--never fully committed to being a smoker?!! somehow that's how I quit? Man, was I living in the moment those days.
Last night I read the part (about pp.80-85?) where the explorers are getting prepped for the journey down the hallway--into the hole. There's all this stuff about Karen being unfaithful, and flirting rather strongly with one in particular. This leads to a lot of useless, stupid, over-the-top scholarship by the "audience-inside the audience". Well that's sort of a strange angle--Hamlet, and others who copy it, have a play within a play---this thing has multiple layers of audience, all giving conflicting, and frequently useless points of view on the action--there's the narrator's view, Zampono's view, Johnny Truant's, then that explosion of scholars, movie goers, casual internet voyeurs who passed around the movie, plus the various versions of said movie, commentary on the movies, interviews within the movie ( and novel) of various people giving their opinion of what it all means (Tom, for example). What a mind screw. I see what people say who are dismissive of this novel, that it's cold, clinical, a joke, literature gone mad with pretension. Yes, yes. But, I'm still reading. Hoping this time I'm gonna figure out what's in that goddamm hole.
Yet, there seems to be something, ( an underground world?) in this crack between Navidson's and Karen's needs.
You know, I don't know if I really am a half-step from сумашестая, or if I just like the romance of that. At least crazy isn't boring. Kill me when boring. Speaking of which, it's about time my сексуальная жизнь stopped being. But that was because I made it all up in my head;)..it's easier that way, I suppose. Brains, heads, dreams, good for something. But sometimes it all just gets in the way. I have always related, tight up, to this Kurt Cobain line:
"Wish I was like you…….easily amused."
Nov 17:
Reading the part where they are getting serious about the exploration, and I think it hints Karen will leave? So, the story develops the elements of Navidson as the artist, the storyteller with pictures. How he frames the descent by first staying at the surface level, with the guy trapped in a wheelchair--who never-the-less has an explorer's mindset. This is somehow addressing the frustrations of all of us who fear taking the leap, or have circumstances that make us hesitate: either other people, morality, (that's my addition), lack of a true death wish, need for double-vision. The wheelchair guy is as obsessive as the explorers themselves. It implies Navidson knows it is actually impossible to take a picture of the dark, so the pictures/movie must be of something else that only implies the dark-- represents its opposite even. It's sort of an interesting portrait of the artist at work, I suppose. Hitchcock did this--never showed the murder: framed it in windows (Rear Window), in ambiguous colored water circling a drain, in specious speculation , "How would one go about cutting up a human body?" This is why his movies will last longer than all the Bloody Saws and Hostels that are so popular now. Context is needed to make the story sing. We all have a murderer, an explorer, a witch, an artist, inside. How to evoke that as if by an incantation? Does this story succeed at doing that? It sure does plagiarize great stuff.
Nov 19:
I think I know what it wrong with this story. This is supposed to be about a relationship, da? A house that embodies the relationship of a modern, perhaps neurotic couple with children, who are having trouble sustaining the love they have because their goals in life are so divergent. One is an adventurer, one is semi-domesticated, or at least wants life to be all about nurturing. There are hints that they have a pretty passionate sex life, or had, or that it comes and goes, but doesn't quite seem sustainable. Maybe the whole problem people have with this story is how outside the story the perspective stays--you never really get inside the heads of the two central characters, to see if there are anythings worthwhile in their relationship that will close the rift in their conjoined souls. Yeah, that makes it a pretty modern, realistic commentary on modern relationships. But I don't really like or believe in "modern relationships"…all that cold, clinical psychoanalysis that goes on. Love, or not? How deep does the love go? That's what I want to see in that hole. I don't mean one of those cheesy, Twilight-y love things---I'll give up my human soul to be with you forever--I'll give up sex to be with you (so I don't kill you) forever. I think I want an Idiotanswer---or something more like. Layers. Human layers.
