House of Leaves: Explored - Labyrinth in Letters [II]

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imagine for a moment then you are in a maze it is contained in an enclosed space a structure solid built with intelligence and intention it is dark it is cold there is no natural light you have instead a flashlight with only moderate range and even when using the flashlight dark is what you see the walls are black the floor is black the ceiling is black you have spare batteries for the flashlight eventually these will run out and you'll be left with only talk Ness there are no obstructions except for the flat surfaces of walls and doors the only sound you can trust as long as you're alive is your voice you are lost in a labyrinth and there is a creature coming for you growling in the dark these are the conditions and the deaths of the Davidson house for Holloway and his team it's the same situation for will Navin s'en and Billy Reston as they attempt a rescue mission for that team and through the echoing power of its heartbeat Binet Vicent record creates a terrifying reflection of its action through its containing manuscript and into the life of Johnny Truitt echoes panic attacks nightmares memories of pain resurfacing at increasing speed thoughts turning into twisting confusing run-on sentences and all because in this maze no one is alone Johnny Holloway Jed wax and Davidson all face a beast even Tom who only enters part away can say he met the monster how many times has Johnny been attacked by something he feels lurking in the dark it happens at the shop twice it happened to zombie nose assistant it keeps happening to Johnny even at home a sudden influx of darkness or Russia senses all pointing to a monster never truly seen but always there hidden in a place the light can't reach a growl in the darkness and as you consider the idea of a creature something huge determined able to lash out and kill once the moment is right you might remember the one detail about zombie knows death that was the most mysterious for long claw marks in the floor right next to the old man's body Zampano may have met the monster this might have been the reason for his warning and didn't one of the darkest chambers of the labyrinth we find what he first dared to tell us about it only to later be repressed [Music] in Chapter nine page 109 we're told how echo serve as an effective means to evaluate the physical emotional and thematic distances present in the Navis and record Zampano also addresses the more complex ideation of convolution interference confusion and even T centric ideas of design and construction in other words the concept of a labyrinth discussion follows on the history of mazes and their reasons for being built the English hedgerow maze at Longley was designed to amuse garden party attendants while Amin him at the 3rd of the 12th dynasty in Egypt built for his mortuary temple a labyrinth near Lake Morris to protect his soul then we encounter her first in the book were headed strikethrough text jonny informs us these lines were obscured by some Pinal he needed turpentine just to save what the old man used to cover the writing it turned out to be a long and detailed example of the most infamous story involving a maze in mythology the labyrinth detail has constructed for King Minos it served as a prison purportedly located on the island of Crete in the city of gnosis the maze was built to incarcerate the Minotaur a creature born from an illicit encounter between the Queen in the bull this red text has its own footnote and within that footnote two more leading to more discussions on pano Road and then buried footnote 123 reveals the first genuine author interlude baizen Pannell his own personal intrusion I am led to a somewhat interesting suspicion King Minos did not build the labyrinth to imprison a monster but to conceal a deformed child his child Zampano writes that the Minotaur is often seen as having the lower body of a bull and the torso of a man were having a Bulls head on a man's body he believes at a third possibility it was a man but he was deformed I believe pride would not allow Minos to accept that the heir to the throne had a horrendous appearance consequently he dissolved the Rite of Ascension by publicly accusing his wife pass a fee of fornicating with a male bull volume but Minos wasn't evil enough to murder his own flesh and blood so he ordered the building of a labyrinth complicated enough to keep his son from ever escaping but without bars to suggest the prison I am convinced menaces maze really serves as a trope for repression my published thoughts on the subject inspired the playwright Taggart chicklets to author a play called the Minotaur for the Seattle Repertory company has only eight people including the doorman got a chance to see the production I produce here a brief summary chicklets begins his play with Minos entering the labyrinths late one evening to speak to his son as it turns out the Minotaur is a gentle and misunderstood creature while the so-called Athenian youth are convicted criminals who were already sentenced to death back in Greece usually King Minos has them secretly executed and then publicly claims their deaths were caused by the terrifying Minotaur thus ensuring that the residents of gnosis will never get too close to the labyrinth unfortunately this time one of the criminals had escaped into the maze encountered mint as chicklets refers to the Minotaur and nearly murdered him had Minos himself not rushed in and killed the criminal his son would have perished suffice it to say Minos is furious he has caught himself caring for his son and the resulting guilt in sorrow and senses him to no end as the play progresses the king slowly sees past his son's deformities eventually discovering an elite she experienced an artistic sentiment and most importantly a visionary understanding of the world soon a deep paternal love grows in the king's heart and he begins to conceive of a way to reintroduce the Minotaur back into society sadly the stories the king has spread throughout the world concerning this terrifying beast prove the seeds of tragedy soon enough a bruiser named Theseus arrived Chiklis describes him as a drunken frat boy who without a second thought hacks the Minotaur into little pieces in one of the play's most moving scenes King Minos with tears streaming down his face publicly commenced Theseus courage the crown believes the tears are a sign of gratitude while we the audience understand they are tears of loss the king's heart breaks and while he will go on to be an extremely just ruler it is a justice for informed by the deepest kind of agony Zapdos thoughts regarding the Minotaur King Minos and his labyrinth doesn't stay inside the text he tried to hide as Holloway Roberts Jed leader and whacks hook make their way further down the stairway and exploration number four the purpose of that vast place still continues to elude them is it merely an aberration of physics some kind of war band space wenches it's healthy air elaborate on a much grander scale perhaps it serves a funeral purpose conceals a secret protect something in prisons or hides some kind of monster or for that matter in prisons or hides in innocent as the Holloway team soon discovers answers to these questions are not exactly forthcoming but that doesn't mean they aren't here or in other words shy from the sky no answer lies there it cannot care especially for what it no longer knows treat that place as a thing onto itself independent of all else and confronted on those terms you alone must find a way no one else can help you every way is different and if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty and you will perish Zampano Swartz rang true for this point in the novel when it comes to Johnny's sense of direction he may not know where he is or where he's going but when it comes to marking things in chapter 9 we see him convey direction using a method only a traveler would understand and it's one that's entirely a personal page 48 footnote 62 at the bottom following a description of what may have been a nightmare his father could have had causing the heart attack suffered in his sleep not waking this time before the hit but sleeping right through in the slamming into the ground at terminal velocity to the pound the balance what kind of ground air emergency code would that mark mean the opposition of L's not understood probably chose x marks the spot unable to proceed Doni his father was a pilot and he would have been trained in ground air emergency codes this is a symbolic language that conveys messages on the ground to aircraft and is taught in survival training there is a single strip of codes found in the opening collage were house of leaves but we can find two more collages in the appendix at Johnny provides giving us a much more complete guide a reader who wanted to interpret what Johnny had to say at any point regarding footnotes would need to come back here often to see the meaning of the codes because he begins using them in earnest during chapter 9 just as Holloway and his team leave signs within the unmarked earth to navigate the maze johnny leaves his own very personal and sentimental markers to let us know his thoughts and feelings even when the footnote belongs to sopping ow least to reflect the action in the story for instance page 118 to 119 Zampano writes he constantly tacks in the UH narrows to the wall sprays neon paint on corners and meets out plenty of fishing line wherever the path becomes especially complicated and twisted the footnote marker here is a rectangle leading to Zampano running about how the fishing line is an echo of Mythology Minos his daughter Ariadne supply Theseus with a thread which he used to escape the labyrinth go to Johnny's appendix look at the first collage and in the ground air codes we find a rectangle it means require compass and map Holloway and his team would understand that entirely after breaking camp on day six of their expiration we make a terrible discovery the remains of one of their footlong neon markers barely clinging to the wall it has been badly mauled half of the fabric torn away by some unimaginable claw even worse their next cache has been gutted they have heard the creature growling in the dark now it's made itself known for physical action Holloway reacts the way he's been trained loading his rifle and immediately going on the hunt he leads his team around on a wild chase looking for more evidence trying to pick up a trail Jen and wax are not happy to go along they're out of resources and it's time to leave the entire situation will eventually lead to the moment that requires an SOS which sends will and Reston into the maze outside the neighbors and record johnny lies alone we now understand his situation is the same lost in a labyrinth from page one deep in the heart and whatever lives here is making itself known there's a Minotaur in the new Batson house and there's a Minotaur stocking Jonny and talk nice outside the manuscript the creatures up and out did his best to put back in the shadows and warn us against meeting