House of Leaves Recap 3/5: The Hallways in This Tiny Room: 98

In which Carla continues to explore the Navidson Record of House of Leaves, so that we may go deeper. Further down and further in. This is the third glow stick we have popped; we have two more, and much more darkness.

The House of Leaves universe:

• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• The Whalestoe Letters: From House of Leaves
• Poe’s album “Haunted”: Apple, Spotify, Amazon

The Cipher by Kathe Koja 
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, Illustrated Edition 
Slade House by David Mitchell 
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 
Alice Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll 
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons 
Locke and Key vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill 
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Haunting of Hill House Audible, narrated by Bernadette Dunne 
We Have Always Lived in the Castle Audible, narrated by Bernadette Dunne 

Referenced works, sources, and recommended reading:
Dante’s Inferno
Rainer Maria Rilke
Virgil’s The Aeneid
M. C. Escher
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling 
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger 
The Never-Ending Story by Michael Ende
Hermes
Orpheus
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Never is like always absolute and an absolute darkness. When
you can't see your hands in front of your face,
is that your hand? You may find that you see
other things, things that have always been there, and what
is there can see you too, the cipher. Kathy Kocha, Hi,

(00:45):
this is Carla. Welcome back to There Might Be Cupcakes,
Welcome back to Spooky Season, and welcome back to the
Navinson's house on ash Tree Lane in Virginia. Before I continue,
please I apologize if if you hear some slight murmurings
in the background, that's my producer, Ellie the Senior Docson snoring.

(01:09):
You should know. In thinking about preparing this episode, I
have been having peculiar dreams, not exactly nightmares per se,
but unsettling dreams about large buildings that grow, that are
otherwise too large for their purpose, and that have corners
that I can't see into, which has been fascinating. I

(01:33):
also realized while outlining my first two episodes in my
new Commonplace book, which was lovingly gifted to me by
the Splendid Archer and Olive Stationary Company. I posted a
picture of it on the podcast Instagram. There might be
cupcakes that this deep dive analysis that I'm taking with
this novel is the very same journey into obsession that

(01:55):
Zupano then Johnny Truant took with the Navidson Record VHS
tapes documentary. Looking at my notes of course in blue
pen because I have a sense of humor about my
obsessive intellectual researches, the word house in blue throughout in
the book, with bookmarks and post it notes fattening it up.

(02:16):
I am amused and also wondering about the surreal dreams
that are to come. So when last we left the
Navidsen hyphen Green family, Will who goes by his last
name Navidsen, Karen, their kids Daisy and Chad, and their
Siberian husky, Hillary and their tabby cat Mellory, and their

(02:36):
house that is slowly growing bigger on the inside and
apparently still growing. Navidsen and Karen's two videotapes, five and
a half minute Hallway and Exploration Number four were circulating
amongst the public like the cross between a fever dream
and an urban legend. A whisper on the wind about
a domestic horror show about a home that wasn't a

(02:59):
home that wasn't safe, The worst scary story you could
tell in early nineteen nineties America. A beautiful suburban home
with squared walls and shingles and matching sighting is not
safe for the two point five kids and the dog.
The middle class American dream is not safe, bright lights
and the family around the dinner table every night, and

(03:21):
the two car garage and new growth trees was the
actual portal to hell. And you could watch the proof
on a VHS tape. Maybe Poltergeist had been a documentary.
Are here Before we rejoin the Navidzens, I want to
share with you some other surreal novels of demented domiciles.

(03:43):
My own phrase that I coined for houses that just
aren't right in some way that fits somewhat alongside House
of Leaves. Now House of Leaf stands alone, to be honest.
It in its companion volume, The Whale Stowe Letters, which
is linked in the show notes and which we will
discuss later episode. But other novels have explored demented domiciles

(04:04):
that get inside the dwellers and readers' heads and admit
uncanny eras and worlds of their own inside their walls.
They have the same vibes of well as I said,
Fever dreams of the house being awake, while the dweller
dreams demented. Domiciles have been a favorite genre of mine
for a very long time, for as long as I've

(04:25):
been reading horror, which is way back into elementary school.
A house that is not just haunted by ghost or demons,
but that haunts the living itself. The first is a
book by an extremely talented friend of mine, The Cipher,
by Kathy Koja. It won the prestigious Brand Stoker Award
and Locust Awards, was the finalist for the Philip K.