What do I know about Karen? She's beautiful, she was a model, bad family history?she may have had drug issues? She's flirtatious with most men. She's neurotic and clingy. There is a hint that there is something deeper, which you only see in descriptions of her on camera--the one where she seems to be constantly checking the door for Will's arrival, but then feigns indifference when he does arrive. I don't know, I don't see where she'd be the great love of anyone's life--the story isn't daring enough to show why. In many ways she seems like a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out. There's the weakness in the story, perhaps. Do I love her, or find her interesting as a character? Not sure she seems all that real to me--I can't even picture who would play her in a movie. Maybe that's the thing---if someone made this into a movie , they could add that additional layer, if they get a great actress. But, she wouldn't have much to go on from the story.
Will is more interesting, more conflicted--his identity is wrapped up in being a guy who can solve problems that have never before been solved, or needed to be. ( Also had family problems, but doesn't everyone, nowadays--too much analysis along the Freudian ditch. ) Plus, he has an artist's eye. But, there are artists with cold eyes, and those whose work seems consumed in fire. Not sure which type he is--he is definitely passionate about his work--does that feed his love for Karen or merely take away from it? I'm not mad for him, the way I am for Holden Caufield--he doesn't rip my soul apart, because, for all his claim to being a great artist, I feel I never get a really focused picture of him. Something makes me keep looking? I think the writer was actually afraid to go to that place --the one Dostoyevski is not afraid of.
This story doesn't have anywhere to go . Does it? I keep thinking I'm just missing something in the labyrinth of details. I need to talk to someone who read it, who's insightful…..bye.
Nov 22, 2013 :
(Consequently, the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. BTW--here's yet another odd harmonic. I figure no point in making much of this to my students, especially the Chinese. Only half of them were there, anyway, because it was a half-day and before Thanksgiving break. So, I show movies after quizzes etc were finished. Let the kids pick off this website I found. They picked Forrest Gump. Guess who appears in Forrest Gump? Kennedy, and mentions of his demise. Then next class, we watch Dr. Who--I did not plan this..but the freaking Kennedy Assassination is in the first Chris Eccleston episode, too! How crazy is that??)
I think I'm starting to make some sense of this --this time through, just like JPS. And like JPS, it's about the same thing….was the girl really there?? Pages 132-33, I think are central to the story, just like Sartre's story tries to decide if Anny is the real deal, the "music of love" frozen into the form of a human body, so to speak. Johnny Truant's new girl, though, is Ashley, (not Thumper, although Thumper haunts him too) who haunts his mind and is perhaps the source of his removal from reality, sanity. Come on---- ASHley, House on ASH Tree Lane, Ashes to Ashes, Bodies aren't important--there's something else: the haunting is real. Love is real. All Johnny's girls keep disappearing from him because he only believes in their bodies. (??? Maybe??) But what does that mean for Will and Karen, as this is really the story of their love, in spite of all the parallel lines in this thing. Echo and Narcissus.
Haha. I remember this weird moment in my life. My scrupulously logical son, who claims to be an atheist, even when he was pretty young, once came to me, telling me this wild story about his friend, who, during show-and-tell, told a story about another friend--his best friend-- that died. The show- and- tell kid said that he now thought his dead friend was haunting him in a friendly way. Claimed he was at that moment holding the dead kid's hand, which my son believed. I said, but Joe, aren't you an atheist? He said--yeah. "But you believe in Ghosts." "Yeah." Does that make sense, I said? And you know, I wanna know--can that make sense? This started a rather intense period where frequently Joseph wanted me to watch those paranormal shows with him on Cable TV.
P. 162: "The woman you never want to meet." The one you relinquish all power to? Making yourself "echo"? I think it's kind of in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, who has those narrators who obsess about/ are haunted by ideal women who maybe aren't really there--or are they? And then all the real women that don't measure up, or, do they? You never really want to meet her cos she's not safe for you, your sense of identity , your soul. It's easier to think of her as a figment of imagination.
Nov 23: I'm up to page 206. I've made it through the labyrinth chapters (Ch. 9, 10), so I think I may finish---it goes really fast through this part. I started, in this part, to get some minor respect for Johnny Truant because he's trying to clean himself up, won't even take doctor prescribed pills. Thinks maybe his fear and paranoia is from excessive drug-related indulgences. But, I think he's starting to work out his--I'll call it sex addiction--girl problems. Why he can't stick with one, etc. He's freaked because he heard Hailey, yet another girl, talking about him on the radio (weird modern life possibility, haha) --about his screaming night terrors that he can't remember. It's his epiphany--his I Must Remember What I Dream--moment. That seems like one of the first insightful, logical things he's said since the beginning of the story. I mean, he's not supposed to be unintelligent or uneducated--many of his ideas display both intelligence and education. It's just his perspective that is so wack. And now he's figuring out how to maybe fix himself, and he seems to have a pretty good idea about what is wrong. THE GIRLS. LOVE. His avoidance of it. The woman he never wants to meet. The echo?
