Damage

 

We all go through life like bulls in a china shop.

 A chip here, a crack there. Doing damage to ourselves, to other people. 

The problem is trying to figure out how to control the damage we've done, or that's been done to us. 

Sometimes the damage catches us by surprise. Sometimes we think we can fix the damage. And sometimes the damage is something we can't even see. 

We're all damaged, it seems. 

Some of us, more than others. 

We carry the damage with us from childhood, then as grownups, we give as good as we get. Ultimately, we all do damage. 

And then, we set about the business of fixing whatever we can.

Sacrifice

 

 There are days that make the sacrifices seem worthwhile. 

And then there are the days where everything feels like a sacrifice.

 And then there are the sacrifices that you can’t even figure out why you're making. 

A wise man once said – “You can have anything in life if you’re willing to sacrifice everything else for it.” 

What he meant is nothing comes without a price. 

So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. 

Too often going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right. And letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building.

 Of course the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming. When we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick sides….or to measure the potential loss. 

When that happens, when the battle chooses us, and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.

Superstition

 

college campus has a magic statue. It’s a longstanding tradition for students to rub its nose for good luck. One freshman really believed in the statue's power and insisted on visiting it to rub its nose before every exam. Studying might have been a better idea, she flunked out her sophomore year. The fact is, we all have little superstitious things that we do. If it’s not believing in magic statues, it’s avoiding sidewalk cracks or always putting our left shoe on first. Knock on wood. Step on a crack, break your mothers back. The last thing we want to do is offend the gods. Superstition lies in the space between what we can control and what we can't. Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck. No one wants to pass up a chance for good luck. But does saying it thirty three times really help? Is anyone really listening? And if no ones listening, why do we bother doing those strange things at all. We rely on superstitions because we're smart enough to know we don't have all the answers. And that life works in mysterious ways. Don't diss the juju, from wherever it comes.

we all try to do the best we can

 

 But the world is full of unexpected twists and turns.

 And just when you’ve gotten the lay of the land, the ground underneath you shifts. And knocks you off your feet. 

If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with nothing more than a flesh wound, something a band-aid will cover. 

But, some wounds are deeper than they first appear and require more than just a quick fix.

 With some wounds, you have to rip off the band-aid, let them breathe, and give them time to heal.

There's no such thing as a grown-up

 

 We move on, we move out, we move away from our families and form our own. 

But the basic insecurities, the basic fears and all those old wounds just grow up with us.

 And just when we think that life and circumstances have forced us truly, once and for all become an adult, your mother says something like that. Or worse, something like that. 

We get bigger, we get taller, we get older. 

But, for the most part, we're still a bunch of kids, running around the playground, trying desperately to fit in.

 I've heard that it's possible to grow up, I've just never met anyone who's actually done it.

 Without parents to defy, we break the rules we make for ourselves. We throw tantrums when things don't go our way. We whisper secrets with our best friend, in the dark. We look for comfort where we can find it. 

And we hope against all logic, against all experience, like children, we never give up hope.

Crossing the line unauthorized is not tolerated

 

  In general, lines are there for a reason. 

For safety. For security. For clarity. 

If you choose to cross the line, you pretty much do so at your own risk.

 So why is it, that the bigger the line, the greater the temptation to cross it? 

We can’t help ourselves. We see a line, we want to cross it. Maybe it’s the thrill of trading the familiar for the unfamiliar. A sort of personal dare. 

Only problem is, once you’ve crossed, it’s almost impossible to go back.

 But if you do manage to make it back across that line, you find safety in numbers.

Lying is bad

Or so we are told constantly from birth

honesty is the best policy, 

the truth shall set you free, 

I chopped down the cherry tree, 

whatever. 

The fact is, lying is a necessity. 

We lie to ourselves because the truth, the truth freaking hurts. 

No matter how hard we try to ignore or deny it, eventually the lies fall away, whether we like it or not. 

But here's the truth about the truth: It hurts. 

So we lie.

 

It's an urban myth that suicide rates spike at the holidays. 

Turns out they actually go down. 

Experts think it's because people are less inclined to off themselves when surrounded by family. Ironically, that same family togetherness is thought to be the reason that depression rates actually do spike at the holidays. 

There's an old proverb that says you can't choose your family. You take what the fates hand you. And like them or not, love them or not, understand them or not, you cope. 

Then there's the school of thought that says the family you're born into is simply a starting point.

 They feed you, and clothe you, and take care of you until you're ready to go out into the world and find your tribe.

 Forty years ago, the Beatles asked the world a simple question: they wanted to know where all the lonely people came from. 

 Four hundred years ago, another well-known English guy had an opinion about being alone. John Donne. He thought we were never alone. Of course it was fancier when he said it. 

No man is an island entire unto himself. 

Boil down that island talk and he just meant that all anyone needs is someone to step in and let us know we're not alone.

Too much

 

When you were a kid, it was Halloween candy. 

You hid it from your parents and you ate it until you got sick. 

In college, it was the heavy combo of youth, tequila and sex 

 good things aren't always what they seem. 

Too much of anything, even love, is not always a good thing.