(04:47):
Dick Award, and was named one of iOS nine dot
COM's top ten debut science fiction novels that took the
world by storm unquote because it did. This book is
wild and wooly and hypnotic quote black, pure black, and
the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it

(05:09):
too closely, The sense of something not living but alive,
sounds like both the Navidson House and Johnny's first response
to Zupano's record of it. Doesn't it compare? Quote one
thinks for sure, Even without touching it, both of us
slowly began to feel its heaviness, sent something horrifying in
its proportions, its silence, its stillness, even if it did

(05:32):
seem to have been shoved almost carelessly to the side
of the room. 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, murdering Zipano,
murdering us, maybe even murdering you. Synopsis quote from the publisher.
When a strange whole materializes in the storage room would

(05:54):
be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allowed their
curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. Wouldn't
it be wild to go down there? Says Nakota. Nicholas says,
we're not, but no one is in control, and their
experiments with it lead to obsession, violence, and a very
final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the funhole.

(06:17):
The fun hole is what they and their friends begin
calling the hole the void. Kathy's writing is luminous and
dark at the same time. Quote the same sweet ghost
howl not so much sirens song as the song that
charms sirens. Uh. Quote she sighed a sad little sound

(06:38):
that made more melancholy the backdrop of the sullen afternoon,
dusty shadows, dusty shadows, lying on flat oblong planes, making
of the whole room a complicated rebus of exhaustion and
want so evocative and amazing, amazing doesn't do it justice.
If a hole to nowhere any where opened up in

(07:01):
a room in your building, would you explore it? Would
you tell anyone? Would you be afraid of it? Or
drawn to it? Would you try to close it? The
next is a novela that is over one hundred years old.
The Willows is a novela by British author Algernon Blackwood,
which is one of the coolest names. It was originally

(07:21):
published in his collection The Listener and Other Stories in
nineteen oh seven. It's extremely important work in horror, being
highly influential on other authors, especially HP Lovecraft. It was
a favorite of his. According to the website The Lineup,
it's an unusual demented domicile, but it's surreal enough to share.
It fits synopsis. Okay, two friends take a boat trip

(07:45):
together down the River Danube. Midway through a trip draped
with and roofed by willow trees, they stop at a
small island to rest. But this island is not quite
of our world or time. The next one on my
list takes this to the nineteen seventies, then through the
next five decades. Slay House by David Mitchell, published in

(08:07):
twenty sixteen, made me dizzy when I read it. In
the best way. Slate House can't always be seen on
its British street. You actually have to look at it sideways,
and even then the conditions have to be just right
for you to see it. Its narrow iron entrance in
even smaller front garden, a stranger standing on its stoop

(08:30):
might know your name and greet you and invite you inside,
and then you won't want to leave, but if you do,
you wouldn't be able to. An extremely strange brother and
sister pair give this invitation to one person every nine years,
to one very lonely and unusual person, and then they

(08:53):
disappear into slay House, and then Slaight House disappears. Interestingly,
the motif of falling shows up in Slaight House, just
as it does in the Cipher, and just as it
does in the most famous surreal novels of all time.
Alice in Wonderland and Awls did a looking glass quote.

(09:16):
But my question falls down a deep well with no bottom,
and I forgot what I've forgotten. This next one is
one of my favorites, and it's oddly the only horror
novel written by this author. The House next Door by
Anne River Sitans. Sians wrote novels about relationships, about complicated relationships,
about how people relate to one another, so she captured

(09:38):
perfectly how this malfunctions. This one is extremely unusual and
that the protagonists do not live in the demented domicidle,
but rather, as the title says, next door. It's a nice,
brand new house constructed next door to their nice, brand
new house in the suburbs of Atlanta. The middle class
American nineteen nineties dream, just like how leaves new sighting

(10:02):
matching shutters, a newly seated lawn, and this upwardly mobile,
happy couple Walter and cole Quit Kennedy, begin to notice
that this house is eating its occupants alive, bringing out
their worst secrets, making them do things that ruin them,
in short, tormenting them into ruining their American dream. So

(10:24):
they start warning people, for they are also haunted by
this house, haunted by watching people lose everything, and because
it's horror. It doesn't go well. The next house, key
House in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, if you could guess by the name,

(10:46):
is also very demented. It was created by the masterful
Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. I love Joe Hill's work.
This is a graphic novel series and now a horror
series on Netflix, newly in its second season called Lock
and Key Lock spelled with an E at the end.
Here's the official synopsis. Following their father's gruesome murder in

