[patroclux-deactivated20260128]

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viα patroclux: Narcissus and Echo Echo was a nymph who loved a youth named Narcissus. She had been cursed by Hera to only be able to repeat the last words said by others. Echo tried to approach Narcissus but she was rejected. She was left heartbroken and her life wasted away until nothing was left expect an echo sound. As punishment for his pride, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection and spent his days in longing until he died. After his death, Narcissus was transformed into a flower.

[writingquotes-deactivated201509]

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Mark Twain (via writingquotes)

[the-alchemist-guild]

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

Terry Pratchett, Jingo (via the-alchemist-guild)

[pantheonofabsence]

The String Quartet No. 16 in F major, op. 135, by Ludwig van Beethoven  was the last substantial work he finished.

The work is on a smaller scale than his other late quartets. For the third movement, Beethoven used variation techniques; he also did this in the second movement of his Quartet op. 127. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement Beethoven wrote in the manuscript "Muß es sein?" (Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the movement, "Es muß sein!" (It must be!).

[pantheonofabsence]

Summer broke on the backs of children, even though swings performed miracles and breezes sang psalms. For that summer, from the outskirts of some far off even whimsical place came the low resolute moo of the dragon. A child, of course, could not recognize that fabled moo or the serpentine tail close to her feet, wound up among the thistle and milkweed like a hose. Nor for that matter could she recognize the starry white bone left upright in the sandbox like some remarkable claw or shovel. Not when the sun was out and games continued. Certainly not when there was summer love and rootbeer. But at dusk when the fog crept in, thick and sweating, suggesting some kind of burning far off, down over there, (where someone once saw two eyes --pale as October moons-- blink) a child could know the meaning of fall. And that August, two weeks before school began, some children went down to that place and they never came back.

"That Place," House of Leaves

[pantheonofabsence]

Color in House of Leaves (Part 1)

Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow

These four colors appear multiple times throughout House of Leaves, at least once in each narrative: Zampano writes about the colors of the deadbolts; Johnny writes about the colors of tattoo inks ("cinnabar, lemon, celadon, and indigo"); Pelafina mentions the colors of the pills she takes ("madder, azure, celadon, gamboge"); Chad & Daisy draw with "madder and rose [...] Sunday red and indigo [...] celadon [...] heliotrope and gamboge"). The four colors are often taken to be representative of the "four elements:" fire, earth, water and air.

Individually, blue is the color of the word "house," the color of blueprints, and meant to evoke the blue screen effect used in movies as well as hyperlinks. Navidson is particularly linked with the color blue, given he is the owner of the house and his nickname, "Navy." Blue is associated with open spaces, freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, and sensitivity. Blue also represents meanings of depth, trust, loyalty, sincerity, wisdom, confidence, royalty, stability, faith, divinity, and intelligence. Blue is the color of the "X" on Navy's letter to Karen. Note that in the images we have of Zampano's writing, the word "house" does not appear in blue and this was likely an invention of Johnny's. Red is the color of the minotaur and all struck-out passages appearing in The Navidson Record. It makes up part of the compass on the cover of the full color addition and appears directly (as the word "Red" and prominently as a color) in the collages. Red is associated with love, passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance, joy, strength, leadership, courage, vigor, willpower, rage, blood, anger, danger, malice, wrath, stress, action, vibrance, radiance, and determination. To recover many of the struck passages, Johnny used turpentine, which can give ink a light brown or reddish tint. Green is the only of these four colors to not appear on the cover of the book. It is linked with Karen Green. Green is associated with life, renewal, nature, and energy, growth, harmony, freshness, safety, fertility, environment, money, finances, banking, ambition, greed, and jealousy. The index cards holding several footnotes were green. Yellow appears as part of the compass on the front cover. Perhaps linked with Daisy, named after the flower with a yellow center. Yellow is associated with freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism, enlightenment, remembrance, intellect, honor, loyalty, and joy, cowardice, deceit, caution, sickness, and jealousy. The index cards were held together by yellow rubber bands.

[ericakawas-deactivated20190602]

[pantheonofabsence]

"I saw a film today, oh boy..."

The Navidson Record opens with this quote from "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles. Actually two songs spliced together with instrumental interruptions throughout, "A Day in the Life" touches on issues such as drug use, youth, and death.

"A Day in the Life" is in the key of G major, but, as Alan W. Pollack explains, "its true center of gravity is in the parallel minor and Major keys of E."

[pantheonofabsence]

"Surviving House, Kalapana, Hawaii, 1993"

--Diane Cook

[andthatsthetruthruth]

Stars to live by. Stars to steer by. Stars to die by.

Mark Z. Danielewski, “House of Leaves” (via andthatsthetruthruth)

[wallskeepshifting]

House of Leaves by ~sasele

[reverendcreep-blog]

“Darkness is impossible to remember. Consequently cavers desire to return to those unseen depths where they have just been. It is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away, which it almost always invariably does.” - House of Leaves [pictures via]

[kinamv]

I’ve wandered as far west as I can go. Sitting now on the sand, I watch the sun blur into an aftermath. Reds finally marrying blues. Soon night will enfold us all. But the light 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 dark at all, not in fact brightly lit, an afternoon sun blazing through the lead panes, now detected amidst what amounts to a long column of my yesterdays, towards the end, though not the very end of course, where I had stood at the age of seven, gripping my mother’s wrists, trying as hard as I could to keep her from going.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (via kinamv)

[flointheshell-blog]

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (via flointheshell)

[pantheonofabsence]

Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse

[alwaysyour-wildflower-deactivat]

Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (via radicalpossibilitiesbabe)

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