EKKO her cell seems to be writing house of leaves now telling the same story through two different worlds the effect that stems from the presence of a Minotaur continues for Johnny in his footnote I race on page 149 footnotes 195 to 196 Johnnie relates his encounter with Haley a girl he met at a record store in took home for the night who was gone when he woke the next morning a few days later I hear her on K rocks love line this time drenched in purple rain describing to dr. Truman Adam Carolla how I this guy in a real stale studio with books and running everywhere everywhere and weird drawings all over his wall - all in black and dozed off only to start screaming and yelling terrible things in his sleep about blood and mutilations and other crazy things which had scared her and had it been wrong of her to leave even though when he been awake he'd seemed all right an ugly shiver ripped up my back then did I scream every night what did I say and why couldn't I remember any of it in the morning he checked to make sure the door was locked he put on the chain lock he needed more locks his heart rate kicked up and he trying to hide in the corner of the room something was approaching I could hear it outside I could feel the vibrations he was about to splinter its way through the hall door my door Walker and darkness from whose face or than heaven long ago flat with no walls crak all my windows shatter a terrible roar more like a howl more like a shriek my eardrums strain and split the chain snaps I'm desperately trying to crawl away but it's too late nothing can be done now an awful stench returns and with it comes a scene filling my place painting it all anew but with what what kind of brushes are being used what sort of paints and why that smell how do I know this I cannot know this the floor beneath me fails and to avoid and then the walls come back the glass is restored the only thing that truly vanished was his horror leaving him in the same state he'd been before when this happened at the shop twice and all the moments had crept up outside the house Johnny tries to calm down with an imaginary exercise about world weary traveler singing a song mad woman on another tour everything she is she spits on the floor an old man telling me she's sicker than the rest God have never been afraid like this my room still stinks of gore a flood of entrails spread from wall to wall the hacked remains of whose and hands matted hair and bone used to paint the ceiling drench the floor the chopping must have gone on for days to leave only this not even the fly settle for long too far from here to know anything or anyone anymore I don't even know myself the situation is clear the Minotaur is trying to get in and we seem to finally gain a sense of what the horrible stench is a flood event trail spread from wall to wall hacked remains of whose and hands matted hair and bone used to paint the ceiling drench the floor it's not just the beast that's coming after Johnny it's the scene of the monsters demise that causes him stress and insists on coming back time and time again the Minotaur and its horrific ending plagues him it's been plaguing him since the beginning an echo reverberating out before we know the origin of the sound and so knowing the effects of echos chamber at work we look to the nave 'its and record to find the origin of that sound where is the Minotaur in the house on ash tree Lane following the SOS from Holloway's team we remember what we'll hear Woodson tells Karen I waited too long with delial I'm not going to do it again readers at this moment may remember the name Belial as a topic of mystery brought up only once before on page 17 in house of Lee's Zampano writes Davidson's early hi-8 journal entries are so easy and mild they rarely if ever allude to take your troubles only Karen staring straight into that little lens brings up the problem he mentioned delial again she says in an extremely clipped tone I've warned him if he's not going to tell me who she is he'd better not bring her up part of this moved south was supposed to be about putting the past and all that behind us he's been pretty good but I guess he can't control his dreams last night I wasn't sleeping very well that was cold it's the middle of May but I felt like I was lying in a freezer I got up to get a blanket and when I came back he was talking in his sleep delial just like that out of the blue I'm certain because he said her name twice shouted it as it turns out karen was not the only one who was kept in to talk about delial even friends and fellow photo journalist who had her Davidson used the name before never received any sort of explanation no one had any idea who she was or why was she haunted his thoughts and conversation like some albatross does this perhaps remind you of anybody or any particular situations we've already learned echolocation you should be finding these on your own now the next moment we have addressing the topic of Delisle comes well after David's in escapes the labyrinth after the rescue mission having both run as far as they could from the house after a traumatic exit and Karen and Navy are temporarily apart and the time will takes the deal with the aftermath and put together footage from the house Karen creates a film of her own a brief history of who I love a slideshow featuring pictures of will in his photography included is the picture that one Davidson a Pulitzer Prize and the most recognition of his career as the world remembers the renowned image shows a Sudanese child dying of starvation too weak to move even though of altar stalks her from behind Karin focuses on the photo for 20 seconds and uses 10 to show the back of the picture they're almost a lost emit so much swipe my six faintly penciled in block letters cradled in quotes delial and while many experts wonder what caused Davidson to go back to the house alone following study of his footage we find his potential goodbye letter to Karen tells us on pages three ninety and 391 they need to go back to that place one more time I know something now when I just have to confirm it slowly the pieces have been coming together I'm starting to see that place for what it is and it's not for cable shows or National Geographic do you believe in God I don't think I ever asked you that one well I do now God's a house I won't reread this if I do I'll throw it away and write something terse clean and sober and all locked up Davidson begins crying as he finally confesses who delial has been on his own terms I can't get delial out of my head Delia Delia Delia the name I gave to the girl in the photo for the photo that's not what I can't get out of my head right now not the photo that photo of that thing but who she was before one sixtieth of a second slicer at a thin air and won me the Pulitzer though that didn't keep the vultures away I did that by swinging my tripod around no that didn't keep her from dying five years old Daisy's age except she was picking at a bone a little girl squatting in a field of rock dangling a bone between her fingers I miss miss miss but I didn't miss I got her along with the vulture in the background when the real vulture was the guy with the camera preying on her for his Pulitzer Prize it doesn't matter if she was already 10 minutes from dying I took three minutes to snap a photo I should have taken ten minutes taking her somewhere so she wouldn't go away like that no family no mother no people just a vulture and a photojournalist it's in expresses that he wishes he were dead he has never stopped thinking about her and never can that tiny bag of bones just started to shake and it was over shaped to hide right in my hands the hands of the guy who took three minutes to photograph her and now she was gone that poor little girl in the SKA awful world I miss her I miss delial I miss the man I thought I was before I met her the man who would have saved her it would have done something will Nathan's confession is major not only do we know who Delia lay is and how it affected him this is the first time he has truly opened up and confided something he was holding on to that deeply affected him no surprise then in this echo chamber that Johnny Tran begins telling us the truth behind the images he's created for us all the stories crafted to protect himself back during chapter 7 on page 92 footnote 104 reflects on the incident of Chad coming home with visible bruises in a swollen I will Nathanson immediately stops talking to Holloway to ask chat what happened in his son doesn't answer which is not really a good response Johnny writes and you know changing the details are changing the subject can be just the same as refusing to speak because 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 decolorizing sometimes even flying in a whole chorus of cartoon characters and now I know exactly where I'm going and plays have already managed to avoid twice the first time with a fictive toothed improv the second time with that quick dart north to Santa Cruz and the troubles of a girl I barely know over Here I am again right at this moment - again heading straight forward which I suppose I could still resist relating the real story behind my broken tooth besides you know is burn it when I'm done after Johnny's father died it went through a number of foster homes when he was twelve he lived with the family of a cruel former marine named Raymond Johnny didn't take the foster life well and often took his anger and aggression out at school engaging in fights with kids who antagonized him it was began making its way back to the house prompting Raymond to threaten Johnny calling him by the only name he used for the boy beast let's get an understanding going he said late one night you're not really in this family but you're living with this family 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 he'll treat you like an animal which will have to suit you Johnny writes that the next day he fought on a schoolyard until his knuckles were bloody day after day he got into fights and each one made him better and worse after the 10th fight something really poisonous got inside me and turned off all the pain I didn't even register hit or cut anymore I heard the blow but it never made it far enough along my nerves for me to even feel it was a fight with a fourteen-year-old that got him expelled when Johnny arrived at the house Raymond was waiting for him we're told Raymond took him into his truck and said they were going to the hospital but Johnny was taken some grounds first where he lost half his tooth in a place surrounded by barbed wire and will hugs we don't come back to this until page 3:23 footnote 276 describing the first time Johnny chose not to fly from the path so a rusty bar taught him the taste of teeth abuse by Raymond continued and eventually Johnny escaped the house fleeing to Alaska the deeper Johnny goes into the nave 'its in record and the mord's characters explore the hallway the less we're told about his one-night stands and fictional stories used to impress women at bars his act of playing pretend who really has started to melt away he doesn't want