House of Leaves (7 page)

By definition “outpost” means a base, military or other, which while safe inside functions principally to provide protection from hostile forces found on the outside. This has always seemed a bizarre word to choose to describe a small house in the Virginia countryside,
[30—KeiIlor Ross in his article “Legal Zoning” for
Atlantic Monthly,
v. 278, September 1996, p. 43, does not wish to discount the possibility of irony: “After all Navidson has just moved from the extremely populated confines of New York City and is now only poking fun at the relative wilderness of this suburb.” Ross makes a good point, except for the fact that Navidson is a man who understands the meaning of outpost and his tone seems too straight forward to imply any kind of jest.]
but it does shed some light on why Navidson undertook this project in the first place. More than just snapping a few pictures and recording daily events with a few Hi 8s, Navidson wanted to use images to create an outpost set against the transience of the world. No wonder he found it so impossible to give up his professional occupation. In his mind abandoning photography meant submitting to loss.

Therefore to revisit our first two questions:

Why Navidson?

Considering the practically preadamite history of the house, it was inevitable someone
like
Navidson would eventually enter those rooms.

Why not someone else?

Considering his own history, talent and emotional background, only Navidson could have gone as deep as he did and still have successfully brought that vision back.
[31—Zampanô. This chapter first appeared as “The Matter Of Why” in
LA Weekly,
May 19, 1994.]

IV

Faith, sir, as to that matter, I don’t

believe one half of it myself.

—
Diedrich Knickerbocker

I
n
early June of 1990, the Navidsons flew to Seattle for a wedding. When they returned, something in the house had changed. Though they had only been away for four days, the change was enormous. It was not, however, obvious—like for instance a fire, a robbery, or an act of vandalism. Quite the contrary, the horror was atypical. No one could deny there had been an intrusion, but it was so odd no one knew how to respond. On video, we see Navidson acting almost amused while Karen simply draws both hands to her face as if she were about to pray. Their children, Chad and Daisy, just run through it, playing, giggling, completely oblivious to the deeper implications.

What took place amounts to a strange spatial violation which has already been described in a number of ways—namely surprising, unsettling, disturbing but most of all uncanny. In German the word for ‘uncanny’ is ‘unheimlich’ which Heidegger in his book
Sein und Zeit
thought worthy of some consideration:

DaJ3 die Angst als Grundbefindlichkeit in sotcher

Weise erschlieJit, daflr ist weider die

alltagliche Daseinsauslegung und Rede der

unvoreingenommenste Beleg. Befindlichkeit,

so wurde fruher gesagt, macht offenbar

wie einem ist.x. In der Angst is einem flunheimlich

. Darin kommt zunachst die

eigentumliche Unbestimmtheit dessen, wobei

sich das Dasein in der Angst befindet, zum

Ausdruck: das Nichts und Nirgends. Unheimlichkeit

meint aber dabei zugleich das

Nichtzuhause-sein. Bei der ersten phanomenalen

Anzeige der Grundverfassung des

Daseins und der Klarung des existenzialen

Sinnes von In-Sein im Unterschied von der

kategorialen Bedeutung der
.
lnwendigkeit

wurde das In-Sein bestimmt als Wohnen bei

Vertrautsein mit
.
..
Dieser Charakier

des In-Seins wurde dann konkreter sichtbar

gemach durch die alltagliche Offentlichkeit

des Man, das die beruhigte Selbstsicherheit,

das selbsrverstandliche Zuhause-sein in die

durchschnittliche Alltaglichkeit des Daseins

bringt. Die Angst dagegen holt das Dasein

aus seinem verfallenden Aufgehen in der

Welt zurlick. Die alltagliche Vertrautheit

bricht in sich Zusammen. Das Dasein ist vereinzelt,

das jedoch als In-der-Welt-sein. Das

In-Sein kommt in den existenzialen Modusc

des Un-zuhause. Nichts anderes meint die

Rede von der Unheim1ichkeit.
[
32
—Declared
Martin Heidegger’s
Sein und Zeit
(Frankfurt Am Main: Vittorio Klostennann, 1977), p. 250-
251.
]