(11:09):
a violent home invasion, the Locked children return to his
childhood home of Key House in secluded Lovecraft, Massachusetts. Their mother,
Nina is too trapped in her grief and a wine
bottle to notice that all in key House is not
what it seems. Too many locked doors, too many unanswered questions.
The older kids, Tyler and Kinsey, aren't much better, but

(11:31):
not youngest son, Body, who quickly finds a new friend
living in an empty well and a new toy, a
key that offers hours of spirited entertainment. But again, all
at key House is not what it seems, and not
all doors are meant to be opened. Soon, horrors, old
and new, real and imagined will come ravening after the

(11:52):
locks and the secrets their family holds. Basically, this family
has inherited special keys that don't just open doors. And
this house, too, is much bigger on the inside. It's
surreal and spooky and unnerving and dangerous, and Gabriel Rodriguez's
art is stunning. The first volume, Welcome to Lovecraft, is

(12:13):
linked in the show notes. I will list the series
in order on the website entry for this episode. The
Netflix series does a great tribute to the books and
is delightful and delightfully dark. This is perhaps his Uncanny
and Universe's House of Leaves in some respects, and the
final demented domicile novel surreal as perhaps House of Leaves.

(12:35):
Before we go back into the house at Ashtree Lane
is of course Hillhouse. It's one of my very favorite
novels by one of my very favorite authors, Shirley Jackson.
Hillhouse is alive, and it breathes, and it is hungry.
It is your audible suggestion for this episode, and it

(12:55):
is narrated by the sublime Bernadette Dunn, who also narrates
Jackson's Perfect We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Both
are linked in the show notes. Remember if you use
the Audible link in the show notes under the section
how to support Cupcakes and are not yet a member,
You'll get a free month to check all of Audible out,

(13:15):
and you'll get to keep the Haunting of hill House
as your free gift even if you cancel. If you
are a member, both hill House and We have lived
in the Castle or linked in the show notes, and
you'll help the podcast out a little bit using those links.
Thank you. I finished Mike Flanagan's adaptation of the Haunting
of hill House on Netflix. As I was typing the script.
I was so hesitant to watch it when it first

(13:37):
came out in two thousand and eight. Whoops, that would
be twenty eighteen. Carry on, because I watched the nineteen
ninety nine movie version of the novel in theater and
not even the sublime actress Lily Taylor could keep me
from getting pissed off. It was garish and wrong and

(13:58):
disrespectful to the original perf work. And that's all I'll
say about that. This mini series, a rather incredibly long
horror movie, honors Shirley Jackson's work the way the original
nineteen sixty three movie does. This hill House plays with
time and is ravenous and jealous of the living. The

(14:21):
novel is as much about architecture and surroundings as about ghosts,
and so is Mike Flanagan's work, and it is an
excellent companion, like I said to the terrifying nineteen sixty
three movie that also honors it. So I love the
usage of names from the novel. I love the playing
with the theme that wanting to come home and have
a home and how that can be perverted by a

(14:41):
sheltered mind. And Mike Flanagan's production used Shirley's words over
and over, and I took great joy when I heard
them throughout the show. The production was circular, as is
the novel. The books first and last paragraph mirror each other.
I want to read them here because though I am
no in English teacher, I think they are some of

(15:02):
the most important beginnings and endings to an American novel.
I would certainly teach them were I ever to lead
a writing or literature class. The novel begins. No live
organism can continue for long, to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality. Even larks and katy DIDs are supposed

(15:25):
by some to dream Hill House not sane stood by
itself against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood
so for eighty years, and might stand for eighty more. Within.
Walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and

(15:47):
doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood
and stone of hill House, and whatever walked there walked alone.
And then ends quote. Hill House not sane, stood by
itself against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood

(16:10):
so for eighty years, and might stand for eighty more. Within.
Walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wooden
stone of hill House, and whatever walked there walked alone.

(16:32):
And from squared sound walls we returned to walls that
are not. Do you suppose the Navidsen House at Ashtree
Lane dreams? Or does it exist in that absolute state
of reality, that insanity, as Jackson's describes, that accompanies those
that cannot and do not have the release of sleep?