to tell us what he shares but he does need to echoing will nee Vuitton's need to confess his guilt over delial Johnny tells us about working at a canning factory in Alaska as a runaway and watching a friend there drown and a boat accident he tells us about his time in a boarding school overhearing a girl he never got to meet talking about how nice looked when he smiled and how that reminded him of a fantasy he'd always had about a girl he could love or even told where the scars on his arms really came from just the result of a pan of sizzling corn oil dropped when he was only four see no nearly as dramatic as at Japanese martial arts cult run by Koreans in Indiana this account pan that's all Johnny says he'd been tried talking to thumper in fact he did talk to thumper telling her and his boss about that summer in Alaska one day at the shop to his surprise both of them listened and thumper took him out for lunch her conversation was about a new guy friend who provided a service no one else really could Johnny's attempt to return conversation was about the once called and quickly forgotten hookups he'd been through until suddenly you realize he didn't want to talk about that even if thumper had opened the floor he talked about cell phone oh he talked about the trunk he talked about his panic attacks or surreal moments or whatever they were he'd been experiencing and thumper didn't laugh she paid attention quiet attentive for maybe half an hour an hour I don't know how long and you know who the more I talked the more I felt some of the pain and panic inside me he's up a notch she wasn't looking around at people who were fixing on silverware she was just looking straight at me and without any malice either she was wide open taking in everything I told her without judgment just listening listening to the way I phrased it all listening to how I felt that's when something really painful torture me like some old powerful root the kind you see in mountains sometimes splitting apart chunks of granite has biggest small homes only instead of granite this thing was splitting me apart my chest hurt and I felt funny all over having no idea but it was this root or the feeling till I suddenly realized I was going to start sobbing now I haven't cried since I was 12 so I had no intention of starting at 25 especially in some Thai restaurant so I swallowed up it killed it and changed the subject the further we go the more Johnny talks his old behavior of telling us fake stories finally ending before the chapter regarding Karen Greene's workflow and the Nuits and Families escape from the house a chapter appears revealing that rumors of her infidelity during wills world traveling with her true she cheated with an actor while still working and living in New York and even after the affair Karen kept a trove of love letters that had been written to her over the years kept in her jewelry box the very same one will Natan opens early in the film its content finally revealed johnny reflects on this topic in his footnote diary on page three fifty-foot enough 3:18 it's amazing how many people save at least a few letters during their lifetime leaves of feeling I have a few that haven't spoiled one in particular hides inside a locket shaped like a deer my mother was the one who used to wear it whenever I saw her from the time I was 13 till I was almost 18 she always had it around her neck I never knew what she kept inside I saw it before I left for Alaska and I guess even back then there was something about its shape I resent it most locket sides seen were small were hound and warm they made sense hers I did again it was awkward ornate and most of all cold johnny writes that he saw it again before going to europe after winning an essay contest about a painter he went to many countries finally ending his tour in Paris where he practically lived at the bistros at night while during the day I slept brokenhearted on the quays of the sign I don't know why I say brokenhearted yes it's the way I felt all emaciated and without company everything I saw at me somehow reflecting my destitution I often thought about the locket dangling from her neck sometimes it made me hurt often it made me angry when my mother died the locket was the only thing she left me for a long time I didn't flip the latch I'm not sure why maybe I was afraid when I'd find inside when I finally did crack the hinge I discovered the carefully folded love letter disguised as a thank-you letter scrawled in the hand of an 11 year old boy so letter I wrote a very first one my mother ever received from the son she left when he was only seven it's also the only one she saved [Music] it's taken quite a while in the House of Leaves Rajani to talk about his mother his father we came to know early and the tragedy that ended his life when Johnny was 10 now we learn about mrs. truant and as the end draws near for the naked sin record more details are provided page 379 footnote 354 in a chapter about the lab results of samples taken from Davidson's house today for no reason in particular I started thinking about dr. ogle Maier wondering what I might have found out if I'd had the money if I'd taken a time to see his specialist if I'd opted for the tests I grew up on certain words words I'd never mentioned too lewd or anyone for that matter where it's orbiting around my mother mainly sometimes whispered more often written letters my father would never have let me read had he lived before I understood the significance of things like auditory hallucinations verb iteration word salad deep realization depersonalization I sensed in them all kinds of adventure Johnny continues wondering what a doctor might have found in his brain if he allowed an MRI scan he says he's been thinking more and more about his mother and the way her life felt her email eiated her with impulses beyond her command broke her with year after year of the same I never knew her that well he remembers she had hair like sunlight extremely fine and whist with silver and her eyes always seemed to brim with a certain tenderness when I visited although most of the time she whispered sometimes she spoke up and then her voice would sound sweet in full like chapel bells caroling in the foreign towns I'd eventually wander at dawn she also used to write me these letters I always handwritten and full of strange colored words I started after my father was killed loaded with advice and encouragement and most of all faith she was never that well and eventually her word sat word until well I wish I could just stick to thoughts of her hair and her brimming eyes and caroling bells and foreign towns at dawn Johnny says he received a letter one day from his mother apologizing for something she'd done he thought it was about the pan of oil she dropped when he was for causing the scars on his arms but she was referring to a completely different event when my father was finally forced to take her away to the whale when I was only seven a day I cannot for the life of me remember as she explained it her thoughts at that time had entirely deteriorated the burden of life seemed too much for her to bear and therefore in her mind and impossible and even harmful burden to impose upon the child especially her own she gathered me up in her arms and tried to choke me my father intervened almost immediately and my mother was then taken away from my own safety I guess I do remember that part someone saying my own safety my father I imagine I also remember him leading her away at least the shape of him in the doorway with her all blurred out and in silhouette Raymond knew about Johnny's mother he said innate mayor's destroyed her I've seen it happen to buddies of mine that's why you'll never catch me without a gun under my pillow I'll get any man through the night and that's when Johnny tells us about the Christmas present he bought himself more than one actually he is now the owner of three firearms I'm hoping the weapons will make me feel better especially if I sense the dullness inside we get too heavy and thick warning me that something is again approaching creeping slowly towards my room no figment of my imagination either but as tangible as you and I and recei seing the scratch humans snored an awful rage they were still pausing outside my door waiting perhaps for a word or an order or some other kind of sign to at last initiate this violent and by now inevitable confrontation he sometimes lays awake at night with his hands on the triggers even lies with them in bed under sky blue shades during chapter 17 Johnny realizes Raymond's advice can't protect him just as it wouldn't protect will davidson with three prominent dreams leading up to his lone expedition into the house exploration number five initiating an echo that leaves Johnny completely rattled on page 403 footnote 390 johnny wakes up from a nightmare which he appears to be on board the atrocity the ship whose tragic tale he might remember from a party he attended when he was much younger I'm deep in the hull of some enormous vessel wandering its narrow passages of black steel and rust something tells me I've been here a long time endlessly descending into dead ends turning around to find other ways which in the end lead only to still more ends Johnny's pace quickens startled by something invisible and he runs into an intruder a truck and frat boy wearing a plum colored tofa beta sweatshirt hearing the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman's axe in his left Johnny tries asking why this man is coming after him but it sounds like grunting that's when I noticed my hands they looked melted as if they were made of plastic and had been dipped in boiling oil stiff hair sprouts up all over the fingers and around the long yellow fingernails this Awful's going does not end at my wrists but continues down my arms his ones reach over my shoulders down my back send across my chest where I know rip still protrude like violin bows reveal plenty of hair covering strange lumps of flesh on my chin my nose and along the ridge of my cheeks my forehead there's an enormous bulge harder than stone and even though I have no idea how I got to be so deformed I do know I'm here because I am deformed because when I speak my words come out in cracks and groans and what's more I've been put here by an old man a dead man by one who called me son though he was not my father Johnny is the Minotaur lost in the labyrinth of the atrocity deep below the sea in the version of Theseus inspired by something I was publishing has come to end his life Theseus raises the axe high and that's when he changes the frat boy I realize is not the frat boy anymore but someone else at first I think it's kiri until I realized it's not Curie but Ashley which is when I realized it's not kiri nor Ashley but thumper or something tells me that even that's not exactly right her face closed with a duration and warmth in her eyes communicated in a blink an understanding of all the gestures I've ever made all the thoughts I've ever had johnny stands there all muscles relaxed as Theseus continues to raise the ax changing into a familiar face