[
33
—
And here’s the English, thanks to John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinsons’ translation of Heidegger’s
Beina and Time,
Harper
&
Row,
1962, page 233. A real bitch to find:

In anxiety one feels
uncanny.
Here the peculiar
indefiniteness of that which Dasein finds itself
alongside in anxiety, comes proximally to
expression: the “nothing and nowhere”. But here
“uncanniness” also
means
“not—being—at home.” [das
Nicht-zuhause-sein].
In our first indication of the
phenomenal character of
Dasein’s basic state and in our
clarification of the existential meaning of
“Being-in” as distinguished from the
categorical
signification of ‘insideness’, Being-in was defined as “residing alongside
.
..
“,
“Being-familiar with
· ·
.
“
This character of Being-in was then brought to view more concretely through the everyday
publicness of the “they”, which brings tranquilized self-assurance——’Being-at-home’, with all its
obviousness—into the average everydayness of
Dasein. On the other hand, as Dasein falls, anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the ‘world’.

Everyday familiarity collapses. Dasein has been
individualized, but individualized Being-in-the- world. Being-in enters into the existential ‘mode’ of the “not-at-home”. Nothing else is meant by our talk about ‘uncanniness’.

Which only goes to prove the existence of crack back in the early twentieth century. Certainly this geezer must of gotten hung up on a pretty wicked rock habit to start spouting such nonsense. Crazier still, I’ve just now been wondering if something about this passage may have actually affected me, which I know doesn’t exactly follow, especially since that would imply something in it really does make sense, and I just got finished calling it non-sense.

I don’t know.

The point is, when I copied down the German a week ago, I was fine. Then last night I found the translation and this morning, when I went into work, I didn’t feel at all myself. It’s probably just a coincidence—I mean that there’s some kind of connection between my state of mind and
The Navidson Record
or even a few arcane sentences on existence penned by a former Nazi tweaking on who knows what. More than likely, it’s something entirely else, the real root lying in my already strange mood fluctuations, though I guess those are pretty recent too, rocking back and forth between wishful thinking and some private agony until the bar breaks. I’ve no fucking clue.

das Nicht-zuhause—sein

[not-being-at-home.]

That part’s definitely true.

These days, I’m an apprentice at a tattoo shop on Sunset. I answer phones, schedule consultations and clean up. Any idiot could handle it. In fact the job’s reserved for idiots. This afternoon though, how do I explain it?, something’s really of f. I’m off. I can’t do a fucking thing. I just keep staring at all the ink we have, that wild variety of color, everything from rootbeer, midnight blue and cochineal to mauve, light doe, lilac, south sea green, maize, even pelican black, all lined up in these plastic caps, like tiny transparent thimbles—and needles too, my eyes catching on all those carefully preserved points and we have hundreds, mostly #12 sharps, many singles, though plenty in two, three, four, five, six and seven needle groups, even a fourteen round shader.

It depends on what you need.

I don’t know what I need but for no apparent reason I’m going terribly south. Nothing has happened, absolutely nothing, but I’m still having problems breathing. The air in the Shop is admittedly thick with the steady smell of sweat, isopropyl alcohol, Benz—all, all that solution for the ultrasonic cleaner, even solder and flux, but that’s not it either.

Of course no one notices. My boss, a retinue of his friends, some new inductee who’s just put down $150 for a rose, keep up the chatter, pretty loud chatter too, though never quite enough to drown out the most important sound of all: the single, insistent buzz of an original “J” tattoo machine logging yet another hundred stabs a minute in the dimple of some chunky ass.

I get a glass of water. I walk out into the hallway. That’s a mistake. I should of stayed near people. The comfort of company and all that. Instead I’m alone, running through a quick mental check list:

food poisoning? (stomach’s fine) withdrawals? (haven’t been on a gak or Ecstasy diet for several months, and while I didn’t smoke any pot this morning—my usual ritual—I know THC doesn’t create any lasting physical dependencies). And then out of the be-fucking-lue, everything gets substantially darker. Not pitch black mind you. Not even power failure black. More like a cloud passing over the sun. Make that a storm. Though there is no storm. No clouds. It’s a bright day and anyway I’m inside.