(16:53):
Does it always watch alert? Does it watch the Navidsen
Green family? Is it alive as hell houses? In this
section of the book, we learned that the house in
ice Tree Lane was quote supposedly built in seventeen twenty.
The family's real estate agent, Alicia Rosenbaum, told Navidsen that

(17:13):
the house had an average of zero point three seven
owners per year quote, most of whom were traumatized in
some way unquote. Even though the date is given in
supposedly seventeen twenty, the history of the house is described
as pre Adamite, before human history. Navidsen and Karen learned

(17:34):
from Rosenbaum that the family that resided in the house
in nineteen eighty one wanted to build an L then
moved out because they wanted something smaller. This means they
wanted to build a full L shape addition to the house,
adding another wing. Drew up blueprints for this to occur,
which Rosenbomb gave to Navidsen, and then abruptly moved out

(17:56):
because they wanted a smaller home. This boat so register
for the events to follow and the events of the
two VHS tapes. Navidsen and Karen created the book House
of Leaves, which is to say, Supano's documents and Johnny's
annotations go now where we are in sections three and
four to the events that shape the two VHS tapes,

(18:18):
June nineteen ninety The Navidsen Greens, which is what I
call them. They're usually referred to in the book as
the Navidsen's, but I'm referring to them as that in
the podcast because Will uses his last name Navidsen, and
everybody refers to him as such. So the Navidsen Greens
come home to Ashtree Lane from a four day trip
traveling to a friend's wedding in Seattle, to find that

(18:40):
their house has grown developed a closet. In their master bedroom,
a door opens into a five foot wide by four
foot long black tunnel in the master bedroom. At the
other end of this new room another identical door, which
opens now into their children's room. The door is white

(19:03):
with a glass doorknob, The other door is identical, and
the inside of the closet is black. Their children are delighted,
not scared at all. They find this great fun, this
new door from their parents' bedroom to their own. The
adults question whether or not someone broke in and did
this to their house, never mind the spatial improbability of

(19:23):
an extra five feet by four feet between rooms, but
they check the motion sensors that are set up to
the high eight cameras, and the tape jumps from the
family's exit from the bedroom to their entrance, and the
door just appears on camera when the tape restarts. Interestingly,

(19:44):
the section of the novel begins with a quote from
the Bible, the Old Testament, Exodus three eleven. But Moses
said to God, who am I? That I should go
to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt? And then
the next sentences, why not, it's why not someone else?
This hints to us, I believe that Navidsen's explorations of

(20:04):
the growth of his house, of the five and a
half minute Hallway, of the creation of the Navidsen tapes
of it and pose song both to come are a
burden placed upon him, a dangerous burden, and perhaps some
sort of liberation of whom his family someone else future

(20:25):
dwellers of the house us the reader. The context verse
is the burning bush appearing to Moses, God speaking to
him in the visage of a burning bush as Moses
is tending his family's blocks as a shepherd. Food for
thought as we continue. It also begins with the Dorothea
Lane quote about how a photographer must become a photographer quote.

(20:49):
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer
anymore that the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer, which
I think is there to remind us about how Navidson's
fete photography career begin in danger in war photography and
photographing awful events and awful human nature, which is exactly
why he and Karen have agreed to stay home and

(21:11):
create this documentary about home life. To quote Johnny Truant
in the footnotes to this section, it's so hard to
argue with these whirls of melted flesh. And then the
photographer Lank's quote is followed with another quote, this time
in a subtitle about not wanting to go on a quest,
this time from Dante's Inferno. Not the first time Dante

(21:33):
is quoted in this book, and I think it won't
be the last. But why should I go there? And
who grants it? I am not an as, I am
not Paul Navison himself echoes this cry in Moses's question
in the Exploration number four video, with the explicative how
the fuck did I end up here? He is not

(21:58):
answered by either God or Virgil. Johnny's footnotes continue to
help flesh out in Navidson's stories, he tells his own
his own war story is true or not. Echo Navidson's
wartime photography quote, they usually look away. My stories actually
help them look away. Maybe they even help me look away.
But I guess that's nothing new. We all create stories

(22:20):
to protect ourselves. This quote once again brings to mind
Heather from the blair Ridge Project, hiding behind her camera
as a barrier between her and life. Remember from my
last episode on Found Footage Horror. The scene from that
movie that I used is that episode's title when Josh
snatches her camera and mocks her filming her for once.
What's your motivation, Heather? She wasn't creating the story for