smiling even as she starts to shake suddenly swinging the axe down on me at my head though she will miss my head barely the axe floating down instead towards my shoulder finally cutting into the bone in lodging there producing shrieks of blood so much blood and pain so much pain she has started to cry even as she dislodges the accent raises it again to swing again again in my head though she's crying harder I'm now too full of fury and hate to do anything but look up as the blade slices down with appalling force this time the right arc I realized with a shade of citric joy at least at last it will put an end to the far more terrible ache inside me borne decades ago long before I finally be held in a dream the face and meaning of my heart if there's any doubt about who if easiest revealed himself to be in Johnny's nightmare the diary footnote on page four 10 we'll take care of it johnny is going to be evicted there's nothing in Los Angeles he wants and like Karen and we'll name it sin in the manuscript he feels a severe need to go to Virginia my visa was cancelled a month ago but I had some good fortune selling my mother's locket though I kept the gold necklace which may surprise you but something about that dream I remember changed me afterwards just looking at the dull silver made me feel like there was this horrendous weight around my neck even though I wasn't even wearing it in fact the idea of getting rid of it was no longer enough I had to hate it as I got rid of it apparently it was designed by someone well-known I made $4,200 oh I will say this as I was handing over that strange shape letter included I felt an extraordinary amount of Rage surged through me for a moment I was sure the scars along my arms would catch fire and melt down to the bones I pocketed the cash quickly ducked away hurt full of poison and more than a little afraid I might try to inflict that hurt and poison on someone else whether in a nightmare wielding an axe or haunting the locket Johnny's mother has shown herself as a figure that kept him from talking about her for very strong reasons well in the trace of catharsis regarding his mother means following Johnny through the diary entries he writes upon reaching Virginia which she reviews on October 30th just before writing his introduction to house of leaves you a quick reread of all this and I begin to see him tracing the wrong history Virginia may have meant a great deal to Zapdos imagination doesn't to mine I'm following something else maybe parallel possibly harmonic certainly personal I cannot tell you why I didn't see her until now and it wasn't a scent that brought her back either or the wistful edges of some found object or any other on the road revelation it was my own hand that did this maybe you saw her first caught a glimpse between the lines between the letters like a ghost in the mirror a ghost in the wings my mother is right before me now right before you her shallow face the dark lyric in her eyes and of course our words those far-reaching letters she used to send me when I was young secretly alluding to how she could sit and watch the night seal the dusky after year waiting it out like a cat or observe how words themselves can also write or even in her own beautiful and yes horrifying way instruct me on how to murder one day even demonstrate it she is here now she has always been here may 4th 1998 in Kent's nine years what an ugly coincidence even glance at my watch nine nine pm five plus four plus one plus nine plus nine plus eight plus nine equals forty five four plus five equals nine well either way it doesn't matter and say it with a German accent nine July 1st 1998 the day after May 4th I didn't feel like writing down what happened a week later I felt even less like writing down what happens what did it matter then an hour ago I woke up with no idea where it was I was thinking over and over again about that night May 4th mindlessly tracing and retracing the route I'd taken when I'd gone to see the Institute where my mother had lived what my father had always referred to as the whale much to my surprise it was dead closed in April over five years ago getting inside hadn't been easy but eventually after enough circling edging quietly around the overgrown perimeter I found a way through the surrounding chain-link fence eight feet high ground with concertina wire it took me another hour to locate her room place where she finally died of course its final right closet to the side empty and her bed in the corner the same bed our should have buried me it didn't I sat down and waited for her to find me she never did I waited all night in the very room it happens waiting for her frail form to glide free of beams of glass and moonlight only there was no glass no moonlight either now that I could see readers of this chapter know that Johnny then goes to the site of his old house the last complete home he had ever known at age seven will either find it's gone the neighborhood has been replaced by a lumberyard I stood by the circular saws and clutched my belly and no idea where I was in relation to what had once existed maybe this had been my kitchen here where I was standing was right where I've been sitting age for at my mother's feet my arms flinging up instinctually maybe even joyfully prepared to catch the Sun catch the rain Johnny continues his wandering eventually making his way back to California where he ends up precisely where we find him in the introduction we come full circle meeting the version of Johnny that has gone the full distance to Virginia and back in the name of the Nathanson record all the way up to the edge of destruction it's October 31st 1998 and Johnny writes more in one day than he ever has and is completely the intro when I heard them coming for me a whole chorus cursing my name all those footfalls and then the bang of their fists on my door I'm sure it's the clerk assure it's the police I'm sure there are others a host of others accusing me for what I've done a loaded guns lined my bad what will I do there are no more guns there are no more voices there is no one at my door there's not even a door any more like a child I gather up the finished book in my arms and climb out the window memories soon follow Johnny remembers the true ending to his fight with task man and how kiri was scared off how he got rid of them both without ending a life and came back to the hotel now he has wandered as far west as he could go [Music] setting now on the sands I watch the Sun blur into an aftermath rats finally marrying blues soon night will unfold us all but the lane is still not gone not yet and by it I can dimly see here my own dark hallway or maybe it was just a foyer and maybe not talk at all but in fact brightly lit an afternoon Sun blazing through the lead panes where I had stood at the age of seven gripping my mother's rest trying as hard as I could to keep her from going her highs I recall melting with tenderness and confusion she continued muttering strange and wieldy words my little Isaac my little Brahma lamb mommy's going to be okay don't worry but even though my father had his hands on her shoulders trying as gently as he could to lead her away I couldn't let go so she knelt down in front of me and kissed my cheeks and my forehead and then stroked my face she hadn't tried to strangle me and my father had never made a sound I can see this now I can hear it too perfectly her letter was hopelessly wrong maybe an invention to make it easier for me to dismiss her or maybe something else I have no idea but I do know her fingers never closed around my throat they only tried to wipe the tears from my face I couldn't stop crying I've never cried that much before I'm crying now all these years and now I can't stop I can't see I couldn't see then of course she was lost in a blur my poor father taking her from me forced to grab hold of her especially when they got to the foyer and she started to scream screaming for me not wanting to go at all but crying out my name and there it was the roar the one I've been remembering in the end not a roar but the saddest call of all reaching for me her voice sounding as if it would shatter the world fill it with thunder and darkness which I guess it finally did she was lost swallowed by the whale where authorities thought it unwise to let me see her they weren't wrong she was more than bad often I was far too young in wreck to understand what was happening to her compassion being a long journey I was years away from undertaking science I learned pretty quickly how to resent her looking away my heart with the dangerous language of blame I no longer wanted to see her I had ceased to mind in fact I could who insist on her absence which was hell I finally learned what it meant to be numb really dumb and then one day I don't know when I forgot the whole thing like a bad dream details it was five and a half minutes just when it left me to my future help me they hadn't been a dream that much a little much by now the apprentices in house of leaves are full of strange and seemingly unrelated items both in Zampa nose contributions and Johnny's one of the greatest curiosities lies in appendix to e the three attic whales to institute letters provided by Johnny these are the letters his mother wrote to him from July 28th 1982 all the way to May 3rd 1989 before they begin we have a note from the editors mr. turnt wished to make known that though some names here were not deleted many were changed as such we find that Johnny's mother is referred to as Paula FINA there are over 50 letters found here and reading them proves just as enlightening as Johnny's footnote Tyrese especially when one considers them part of the grand labyrinth El Jefe no loved her son more than anything in the world that is absolutely the most indisputable fact that you can take away from the whales throw letters he was the light of her life in the center of the universe pehle FINA was an extremely poetic soul often using the most flowery and metaphorical language possible to refer to her son or describe things this begins straightaway as early as her second letter from August 20th 1982 if I were with you now I'd hug you and tender you and shape you with sloppy web cases the way mother cat shaped their Cubs in the wild unfortunately since such excursions are strictly prohibited from the whales tau as tongue of ink will have to do felicities my Felix feline boy love mommy Ella FINA was the kind of woman to speak to her son using references far beyond his knowledge or the knowledge of most people On January 20th 1983 she said as old goat sorrow would shape a noble life and cats no backward glances toward the past and there was somewhat be lost in God yet to though act as one newborn she thought johnny was the smartest boy in all the world and only sought to encourage his intelligence April 17th 1983 as she writes never neglect your mind Johnny you were born with substantial faculties I'm sending you several books including a concise Oxford English Dictionary the volumes of poetry may be too advanced for you right now but in time your own curiosity will unlock