I wish that had been all. Just a slight decrease in illumination and a little breathing difficulty. Could still blame that on a blown fuse or some aberrant drug related flashback. But then my nostrils flare with the scent of something bitter & foul, something inhuman, reeking with so much rot & years, telling me in the language of nausea that I’m not alone.

Something’s behind me.

Of course, I deny it.

It’s impossible to deny.

I wanna puke.

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That’s
where it is. Right at this moment. But don’t look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it’s gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails?, don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms—you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book—you won’t have time to even scream.

Don’t look.

I didn’t.

Of course I looked.

I looked so fucking fast I should of ended up wearing one of those neck braces for whiplash.

My hands had gone all clammy. My face was burning up. Who knows how much adrenaline had just been dumped into my system. Before I turned, it felt exactly as if in fact I had turned and at that instant caught sight of some tremendous beast crouched off in the shadows, muscles a twitch from firing its great mass forward, ragged claws slowly extending, digging into the linoleum, even as its eyes are dilating, beyond the point of reason, completely obliterating the iris, and by that widening fire, the glowing furnace of witness, a
camera lucida,
with me in silhouette, like some silly Hand shadow twitching about upside down, is that right?, or am I getting confused?, either way registering at last the sign it must have been waiting for: my own recognition of exactly what has been awaiting me all along—except that when I finally do turn, jerking around like the scared-shitless shit
-
for-brains I am, I discover only a deserted corridor, or was it merely a
recently
deserted corridor?, this thing, whatever it had been, obviously beyond the grasp of my imagination or for that matter my emotions, having departed into alcoves of darkness, seeping into corners & floors, cracks & outlets, gone even to the walls. Lights now normal. The smell history. Though my fingers still tremble and I’ve yet to stop choking on large irregular gulps of air, as I keep spinning around like a stupid top spinning around on top of nothing, looking everywhere, even though there’s absolutely nothing, nothing anywhere.

I actually thought I was going to fall, and then just as abruptly as I’d been possessed by this fear, it left me and I fell back into control.

When I re-enter the Shop things are still askew but they at least seem manageable.

The phone has been ringing. Nine times and counting, my boss announces. He’s clearly annoyed. More annoyed when I express some surprise over his ability to count that high.

I pick up before he can start yammering at me about my attitude.

The call’s for me. Lude’s on a pay phone in the valley with important info. Apparently, there’s some significant doings at some significant club. He tells me he can guest list my boss and any cohorts I deem worthy. Sure, I say, but I’m still shaken and quickly lose hold of the details when I realize I’ve just forgotten something else as well, something very important, which by the time I hang up, no matter how hard I try, I can no longer remember what I’d meant to remember when whatever it was had first entered my head.

Or had it?

Maybe it hadn’t entered my head at all. Maybe it had just brushed past me, like someone easing by in a dark room, the face lost in shadow,
my thoughts lost in another conversation, though something in her movement or
perfume is disturbingly familiar, though how familiar is impossible to tell because by the time I realize she’s someone I should know she’s already gone, deep into the din, beyond the bar, taking with her any chance of recognition. Though she hasn’t left. She’s still there. Embracing shadows.

Is that it?

Had I been thinking of a woman?

I don’t know.

I hope it doesn’t matter.

I have a terrifying feeling it does.

Nevertheless regardless of how extensive his analysis is here, Heidegger still fails to point out that
unheimlich
when used as an adverb means “dreadfully,” “awfully,” “heaps of,” and “an awful lot of.” Largeness has always been a condition of the weird and unsafe; it is overwhelming, too much or too big. Thus that which is uncanny or
unheimlich
is neither homey nor protective, nor comforting nor familiar. It is alien, exposed, and unsettling, or in other words, the perfect description of the house on Ash Tree Lane.