(22:43):
once and had no protection from life. This theme of collection,
as through filming and ephemera, as on the frontispiece image
of the book, both come up again and again, this
time in Johnny's footnotes to the section where he's musing
about why he's bothering with Zupano's writing quote, what can
I say? I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff,

(23:06):
forgotten stuff, and old stuff, which, despite the light of
progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows
at noon, going unheralded, passing unmourned. You get The drift
family is a huge theme in these two sections, as
we learn more about the fraternal twins Tom and will
Navidson's upbringing, and Johnny also writes about his father. The

(23:30):
theme of father comes up for the first time directly,
rather than as an oblique father figure. In Soupano, we
find out Johnny's father died violently when he was young,
and that the Navidsen father was alcoholic, erratic, and often absent.
Quote both brothers learned to identify with absence. Missus Nabdson
cared more for being an actress than being a mother.

(23:52):
In a brilliant foreshadowing quote, Supano explains, purportedly in her
own words, all she wanted to do was bring down
the house. This explains why Navison wanted to capture permanence
on film and why creating a home is so important
to him. Quote. Tom just wants to be Navidsen must become.

(24:14):
In this becoming spirit, Navison must learned all he can
about this new dark closet. He starts measuring and recording
is measuring, and he discovers the house is bigger on
the inside. Now Karen is Navidsen's doubting Thomas. She refuses
to believe that the house has grown, that the closet
is birth to change in the house. He calls his

(24:35):
brother Tom, who builds houses, his friend Bill Reston, an
engineer from the University of Virginia, and Karen calls in
her friend Audrey mccaulliffe down from DC for support With
this craziness. The women build a bookshelf in the bedroom
and film it for the documentary while the men debate
faulty equipment and operator error. Quote. The impossible is one

(24:55):
thing when considered as a purely intellectual conceit. It is
not so large a problem when one can puzzle over
an Escher print then close the book. It is quite
another when facing a physical reality the mind and body
cannot accept. Karen refuses the knowledge a reluctant Eve who
prefers tangerines to apples, and so this part of the

(25:19):
novel begins with several versions of why me and ends
with Karen's screaming on the tape. The uncanny is addressed
by way of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. I hope
I'm pronouncing that name correctly. His work is quoted in
the text by Zipano and translated and expounded upon by
Johnny in a footnote from Heidegger's work being in time

(25:43):
quote in anxiety one feels uncanny. The quote nothing and
nowhere but here uncanniness also means quote not being at home. Now.
Remember from the last episode when I quoted Navidsen, he
said he was still afraid of the house and warned
people away from it, saying there's nothing there. And I

(26:05):
wondered if he meant nothing as a positive, as if
there was a nothingness there, you know, like the nothing
and the never ending story that resonated with this idea
of Heidegger as the uncanny being a sense of the
quote nothing in nowhere. Eerie idea, isn't it. Here's Johnny
Truant expounding upon this notion of the uncanny quote. Nevertheless,

(26:29):
regardless of how extensive his analysis is here, Heidegger still
fails to point out that anheimlich, when used as an adverb,
means quote dreadfully, awfully, heaps of and an awful lot of.
Largeness has always been a condition of the weird and unsafe.
It is overwhelming, too much or too big, Thus, that
which is uncanny or annheimlich is neither homy nor protective,

(26:54):
nor comforting nor familiar. It is alien, exposed and unsettling, or,
in other words, the perfect description of the house on
Ashtree Lane. In their absence, the Navison's home had become
something else, and while not exactly sinister or even threatening,
the change still destroyed any sense of security or well being.

(27:15):
Before I end this episode, I want to address one
obsessive footnote of Johnny's. There are no coincidences in this novel,
nor nothing done by accident. In questioning the how or
why of the closets appearing, Navisen suggests Riley that someone
broke in and created it. Johnny footnotes this who quotes

(27:38):
quoting the poet Maria Railke, and again I apologize if
I'm pronouncing his last name correctly in his poem Orpheus,
you're adce hear mes. The word who does not need
to be cited. Spaghetti mentions finding it in the poem
as if researching a quote. This poem was mentioned for

(28:01):
a very specific reason. As I've said, this novel is
a labyrinth unto itself. It is a strange, eerie, and yes, uncanny,
poem I found when I looked it up, and I
think it bears reading. Before I do, I want to
point out that Orpheus and your dce their story is

(28:21):
not the first mention of snakes. In these two sections
of the novel, er DC is killed by a snake bite,
but Orpheus is allowed to rescue her from hades as
long as they don't look back, and nag and Nagina
from Ricky Tiki Tavi also come up. Hermes, known as
the Messenger and the wing Trickster, has Hiss as symbol.