their secrets it certainly yours mommy and then we have letters like these May 9th 1983 my dear sweet sweet child you are most most welcome your letter arrived last week the first ever and I'm still a fountain who would have thought such a young boy would succeed where Ponce de Leon failed never could I have imagined how your tender words would repair so much of my failing heart I have been walking around on clouds dancing on air blushing like a schoolgirl in dark green new socks do you really love your mother so much I shall guard this letter forever and even if there's never another one it will always restore me I will wear it like a heart it will become my heart more kisses then you can count mami June 26 1984 your sentences cast spells once again you've turned your mother into a silly schoolgirl like Hawthorne's faith I put pink ribbons in my hair and subject everyone here including of course the good director to a complete account of your pernicious accomplishments your letter is not paper and pencil in his glass a perfectly ground glass in which I can endlessly gaze on my fine young boy unleashing arrows like some Apollo scrambling across cliffs like the agile and ever wily Odysseus not surprisingly besting his peers and mad dashes by the shores of that turquoise lake you described Hermes once again patterning on Terra I've carefully hung your blue ribbons on my Bureau where I can see them every morning and every evening and free afternoon to now the fina writes the Johnny about his schoolyard fights and encourages survival against the ignorant marine man Raymond's she learns what Raymond does to Johnny breaking his nose and snapping his tooth and is infuriated I would like nothing more than to tear out the liver of your purported protector and feed it to him with a hiss he could Semper five at meal all the way to Hades but since he is shielded from my wrath by my own confusions I shall invoke Hegarty and her Acheron deaths and by scale of Dragon I of Newt boiled in the blood of murdering ministers in Clytemnestra skal asked a great curse which shall fly directly on a dark wind and take up immediate residence in his body daily chewing on his flesh nightly dying on his bones until many months from now moments before the final spark of self-awareness expires he will have witnessed the total dismemberment and consumption of every lemon organ so written so done this curse is cast through an ilium and now without a doubt you see your mother is mad s'appelle Athena's credit her curse came true as we learn from Johnny and a footnote diary that just after escaping Raymond's the man came down with severe cancer and was dead within two years things weren't always happy or powerful on a protective way in pelopidas letters though there are periods Johnny's reminded why his mother is so far away March 7th 1985 I am still alive unfortunately the dead of winter was not kind to your mother as she reverted to the state that brought her here in the first place the very same state that your glimmering father wrestled with so nobly everyone here especially the honest director was kind and attentive but their effort still could not break me from my wild and often I'm afraid to admit hallucinatory condition sad but true sometimes your mother hears things known some Qualis around known some Qualis Aram known some call is Aram have we heard that before does it ring a bell if it does you've got a memory pail Athena would be proud of page 69 footnote 77 well Nathanson escapes from the hallway courtesy of Daisy who came looking for him because she had a nightmare Johnny wakes up from a dream bout thumper goes to work and experiences an attack in the ink room is scream a how a roar alls warping or splintering there's a terrible banging the heirs rank with stench the more I try to hold on the less I can focus words filling my head known some call is heir am incoherent yes without meaning I'm afraid not and now in the footnote Johnny realizes the meaning known some call is hair ham which is to say I am not what I used to be in Latin it's written like this known some Qualis ere am I am not what I used to be it came from a letter his mother wrote him pehle FINA was not just Theseus in Johnny's nightmare trying to murder him when he was a Minotaur she was and always has been his Minotaur page 502 Johnny's review of the Virginia Diaries I cannot tell you why I didn't see her until now it was my own hand that did this maybe you saw her first caught a glimpse between the lines between the letters like it goes in the mirror a ghost in the wings my mother is right before me now right before you she is here now she has always been here go all the way back to Johnny's first attack in the tattoo shop ages 27 to 28 I can no longer remember what I'd meant to remember maybe it had just brushed past me like someone isn't buying a darkroom the face lost in shadow thoughts lost in another conversation there's something in her movement or perfume it's disturbingly familiar she hasn't left she's still there embracing shadows is that it had I've been thinking of a woman I don't know I hope it doesn't matter I have a terrifying feeling it does every attack Johnny has experienced because of his Minotaur has been due to this memory but briefest moments can set him off as her ghost haunts him right down to the smallest blink and you'll miss it details in the whales toe letter from March 19th 1980 a pillow FINA confesses this memory of her attempted murder writing I kissed your cheeks and your head and after a while put my hands around your throat I'll read your face got then even as your timing oh so delicate hand stayed clamped around my wrists your eyes became glassy and wandered away your grip loosened and you wet yourself you did more than what yourself I'll never know how close you came to that fabled edge because your father suddenly arrived and roared and intervention a battering blast of complete nonsense but it were just the same and full of love too you were a mess but aside from a few evil coughs and dirty little pants and some half moon cuts on the back of your neck you recover quickly enough I did not I had long ridiculous purple nails back then the first thing they did when I got here was tie me down and cut them off Jonnie second minute or encounter at the shop begins immediately following his trip to the ink room and this precise line I start filling caps with purple concentrating on its texture with strange hue imagining how I can actually observe the rapid pulse of the bandwidth the experience is a hallucination of being cut by a slash of light and describes beads of sweat slipping off my forehead licking off my eyelids streaming down the back of my neck cold as hands hands of the dead there's an awful taste again sharp as rust wrapping around my tongue worse I'm no longer alone this time it's human maybe not extremely long fingers the rest is in pieces a scream a howl a roar you're in soaking into my pants fecal matter running down the back of my legs words filling my head known some call is Arab the shape of a shape of a shape of a face disassembling right before my eyes I should be dead why am I still here later a patron points out the long bloody scratch on the back of my neck I'm unable to respond now though I realize what I should have said knowing some call is Arab which is to say I am NOT what I used to be purple ink purple nails long bloody scratch on the back of his neck Halfmoon cuts on the back of his neck cold hands of the dead hands wrapped around his neck their hands of his dead mother a scream a howl a roar his father screaming coming to the rescue ruined pants and strangled throat should have been dead but it wasn't just the sight of that purple ink was enough to send Johnny down the spiral into the most revealing minute or attack we could possibly get Pell Athena is Johnny's Minotaur she always has been but is that the end of echos work in the tale of course not echo has two origin stories after all and the neighbored sin record is the echo chamber affecting Johnny's experiences but let's use the clues we have from Johnny sign to determine something who is the Minotaur in will Naveed since labyrinth it's steely all haunting his nightmares haunting his memory coming to him in a moment that lets him know he must go back to the house and face the labyrinth alone north wall west wall delial pelo FINA the Minotaur you will remember was not a horrible monster filled with violence in the eyes of Zampa know he was a pitiful creature a shameful attachment to King Minos that later became his greatest source of guilt and regret in following the Minotaur's death King Minos carry the burden of forsaking the poor suffering child forever but do we see any of this reflected in the case of Gianni and Pella FINA more than you know unless you read all of the whales through letters of course it's easy enough to see from some of the letters that Johnny received that while his mother did absolutely love him she was rather heavy-handed with examples of her love bordering on the kind of language that feels inappropriate for a mother-son relationship Johnny her 12 year old boy should not have been told he made her feel like a silly schoolgirl we also come to see that Paula FINA gets very depressed when she doesn't hear from Johnny she becomes dependent on correspondence from him treating Johnny's letters like a lifeline and pressing her needs for a visit and when she has a bad winter as she warned him the results are disastrous illustrating just how bad her condition can get not only is it present in the writing it's present in the way Pellow fina recounts the moments she lost touch with reality she hallucinates shares moments of schizophrenic beliefs and obsessive behavior even losses major gaps of time the most horrific content the letters have to offer however is in a series of messages she writes in the belief that director is reading and destroying her correspondence as part of a conspiracy April 25th 1987 perhaps you will have time soon to return to your mother whom by abandoning you have left unprotected from the deviltry committed to many times by too many miscreants to faceless - remember there is no escape for me now I know the new director knows I know this in turn he knows I know he knows these pages are my only flight at least they escape my ear steepen my secrets crack and crumble not even my only family my only boy comes to see me when they murder me how will you feel [Music] April 27th 1987 pay attention the next letter I will encode as follows use the first letter of each word to build subsequent words and phrases you're exquisite intuition will help you sort out the spaces I sent this via a night nurse that where secret will be safe May 8th 1987 a very long letter into Dipel Athena's need to use the code she mentioned which reveals that she is being constantly assaulted in her room at night the attendants to it others do it not every day not every week maybe not even every month but they do it someone I don't know always comes when it's dark late I've learned not to scream screaming gave me hope and unanswered hope is