“The second peculiar thing, you’ll see for yourself” Lude said, lowering his voice even more, as we slipped past the room of what looked suspiciously like a coven of musicians, all of them listening intently to headphones, passing around a spliff.

It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered from malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care if their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives.

Karen’s project is one mechanism against the uncanny or that which is “un-home-like.” She remains watchful and willing to let the bizarre dimensions of her house gestate within her. She challenges its irregularity by introducing normalcy: her friend’s presence, bookshelves, peaceful

The fights were bad enough. “And incidentally I’d won every one,” I added. Lude scoffed.

At first I figured Zampanô was just a bleak old dude, the kind who makes Itchy and Scratchy look like Calvin and Hobbes.

As you probably know, finding out there’s no warm water is a particularly unpleasant discovery simply because it’s not something you figure out immediately.

I saw a film today, oh boy...

In retrospect, the rabid speculation over Karen’s infidelities seems driven by a principally sexist culture, especially since so little attention was paid to Navidson’s role in their relationship. As David Liddel once exclaimed: “If he has horns, who’s to say he doesn’t have hooves?”²¹

No wonder he found it so impossible to give up his professional occupation. In his mind abandoning photography meant submitting to loss.

These adults are often the same ones who say “grow up” and “face the facts.” They are offended by the incongruities of yesterday’s riddles with answers when compared to today’s riddles without.

Of course, I have only my own immeasurable stupidity to blame for winding up here. The old man left plenty of clues and warnings. I was the fool to disregard them. Or was it the reverse: did I secretly enjoy them?

I’ve come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

Typically when Lude calls me late at night it’s because there’s some party he wants to hit. He’s the kind of guy who thinks sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. Maybe he’s right.

she shuddered and quickly folded her arms as if she’d just gotten cold. “It was like that tiny place of his was suddenly full of faces and he could see them all, even speak to them. It made me real uneasy, like I was surrounded by ghosts. Do you believe in ghosts?”

That said, while the first sequence certainly hints at a number of underlying tensions in the Navidson/Green family, all brought into relief by this chapter, it is crucial not to lose sight of the prevailing sense of bliss still evoked in those opening minutes.

After nearly eleven years of constant departures and brief returns, Karen has made it clear that Navidson must either give up his professional habits or lose his family. Ultimately unable to make this choice, he compromises by turning reconciliation into a subject for documentation.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift.

Terry Borowska, who used to babysit both brothers, remembers how every so often Navidson’s father would vanish, sometimes for up to five weeks at a time, without telling his family where he was going or when he might return.

He double checks his work, makes sure the line is straight, level and taut and then marks it. The measurement is still the same. 32’ 10” exactly.

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it,

Virtually a week seamlessly elided, showing us the family as they depart from a house without that strange interior space present only to return a fraction of a second later to find it already in place, almost as if it had been there all along.

If, however, you discover that readers are less than sympathetic and choose to dismiss this enterprise out of hand, then may I suggest you drink plenty of wine and dance in the sheets of your wedding night, for whether you know it or not, now you truly are prosperous.

Virtually a week seamlessly elided, showing us the family as they depart from a house without that strange interior space present only to return a fraction of a second later to find it already in place, almost as if it had been there all along.

“Funny how all it took was a fraction of an inch to get us in a car together.” “Pretty strange.” “Thanks for coming Tom.” “Like there was really a chance I’d say no.”

Another pause follows. This time, Tom breaks the silence: “Did you hear the one about the guy on the tightrope?”

I feel that way now, watching myself tugged stupidly along by inertia, my own inquisitiveness or whatever else, and it must have been something else, though what exactly I have no clue,

“Navy’s successful, Tom’s not,” Karen explains in the film. “There’s been a lot of resentment over the years. I guess it’s always been there, except when they lived at home. It was different then. They kind of looked after each other more.”

“Personally, I just want to create a cozy little outpost for me and my family. A place to drink lemonade on the porch and watch the sun set.”

And so only now, days later, as I give these moments shape here, do I re—encounter what my high briefly withheld; the covering memory permanently hitched to everything preceding it and so prohibiting all of it, those memories, the good ones, no matter how different, how blissful, eclipsed by the

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now.

The simple answer I know: Lude woke me up at three in the morning to check out some dead guy’s stuff. Of course, it’s not really all that simple.

“No,” Navidson replies with a grin.

Thus echoing the words copied down by hell’s most famous tourist: “Dinanzi a me non flior cose create! Se non etterne, e io etterna duro./ Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch ‘entrate.”⁴

Furthermore, most of what’s said by famous people has been made up. I tried contacting all of them. Those that took the time to respond told me they had never heard of Will Navidson let alone Zampanô.

No such luck with this crate. Let the cold water run. It’s gotta warm up eventually. Right?

If only any of it were true. I mean we’d all be so lucky to wind up a punching bag and still find our crates full of Birds of Paradise. No such luck with this crate. Let the cold water run. It’s gotta warm up eventually. Right?

Navidson immediately asks whether or not they overlooked the room. This seems ridiculous at first until one considers how the impact of such an implausible piece of reality could force anyone to question their own perceptions. Karen, however, manages to dig up some photos which clearly show a

Which is almost literally how The Navidson Record begins, with Will Navidson relaxing on the porch of his small, old-style heritage house, enjoying a glass of lemonade, watching the sun turn the first few minutes of daytime into gold.

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.

Virtually a week seamlessly elided, showing us the family as they depart from a house without that strange interior space present only to return a fraction of a second later to find it already in place, almost as if it had been there all along.

Why not someone else? Considering his own history, talent and emotional background, only Navidson could have gone as deep as he did and still have successfully brought that vision back.

Navidson immediately asks whether or not they overlooked the room. This seems ridiculous at first until one considers how the impact of such an implausible piece of reality could force anyone to question their own perceptions. Karen, however, manages to dig up some photos which clearly show a

What hit me first was 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.

“’He loved to brag about how uneducated he was,” Amber told me. “’I never even went to high school’ he would say. “Good, that makes me smarter than you.’”

He knows the drinks, the addresses and most important of all he can usually tell the difference between the women who are out to talk and those out to do something a little more interesting which always interests Lude.

He called himself Zampanô. It was the name he put down on his apartment lease and on several other fragments I found. I never came across any sort of ID, whether a passport, license or other official document insinuating that yes, he indeed was An Actual-&-Accounted-For person.

Who knows where his name really came from. Maybe it’s authentic, maybe made up, maybe borrowed, a nom de plume or—my personal favorite—a nom de guerre.

In fact a few eager intellectuals have already begun to treat the film as a warning in and of itself, perfectly suited for hanging whole above the gates of such schools as Architectonics, Popomo, Consequentialism, Neo-Plasticism, Phenomenology, Information Theory, Marxism, Biosemiotics,

At least some of the horror I took away at four in the morning you now have before you, waiting for you a little like it waited for me that night, only without these few covering pages.

Thus as Will and Tom set out to find an answer, two old friends put an enigma on hold, stir up some vodka tonics, and enjoy the rhythm of working with brackets and pine.