(28:44):
The wings staff with two entwined serpents. Arthur Fromingham, a
Princeton University archaeology professor, thought Hermes might have existed as
a Mesopotamian snake god. Very interesting. The first line and
the second verse of this poem are what strikes me
the most with regards to the House. See what you

(29:05):
think and let me know on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Those links are in the show notes. I hope you've
enjoyed this episode. Next up is another Boo without Goo episode,
another full list of horror movies for the squeamish, just
in time for Halloween, and then the fourth House of
leaves episode. I hope you're enjoying this exploration of the
Navison record as much as I am. If you read

(29:28):
these sections, as I've stated in the first two episodes,
you'll find I left out a lot. I'm making sure
that you can enjoy reading the novel, that I'm leaving
out a lot of spoilers, but that you can enjoy
listening to this without reading the novel. It's a tricky balance,
but please let me know if you're enjoying it. This

(29:50):
is all about us having fun together, Orpheus. You're DC,
Hermes Rayner, Maria Rilke. This was the eerie mine of souls,
like silent silver ore. They veined its darkness between roots.
The blood that flowed off into humans welled up, looking

(30:14):
dense as porphyry in the dark. Otherwise there was no red.
There were cliffs and unreal forests, bridges spanning emptiness, and
that huge gray blind pool hanging over its distant floor
like a stormy sky over a landscape, and between still

(30:34):
gentle fields, a pale strip of road unwound. They came
along this road in front the slender man in the
blue cloak, mute, impatient, looking straight ahead without chewing his
footsteps ate the road in big bites, and both his
hands hung heavy and clenched by the poor of his garment,

(30:57):
and forgot all about The light lair become like part
of his left hand, rose tendrils strung in the limbs
of an olive, his mind like two minds, While his
gaze ran ahead like a dog, turned and always came
back from the distance to wait at the next bend.
His hearings stayed close, like a scent. At times it

(31:18):
seemed to reach all the way back to the movements
of the two others who ought to be following the
whole way up. And sometimes it seemed there was nothing
behind him but the echo of his own steps, the
small wind made by his cloak. And yet he told
himself they were coming. Once set it out loud, heard
it die away. They were coming. Only they were two

(31:40):
who moved with terrible stillness. Had he been allowed to
turn around just once, wouldn't that look back mean the
disintegration of this whole work still to be accomplished? Of course,
he would have seen them, two dim figures walking silently
behind the God of journeys and secret tidings, shining eyes
inside the traveler's hood, the slender wand held out in

(32:03):
front of him, and wings beating in his ankles, and
his left hand held out too her, This woman who
was loved so much that from one layer more mourning
came than from women in mourning. That a whole world
was made from mourning, where everything was present once again,
forest and valley, and road and village, field, river and animal,

(32:25):
and that around this morning world, just as around the
other earth, a sun and a silent star filled sky
wheeled a morning sky with displaced constellations. This woman who
was loved so much, But she walked alone, holding the
God's hand, her footsteps hindered by her long grave clothes, faltering, gentle,

(32:47):
and without impatience. She was inside herself like a great hope,
and never thought of the man who walked ahead, or
the road that climbed back towards life. She was inside herself,
and her being filled her like tremendous depth, as a
fruit is filled with his sweetness and darkness. She was
filled with her big death, still so new that it

(33:09):
hadn't been fathomed. She found herself in a resurrected virginity,
her sex closed like a young flower at nightfall, and
her hands were so weaned from marriage that she suffered
from the light God's endlessly still guiding touch, as from
too great an intimacy. She was no longer the blond
woman who sometimes echoed in the poet's songs, no longer

(33:31):
the fragrance the island of their wide bed, and no
longer the man's to possess. She was already loosened like
long hair, and surrendered like the rain, and issued like
massive provisions. She was already rude, and when all at
once the gods stopped her, and with pain in his voice,
spoke the words he had turned around. She couldn't grasp

(33:53):
this and quietly said who. But far off in front
of the bright door stood someone whose face it growing unrecognizable.
He just stood and watched how on the strip of
road through the field, the god of secret tidings, with
a heart broken expression, silently turned to follow the form,

(34:14):
already starting back along the same road, footsteps hindered by
long gray clothes, faltering, gentle and without impatience,