shattered hope so I submit and I draft I'm in Hell giving into heaven where I sometimes think of your beautiful father with his dreamy wings and only then do I allow myself to cry you must save me Johnny in the name of your father I must escape this place or I will die when Johnny received the coded message he was fifteen years old it was followed by several letters demonstrating symptoms of Pilipinas condition on November 1st one year later a letter arrives that's completely coherent and palutena says she's come out of a long period of psychosis there is no new director it's the old director and she hallucinate idati also hallucinate abusing five reams of paper for letters to Johnny and she's been informed he visited several times but she was completely unresponsive put yourself in Johnny's shoes reading all of this knowing your mother's condition being so far away being only 15 going on 16 a foster kid who barely survives himself drifting place-to-place getting coded messages of the most horrible awful kind followed by a storm of schizophrenic letters and then being told in complete lucidity I'm sorry son it was all a bit of psychosis no matter what version of reality palutena related is true there is nothing good about this situation and being relied on as the only soul who can save his mother from suffering and possible assault is psychologically devastating for any sixteen-year-old boy Johnny does not know what's real is this happening to his mother or is this all a horrible hallucination that can be bought into by its writer alone because that's still who his mother is either way there's nothing Johnny can do and whether the assaults are hallucinating or real his mother is still suffering still telling him about it still putting the weight of her life in all reason for living and being rescued on his shoulders and when a letter arrives explaining she's institutionalized because she tried to murder him when he was seven in age he can barely remember anything from what else can he do his father took her away for his own safety the hosts were his dad's words Jonnie truant lives an entire life of loss and abuse his father was dead his mother was a permanently hospital I schizophrenic who left him with permanent physical scars and told him she tried to murder him and all she could do now was put the weight of the world on his shoulders when the world had already taken so much away from him Johnny hadn't been in a real home since he was 10 and his mother was torn away from him at 7 he led himself believed in the confession letter about trying to kill him he took it to heart and let it harden him the first story he ever used to protect himself as he wrote in his last diary to us her letter was hopelessly wrong maybe an invention to make it easier for me to dismiss her she wasn't more than bad off and I was far too young in wreck to understand what was happening to her compassion being a long journey I was years away from undertaking besides I learned pretty quickly how to resent her looking away my hurt with the dangerous language of blame I forgot the whole thing like a bad dream the details of those five and a half minutes just went and left me to my future unable to pierce the truth and hallucinations in his mother's memory Johnny let the stress pain and resentment of her constant presence influence the dark paths of belief he was told the story of why his mother ended up in the whale and he accepted as truth even if it might not have been he let the lie she believed become his belief too embracing that lie in hardening his heart against her it was far easier to believe his mother was that sick in all of her confessions those horrible confessions of what was being done to his mother all her coded messages were just part of her illness it was easier to believe she's sick that's all then to consider any other possibility and to find a way to resent her because if he loved her and any of it was true it would have destroyed Johnny Bella Finas last few letters came in 1989 expressing a relapse in her condition that johnny was warned about by the director in January of that year she had come under the delusion she was going to be released from the Institute johnny was in her mind going to come pick her up she requested a suitcase because she had none in the end she even forgot her husband had died as saying Donnie will pick me up soon very soon but you my dear child you should stay awhile the next letter Johnny received came from the director we regret to inform you that on May 4th 1989 at approximately 8:45 p.m. your mother Paula FINA Heatherly Avril dine in her room at the three Anna Quayle Stoke Institute after a detailed examination both our resident dr. Thomas Yana vinovich MD as well as the County Coroner confirmed the cause of death was the result of self-inflicted asphyxiation achieved with bed linen hung from a closet hook miss Olli Avril was 59 Johnny's mother had taken her own life by hanging leaving him an orphan at the age of 17 in all he had known of her since he was 11 was the poor schizophrenic woman who needed him and put her life and happiness in his hands in the end he could not save her he could only visit and keep her in letters just as well Davidson had done by taking a picture of delial Johnny's pain is an echo of will Nabataeans own Minotaur and taxon Davidson came in his sleep attacks on Johnny came in his sleep and when he was awake but these two main characters are echoing off each other caught in their own labyrinths feeling just like King Minos upon witnessing what their callousness had done and before we were given major evidence regarding his mother John he tried to tell us exactly what was going on with him he did it the only way he knew how without completely gutting himself you [Music] in Chapter 11 on page 2 61 through footnote 249 Johny decides the time has come to tell us a story he's hinted at before the story of his Pekinese he reports having a moment in the store one day when he left at a biker talking about the permanence of ink everyone was shocked too shocked to speak if thumper took him outside to talk she said she didn't know what Johnny had been getting into but he was really messing him up and she touched my arm and I immediately wanted to tell her everything right then and there I needed to tell her everything he swallowed his words I came here instead which I guess finally brings me to the story I've been meaning to tell all along one that still haunts me today about the wounded and where I still fear they finally end up a story of my Pekinese it was December later that month Zampano would finish writing the Nathanson record one month after this event Johnny would find the Navis and record loot and Johnny ended up at the bar around 11 p.m. they scanned the crowd doing what they were used to when their eyes set on a woman who stood out petite figure platinum hair way too much I'm liner nails as long as kitchen tires and lip stuff with God knows how many layers of tissues her figure was also petite only up to the major selling point as plastic and falsified as her lips a true Hollywood staple granted by surgery Johnny approached and they end up talking about essentially nothing still when the club started to close they walked out together she came with a girlfriend who she waved goodbye to outside ignoring me though after the wave suddenly returning to me asking me to escort her to her truck he learned her name was Johnny Joh NN i he then as the light changed and we crossed the east side of Vine we found on the corner of blackbuck eyed Pekinese without tags it was dirty scared and obviously without owner it's not pouring out of its pug nose every part of it trembling as a coward on that grimy sidewalk motionless finally after how many hours how many days where to go all directions leading to the same place anyway someone end our Johnny reports that the girl Johnny coud oh my poor baby and the notes of her speech sounded wrong how where Johnny picked up the dog cradling its small head in the crook of my arm wiping some of the snot off on the sleeve of my punt last quarter I coat the signing as I did this making a mess of myself to take it home with me I wasn't going to let this animal die not after it had snotted on my coat inside in my arms but Johnny wanted the poor thing she has what kind of place he had to which he replied a studio she insisted that wasn't right for the dog she had a home in the valley a yard the kind of place dogs are meant to have a happy pet land she called it I handed Johnny the poor Pekinese and together we placed it in the truck Johnny gave how her Johnny left back home he remembers how odd it was that he didn't invite her inside but I hadn't tucked the invitation on her behalf he said something seemed wrong very wrong maybe it was the vacancy I had begun to taste brought on by November maybe it was her something about her frightened me and nodded fingers that blank stare permanently fixed maybe it was that Pekinese pop hungry and abandoned suddenly rescued suddenly with hope projection of myself my own place in the way of stratum maybe I was thinking only about the Pekinese at safety its future the Pekinese and me a contract of concern I wrote the top of it Sears stroked its back and then I climbed out of the truck and said goodbye as Johnny pulled away she smiled again that weird all wrong smile for a moment I watched her taillights trail down the street still feeling uncertain but a little relieved until as I turned to go inside I hear a thump but one I remember even now so clearly an eerie and awful sound I looked down the street her truck was gone but behind it in its wake something dark rolled into the light of a street lamp something Johnny had thrown out her window as she passed the parked cars I jogged down the block feeling more than a little uneasy till as I approached that clump of something on the side of the road I discovered much to my dismay all my uneasiness confirmed to this day I don't know why she did it my abandoned Pekinese found on vine bug-eyed what's not pouring out of its pug nose refound not too far from my front door that very same night lying next to a car with half its head caved in she must have thrown it with tremendous force too in truth and almost unimaginable amount of force I tried to picture those claw-like hands grabbing this poor creature by the neck and hurling it out her window and she even looked at what she held and she even glanced back me staring down at that lifeless dog not a speck of blood mind you just a shadow looking a lot like some kind of a charcoal drawing featureless and still floating in a pool of yellow lamplight I couldn't even say anything not a cry a shout or word I couldn't feel anything either shock alone possessing me depriving me of any emotional meeting finally leaving me in a manta bait over what to do with the body bury it take it to the pound throw the thing in a garbage can I couldn't decide anything so I just crouched there my knees burning finally filling with enough of that distant pain that tells all of us especially in our sleep that the time has come to move