Well, since I have nothing better to do, I figured I would post some more of house of leaves by mark danielewski up...If anyone's interested.
...What hit me first was the the smell. It wasn't a bad smell, just incredibly strong. And it wasn't one thing either. It was extremely layered, a patina upon progressive patina of odor, the actual source of which had long since evaporated. Back then, it had overwhelmed me, so much of it, cloying, bitter, rotten, even mean. These days, I can no longer remember the smell only my reaction to it. Still if I had to give it a name, I think I would call it the scent of human history- a composite of sweat, urine, ****, blood, flesh, and semen, as well as joy, sorrow, jealousy, rage, vengence, fear, love, hope, and a whole lot more. All of which probably sounds pretty ridiculous, espescially since the abilities of my nose are not really relevent here. What's important though, is that the smell was complex for a reason.
All the windows were nailed shut and sealed with caulking. The front entrance and courtyard doors all storm proofed. Even the vents were covered with duct tape. That said, this particular effort to eliminate any ventilation in the tiny apartment did not culminate with bars on the windows or multiple locks on the doors. Zampano was not afraid of the outside world. As I've already pointed out, he walked around his courtyard and supposedly was even fearless enough to brave the LA public transportation system for an occasional trip to the beach (an adventure even I'm afraid to make). My best guess now is that he sealed his apartment in an effort to retainddddddd the various emanations of his things and himself.
Where his things are concerned, they ran the spectrum: tattered furniture, unused candles, ancient shoes (these in particular looking sad and wounded), ceramic bowls as well as glass jars and small wood boxes full of rivets, rubber bands, sea shells, matches, peanut shells, a thousand different kinds of elaboratly shaped and colored buttons. One ancient beer stein held nothing more than discarded perfume bottles. As I discovered, the refridgerator wasn't empty, but there wasn't any food in it either. Zampano had crammed it full of strange, pale books.
Of course, all of that's gone now. Long gone. The smell too. I'm left with only a few scattered mental snapshots: A battered Zippo lighter with patent pending printed on the bottom; the twining metal ridge (I think he might be talking about the refridgerator here),looking a little like some tiny spiral staircase, winding down into the bulbless interior of a light socket; and for some odd reason-what I remember most of all-a very old tube of chapstick, with an amber like resin, hard and cracked. Which still isn't entirely accurate; though don't be misled into thinking I'm not trying to be accurate. There were, I admit, other things I recall about this place, they just don't seem relevent now. To my eye, it was all just junk, time having performed no economic alchemy there, which hardly matterd as lude hadn't called me over to root around in these particular and-to use on of those big words I would eventually learn in the following months-deracinated (to displace from one's native or accustomed environment) details of Zampano's life.
Sure enough, just as my friend had described it, on the floor, in fact practically dead center, were the four marks, all of them longer than a hand, jagged bits of wood clawed up by something neither on of us cared to imagine. But that's not what Lude wanted me to see either. He was pointing at something else which hardly impressed me when I first glanced at it's implacible shape.
Truth be told, I was still having a hard time taking my eyes off the scarred floor. I even reached out to touch the portruding splinters.
What did I know then? What do I know now? At least some of the horror I took away at four in the morning you have before you, waiting for you a little like it waited for me that night, only without these few covering pages.
As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. Endless snarls of words, sometimes twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all, freaquently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I'd come across later- on old napkins, on the tattered edges of an envelope, once even on the back of an old postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed, legible, illegible; inpenetrable, lucid, torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded that so many times that the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what-sense? truth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy, or nothing of the kind? and in the end, achieving, designating, describing, recreating-find your own words; I have no more; or plenty more, but why? and to tell-what?
Lude didn't need to have the answer, but somehow I knew that he would. Maybe that's why we were friends. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he did need the answer, he just knew he wasn't the one who could find it. Maybe that's the real reason we were friends. But that's probably wrong too.
One things for sure, even without touching it, both of us slowly began to feel it's heaviness, sensed something horrifying in it's proportions, it's silence, it's stillness, even if it did seem to be shoved almost carelessly to the side of the room. I think now if someone had said to be careful, we would have. I know a moment came when I felt certain its resolute blackness was capable of anything, maybe even of slashing out, tearing up the floor, murding Zampano, murdering us, maybe even murdering you. And then the moment passed. Wonder and the way the unimaginable is sometimes suggested by the inanimate suddenly faded. The thing became only a thing.
So I took it home.
Back then, well, it's way back then by now-you could have found me downing shots of whiskey at La Poubelle, annihalating my inner ear at Bar Deluxe, or dining at Jones with some busty redhead I'd met at thehouse of blues, our conversation traversing wildly in clubs we knew well, to clubs we'd like to know better. I sure as **** wasn't bothered by some old man Z's words. All those signs I just now finished telling you about quickly vanished in the light of subsequent days or had never been there to begin with, existing only in retrospect.
At first, only curiosity drove me from one phrase to the next. Often, a few days would pass before I'd pick up another mauled scrap, maybe even a week, but still I returned, for ten minutes, maybe twenty minutes grazing over the scenes, the names, small connections starting to form, minor patterns evolving in those spare slivers of time.
There's still about five pages left in the introduction (BTW, if my little notes are bothering you, just sat so and I won't put them in next time). :)
Edit: Oh, I forgot to add this before; I mentioned earlier that this book had a sort of "soundtrack". It's by the artist pictured in my signature; Poe. You can hear examples of the songs here:
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004Y6J1/qid=1093210375/sr_1_1/002-2735030-0458406?v=glance&s=music
(or since I can't get that to change into a link, go to amazon.com, search under "Poe" or "Haunted" in popular music, and it should come up. FYI, the CD cover has her face on it being covered by...I think about four hands. Yeah, I'm really bored ^_^)