At the same time, the explorer boys are having a crisis moment…trying to track down a cry in the dark labyrinth. My speculation is they can hear Karen, who Tom tells them on the radio, from upstairs, that there is something the matter with her. They go back to trying to follow the cry (Echo?), end up at a locked door with no knob. This feels like a climactic moment in the story. What's on the other side? They bust it down… find Jed, who thought he was about to die. Relief. But 15 pages later?
Dec 2:
Lord, I almost forgot about this. Navidson's Dream, p.398+
The most intense , quintessential image, perhaps ever. I need to broadcast this because it doesn't get enough attention. You could almost convince me I once had this dream…that we all have..but just don't remember.
The Wishing Well.
Setting; Inside a large, enclosed, concrete chamber. People mill about in soiled togas. The well is in the center, with many people sitting around it, dangling their feet. Contemplating--something. This is the afterlife, but only the gateway to heaven/hell. There is still a chance, a choice, this late in the primordial stew.
The well is full of clear liquid that does not obscure the depths of the well, but intensifies it. There is a bottom, that leads to? Dread perambulates the well. Someone leaps into the well. This is what must go next. Eventually. The leaper is encapsulated in blue light--success? Others do not get the blue light but sink. It is not necessary to jump in any specific amount of time. Navidson's dream ends without leap.
You can stay at the edge of the well, dangling your feet, forever, if you wish. It's like purgatory. Or you take the leap of faith, that you deserve reward.
Yeah, yeah, we can do a whole JPSartre on this, but I want to make it bigger, about every, single moment of everyone's life.
p. 400-01:
The dream of the snail: Nautilus Pompilius--the symbol of perfection, the golden mean. This Music is Eternal. Also, not so ironically, an image relating to the inner ear canal--the cochlear (cockle shell) where music goes deep. Navison wants to make perfect art..so he goes back.
Dec 8: only about 100 pages left, and most of those are those squirrelly, one line, twisty quick things. Unless I decide to read the letters etc in the appendix, which right now I'm not too keen on doing. Here's one of the central images of this book that makes it's confusion with reality so…real.
Delial:
I thought I had remembered seeing this somewhere and that it was real, although I had remembered the image differently. The real photographer , Kevin, as the caption says if you can't read it, committed suicide not long after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the picture.
http://100photos.time.com/photos/kevin-carter-starving-child-vulture
Just as well to hide this in a link:it's pretty awful.
pp. 466-67 and 492-93: Good Night!!! Manuscripts Don't Burn!! Harmonic harmonies so crazy. Did I really say that or am I imagining??? I KNOW I didn't consciously remember this.
So, to sum up, maybe, since this didn't get as wild as Jean-Paul Sartre, this book is full of copious amounts of intellectual ideas...it's a great source, maybe, to spin things from, a pretty deep well. But, I wasn't so taken with its characters, on the whole. Does it all actually tie up, or...? I think it should attach to people a little better, somehow, since ideas generally come from people. I want more connections than this has, so maybe this should go on my "Art I Want To See" blog. Still, glad I re-read.
Now that I'm reading Infinite Jest I realize how much of the ideas in this book (that I was impressed with for originality) were first done in IJ. The footnote idea, the disappearing film with a larger meaning. IJ has much more warmth to it, character wise, though and is surprisingly less intellectual. However, it is also annoyingly dense and random--definitely not JUST telling a story. I'm just taking it as I can, without being too serious.
феб 4 2014: Deadness of the deadest, darkest void. тоска без начала. O конца. I wish I knew what I wanted, and where the edges of my sanity lies. Send me a telling dream---please, I beg.
Дес 1 2014: Look at that/\. Been here be4. Oh, life's crazy cycles.
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