but I wanted to give this dog a name first and lists get through my mind endless lists which in the end right now there was no name I was too late so I just stood up and left my Pekinese friend was gone the name for the dog breed Pekinese is spelled p EK ing ESA as Johnny writes it it is spelled p EK i an e se from nine letters down to eight letters in the wells two letters johnny chose the names he wanted to use to protect his identity for his mother he wrote pehle FINA PE l AF i an a eight letters johnny describes his mother's hair as follows like sunlight extremely fine and whist with silver this is what the hair of a Pekinese looks like during that encounter with the Pekinese yet surrendered care for the poor suffering dog to the utter Johnny it's his name but with just two letters making a difference at the end and like will Nathanson after the poor creature he had come across died he felt compelled to name them the story of Johnny's Pekinese is the story he has needed to tell since he was 17 his mother was the Pekinese and he has always felt responsible for her death which is why Johnny killed the dog and just like with his mother's body there wasn't a single speck of blood johnny has been in Zampa newest interpretation of the myth of the labyrinth this entire time his mother is his Minotaur deformed sick but still a beautiful and kindly artistic soul blameless in her condition hidden away from the world in a prison he is King Minos ashamed cold frightened but still feeling loved towards the family member he left in a prison and when the Minotaur is slaughtered all King Minos can do is weep and carry the guilt for the rest of his life the Minotaur was troubled burdensome ugly but he loved his son and Johnny loved his mother he didn't want anything to turn out like this he didn't want to be the source of all of her sorrow he didn't want to hate her but he knew on some level he had done all of that he chose to hate her he abandoned her he turned her away and it ate away at him to a monstrous degree despite her sickness despite the false memory of what she had done she was his mother and she loved him and he abandoned her to die on many levels including this one Johnny true and is an echo of will David sin and his delial has been haunting him this whole time but it matches too well doesn't it everything about this looking at that Pekinese story that confession it all seems far too fitting doesn't it the girl named Johnny killing the poor creature a major reflection of our Johnny's guilt and will naked since expressing desire to name the poor thing he let die that doesn't seem like an echo seems like a fabrication in fact if you think about it the idea of a manuscript legs up and I was finding Johnny true and resonating with him so perfectly like this all the way along uncovering his scars making him see the light echoing at all these different points from the broken water heater to now it's also miraculous it feels like the kind of fairy tale or myth that Pelle Athena herself would enjoy and maybe there's a really good reason for that because as much truth as Johnny true and has told us you can't deny that his Pekinese story is far too fitting and coincidental his constant echo with the Nabataean record is far too coincidental it's perfect it works too well it works too well all the time even during will Knudsen and Karen's resolution in the house at the end of the story we see things pickup for Johnny too and he gets better September 2nd 1998 Seattle staying with an old friend a pediatrician my appearance frightened both him and his wife and she's a doctor too I'm under way too many unexplained tremors and tics he insists I stay with him for a couple of weeks I decline I don't think he has any idea what he'd be in for September 7th the three of us spent the weekend at the doe Bay Village Resort on Orcas Island the mineral baths there seemed to help encircle by douglas-fir and frequently visited by strange drifters kayaking in from small boats moored in the bay we sat there for a long time just inhaling hot sulphur as it mingled with evening air eventually my friend's wife asked me about my journey and I answered her with stories about my mother when I remembered in the Institute September 20th I am much improved my friends have been taking care of me full-time I exercise twice a day they've got me on some pretty serious health food at first it was hard to choke down but now my stomach's in great shape there were thoughts of a tumor or even an ulcer once a day I attend a counseling session at their hospital I'm really opening up doc has also put me on a recently discovered drug one bright yellow tablet in the morning one bright yellow tablet in the evening it's so bright it almost seems to shine the medication seems to have eliminated those deep troughs and manic peaks I frequently had to endure also allows me to sleep September 23rd doc and his wife took me out to Deception Pass where we look down into the gorge we all watched a bald eagle glide beneath the bridge for some reason no one said a word September 27th I'm healthy and strong I can run two miles in under 12 minutes I can sleep nine hours straight I've forgotten my mother I'm back on track and yet even though I'm now on my way to LA to start a new life the guns in my trunk along since gone replaced with a year's supply of that miraculous Salish I'm when I said goodbye to my friends this morning felt awful and soaked in sorrow much more than I expected are you fucking kidding me did you really think that any of that was true September 2nd through September 28th I just made all that up right out of thin air wrote it in two hours I don't have any friends where doctors Lowell and two friends that are doctors you might have guessed that at least the lack of expletive should've clued you in a sure sign that something was amiss and if you bought that yellow tablet of shine stuff well thank your fucking worse off than I am so here's the sadder side of all this I wasn't trying to trick you and that's the truth we weren't trying to trick you even when it looks like a half-hearted attempt because that's Johnny truing constantly back and forth trying to trick you I'll show you how capable he is of lying even when it's ridiculous and then he'll go on telling you all sorts of things he's always trying to trick you into believing something even when he knows it's fake and it's as fake as it sounds he's a practiced liar he scripted scripted his practice of doing this isn't even his own either it's found throughout the entire novel you don't know if it's on a line you don't know if it's well David's sitting in his own documentary is lying because it could just be a great movie did you don't know whether Johnny is lying even if you present something to you that's so fake and stupid it's infuriating to sit through he's the kind of guy to set up an entire load of videos write down his lines and read them off camera the whole time trying to make you believe something even when it's total garbage even when he knows it looks ridiculous sounds ridiculous and E ridiculous even when you know as you can you can tell he's reading his lines and didn't memorize them but press on and try not try to sell it to you I'll tell you straight to your face he's doing it and you'll go right by the moments he tells you because you don't care to think about what you're being shown in the grand scheme of things altered version it's a twisted lumic away everything what's in here might just be a joke whole thing you're seeing now it's just again it's not just the tapes all sorts of impossible stuff in there sometimes though you're just I think people up for what's to come teasing I can't tell whether Xin Paolo was a performer or opposing alright more than I record now had to write it all down before I felt like they could say it out loud and recorded this video experience is unauthorized unofficial and made without permission or knowledge of the parties involved in the publication and writing of house of leaders and it is in no way shape form or intention any sort of substitute affiliated work direct adaptation reproduction or replacement for house of leaves this is at the very best one readers own lengthy footnote separate from the novel in all its official content this year a secret was unveiled in the form of a YouTube channel called Pelican black uploads of the long room and video diaries of a man who appears to be Johnny truant recorded at intervals during his journey through the neighborhood sin record now you have to be an actual actor who curses their lines and practices being natural a lot to sell it on camera there's a great way you can lie to someone make them believe everything you told them without turning on a camera microphone or even being there in person you don't need your voice you don't need your face you don't even need a room or a dollhouse prop you just write it it really is that simple isn't it it is that simple and here's the thing about Johnny and Zampa no using writing to tell you all of their lies by virtue of it being writing and leaning so much into reference material you can lie about passages that do come from legitimate sources while we were working on the Pelican black videos I actually checked for the passage in Chapter four in the book itself trying to find it according to Zapdos footnote didn't do you remember that moment oh yeah yeah yeah we couldn't find it being in time it does not exist I use the index I use the chapter guide all of it I screamed to this guy in the other room you will believe it he did it again and then we both looked it wasn't there it's layer upon layer of meta and deceit that's it insanely layered if the entire novel is it constantly plans with the idea of fact or fiction who is running what where it comes from if it's even true it's it's a labyrinth it's just a labyrinth of lies and deceit and Bausch not the way through and it's all purposeful we hacked a loan of an audience never create our concern how bogus or true something is it can be found every single step of the way look how critical people are in the novel of The Naked sin record how many doubters it has how many people screaming at will move it's in that he made a movie it's a not a documentary look how critical chuny is of Zampa i was writing at referencing the event how critical we need to be of Johnny himself oh and if you thought all this was me being natural here I'm reading off a script right now - okay if this feels like slamming down the brakes on the car at 40 miles per hour or being slapped in the face then you are not alone that's exactly what it was like to read the September 1998 diary entries way back at the beginning of the journey our narrator Johnny truant shows us he is a practice storyteller he is so good he brags about it shoves it in our faces even when it's absolute garbage and then we keep on reading everything he tells us how much of this did you take at face value the Davidson record Zampa know Johnny's history the echos how much of this did you blindly buy into without questioning it because I'll tell you this much I bought it all the first time after everything I'd been through with Johnny while reading house of leaves on my first go years back I had forgotten how much of a practice liar he was the more he told me about his past the more I believed him and just wanted his life to get better Johnny truants started out as this intrusive force constantly telling random stories and odd anecdotes that went nowhere and meant nothing in this otherwise great piece about this awesome thing that Zampano made but the more time I spend with him the more I liked him the more I cared about him especially when I saw it was happening to him and when he stopped telling bullshit stories when he started opening up and telling the truth I really began to care for him I really began to like him thanks got really bad for him and all I did all the time was just feel for him his Minotaur attacks the empty one-night stands the increasing anxiety nightmares insomnia self-isolation his stories about Raymond Alaska all that abuse he endured as a child his father's death his mother suffering the fact that he was nearly killed by his own schizophrenic mother and she was dead now too so much happened between being shown our narrators capacity to put stupid fabricated garbage in front of us where where's fake and not part of reality then I had forgotten they did it I cared about the legitimate experience Johnny was giving us far too much to remember his focus on the neighborhood sin record made things better especially when we saw the effects that it was on him and how much it opened him up made him real I believed in him I was feeling everything with him and when Johnny had completely made me a believer swallowing every lie hearing that he was finally starting to feel better to have real friends getting clean and healthy it made my heart soar and maybe took my heart stomped on and call me an idiot for believing him bringing me back to the coldest reality we have no idea how much of Johnny's stories are true just like all the viewers of will naked since documentary in the universe of the Navis and record September 1998 with his two doctor friends was a lie the Pitt boxing story was a lie the Japanese martial arts cult that gave him the scars and his arms was a lie the Pekinese story was a lie the broken water heater in the nave 'it's and record was a lie showing how easy it is for Johnny to insert his own ideas into Zampa nose work the narrator you've been trusting to tell someone else's story their grand life's work is fully capable of inserting his own ridiculous infuriating unrelated bullshit into the genuine authors project in constantly intruding on the core focus do you see how easy it is for him to do that even when it looks bogus even when he knows you're aware of how bogus it is even when the initial premise he sets up is entirely ludicrous Johnny Truman has been appropriating Zampa nose work this entire time intruding all over the place writing his own site along story disrespecting the authorship of Zampano even when he put his name up front and you've all just gone along with it go back to chapter nine right now page 107 and see what occupies most of that page and the next page and a half Johnny truant dominates the beginning of an extremely important chapter in Zampa nose Grande work with a footnote diary about a girl he meets named Tatiana show of hands who out there thought this was one of the most gratuitous overly explicit absurd hookup scenarios that could just happen on the fly how many of you felt that it was too crazy too random and made no sense being here even by Johnny diary standards now how many of you just let that slide and win a long reading trying to ignore what you just read how many of you completely missed how insanely disrespectful and inappropriate that is that bunting at Izapa knows manuscripts and look how often this has happened look at how many times Johnny truant has pulled the reader aside distracting them from Zapdos work the real story the art piece to show off his absurd self celebrating side activity he's supposed to be piecing together this poor dead man's work but all the time he's just intruding on it showing off how much sex he has all the drugs he does all the times he gets drunk his life story all of his scars he made the Navis and record about himself and it should absolutely clash with your ideas of what's going on in who Johnny is just as much as you felt weirded out by his behavior mixed with how much of a beautiful poet and good-hearted guy he is smarter than any impression he gives with all of his crazy stories and activity his approach to the Nathanson record who would never fly in the real world and someone has well-read intelligent experienced and sensitive as johnny truant knows that do you really think he has spent a lifetime reading and learning professional intelligent behavior in production by real artists and he's just forgotten all of that when it comes to covering poor death Zappa knows magnum opus the man's life's work did you have moments of reading a Johnny footnote diary and realizing this really does not belong here like the party scenes and things like that there's some like real personal stuff that like we talked about like with other people or like other people's lives being put into this book like that stuff doesn't belong a book about you trying to figure out what's going on with this manuscript that you found now that that belongs in it it's just Johnny forcing himself you to something that has already been created just to get in on it yeah and it makes you really wonder when you look at the fact that the publisher took it wholesale and Johnny when he exposes how much of himself he actually is through his mother there is writing through his genuine past that you can correlate through Pilipinas letters yeah you wonder if this is really who you are and I can see that because you can't fake writing this well off the cuff then who are you to do all this awful shit with somebody's great work see that reminds me of something that I I noted in the novel that moment where Johnny do you remember the moment Johnny truant looks at that equation and says actually the proper equation would be talking about who the hell is Johnny true to know this fucking away that shit I went to school for this everything about the premise that he delivers makes him such a Rando yeah mix Zampa no such a random guy it's it's it's highly too coincidental it doesn't work you can't believe anything he props up of I'm just a random guy who loves drugs alcohols like getting laid and I work in LA at a tattoo shop but also I am a bit fucking smart I've gone on trips to Europe for things that I've written and like I do all of this other stuff he's like six people forced into one person precisely Johnny's not real I'm not Johnny look at his arms do you see scars and also we're very well aware that dad Johnny himself says in the novel he has no tattoos I don't believe that personal elemina I never I work with tattoos as a person that removes them ironically enough I've never met a apprentice or a tattoo artist that hasn't had tattoos most apprentice tattoo themselves to him I remove a lot of crappy apprentice tattoos but you don't find that you don't have tattoo artists that don't have tattoos I mean even God it's like this is how much reach ready you need for a house of leaves because I'm just thinking about it now and we even have this factor of Johnny says himself he works on sketches well he's not the tattoo shop right that's the entire reason we incorporated this element into it here almost charcoal sketches because Johnny says he does that he works at the shop making needle points he could work on himself if he wanted to but he doesn't he claims he's got no tattoos you give anyone a tattoo gun and free range to do something with it they're gonna put something on them even if it's a line like I challenge anyone not to do that I wouldn't be able to mmm I don't even have space for it anymore have you tattoo yourself yeah actually yeah BAM X red striker text how appropriate no you have the entire way through house of leaves every echo is so powerful and echoes are so prevalent that could very well all be lies the entire story is wrapped up in a liar's premise and all his anecdotes and when we learn about who Johnny really is and his backstory and used all the clues about his genuine intelligence and his poetic writing to confirm it we just accept that this is a natural behavior and the first instinct of someone who's supposed to be smarter than that and a student of the Arts no no no no a blue Prize winner someone who is good enough to write an essay to land him in Europe all expenses paid none of it adds up but here's the beauty of it if you didn't question any of it until this moment when Johnny slaps you in the face and shows he's angry about it before trying to cover up his intention it means he was absolutely successful in his goal but that's both what he does and doesn't want to do he's not trying to trick you this has never been about Zampa no it's never been about you it's been about Johnny and his extreme need to tell the Pekinese story without changing the details and switching out names but he just can't do it don't you remember this is not for you look at the font that message is in it's Johnny so what does it all actually mean then what kind of major problem does this pose for us not just with Johnny's storytelling but House of Leaves overall we entire authorship of House of Leaves is now in question from the neighbors and records at Johnny turns entire purpose in being here and we have barely an I to mean barely scratched the surface of the entire mountain of evidence that should compel us to ask ourselves who actually wrote this book the good news though the ultimate legitimate author mark Z Danielewski did not leave us out to dry when it comes to picking up all these clues that can solve the mystery are you ready to put playing pretend to side now and gather the remaining puzzle pieces I am the tale itself is told now outside the house and free from the maze we can go forward and see the secrets in each Appendix and outside the novel putting the matter of ash-tree Lane in its final cut and releasing it at last oh really Road House of Leaves who is Zampa know who is Johnny Truitt and what finally does palutena truly have to do with all of this follow me now just once more into the labyrinth and together we'll find our way for good in this house of leaves [Music]

Info

Channel: Night Mind

Views: 48,885

Rating: 4.740458 out of 5

Keywords: house of leaves, night mind, house of leaves explored, mark z danielewski, nick nocturne, pelican black, johnny truant

Id: hqlgmL76vG0

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 97min 37sec (5857 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019

Reddit Comments

Without going into unnecessary detail, I believe that the majority of people who were displeased with the first of his videos on the novel will find this one entirely (edit: or perhaps begrudgingly) satisfying.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/essidus 📅︎︎ Mar 21 2019 🗫︎ replies