How do you know when how much is too much? 

Too much too soon. 

Too much information.

 Too much fun. 

Too much love. 

Too much to ask

... And when is it all just too much to bear?

 

Gratitude, appreciation, giving thanks. 

No matter what words you use, they all mean the same thing. 

Happy. 

We're supposed to be happy. Grateful for friends, family. Happy just to be alive. Whether we like it or not. 

Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. 

Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for the things we'll never know. 

At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.

Romeo and Juliet

 

Juliet was an idiot.

For starters she falls for the one guy she knows she can’t have, then she blames fate for her own bad decision. 

 love, like life, is about making choices. And fate has nothing to do with it. 

Everyone thinks it’s so romantic, Romeo and Juliet, true love, how sad. If Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink the bottle of poison, and go to sleep in a mausoleum, she deserved whatever she got. 

Maybe Romeo and Juliet were fated to be together, but just for a while, and then their time passed. If they could have known that beforehand, maybe it all would have been okay.

for the most part, love is about choices. It's about putting down the poison and the dagger and making your own happy ending...most of the time. 

And that sometimes, despite all your best choices and all your best intentions... fate wins anyway.

Communication

 

Communication. It's the first thing we really learn in life.  Funny thing is, once we grow up, learn our words and really start talking the harder it becomes to know what to say. Or how to ask for what we really need. At the end of the day, there are some things you just can't help but talk about. Some things we just don't want to hear, and some things we say because we can't be silent any longer.  Some things are more than what you say, they're what you do. Some things you say because there's no other choice. Some things you keep to yourself.  And not too often, but every now and then, some things simply speak for themselves.

 

 whoever said "What you don't know can’t hurt you", was a complete and total moron. 

Because for most people I know, not knowing is the worst feeling in the world. 

 sometimes it's better to stay in the dark, because in the dark there may be fear, but there's also hope.

Pain

 

Pain comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain, the normal pains that we live with everyday. Then there's the kind of pain you can't ignore. A level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else; makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt. How we manage our pain is up to us. Pain. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it... and for some of us, the best way to manage pain is to just push through it. Pain, you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside.  Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain, you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it, and life always makes more.

Denial

 

 We deny that we're tired, we deny that we're scared, we deny how badly we want to succeed.

 And most importantly, we deny that we're in denial. 

We only see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and it works. We lie to ourselves so much that after a while the lies start to seem like the truth.

We deny so much that we can't recognize the truth right in front of our faces. 

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass.

 And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. 

The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired, we are scared, denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial and face the world. Head on, guns blazing.

 De Nile. It's not just a river in Egypt, it's a freakin' ocean

. So how do you keep from drowning in it?

 

You have an aunt who whenever she poured anything for you she would say "Say when!" 

 aunt would say "Say when!" and of course, we never did. 

We don't say when because there's something about the possibility, of more. More tequila, more love, more anything. 

More is better. 

There's something to be said about a glass half full. About knowing when to say when.

 I think it's a floating line. A barometer of need and desire. It's entirely up to the individual. And depends on what's being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. 

Other times there's no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless. 

And all we want, is more.

Secrets

 

 One thing is certain, whatever it is we're trying to hide; we're never ready for that moment when the truth gets naked. 

That's the problem with secrets – like misery, they love company. 

They pile up and up until they take over everything, until you don't have room for anything else, until you're so full of secrets you feel like you're going to burst. 

The thing people forget is how good it can feel when you finally set secrets free. Whether good or bad, at least they're out in the open, like it or not. And once your secrets are out in the open, you don't have to hide behind them anymore. 

The problem with secrets is even when you think you're in control, you're not.

 

You know how when you were a kid and you believed in fairy tales? 

That fantasy of what your life would be – white dress, prince charming who’d carry you away to a castle on a hill. You’d lie in your bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. 

Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, prince charming –they were so close you could taste them. 

But eventually you grow up and one day you open your eyes and the fairy tale disappears. 

Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. 

But the thing is, it’s hard to let go of that fairy tale entirely because almost everyone has that smallest bit of hope and faith that one day they would open their eyes and it would all come true.

 At the end of the day, faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't really expect it. Its like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. 

And it's not so important that it's happy ever after. Just that it's happy right now.

 See once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you, 

and once in a while people may even take your breath away.

 

 if life's so hard already, why do we bring more trouble down on ourselves? 

What's up with the need to hit the self-destruct button? 

Maybe we like the pain. Maybe we're wired that way. Because without it, I don't know, maybe we just wouldn't feel real. 

What's that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?

 Because it feels so good when I stop.

 

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow,” he said, “Which you can do today.” 

This is the man who discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. 

I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you’re wrong? What if you make a mistake you can’t undo? 

Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true: that by the time the pain of not doing the thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we're carrying around a giant tumor. And you thought I was speaking metaphorically. 

The early bird catches the worm; 

a stitch in time saves nine. 

He who hesitates is lost. 

We can't pretend we haven't been told. 

We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to ‘seize the day'. 

Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. 

That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. 

And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.

 

Remember when you were a kid and your biggest worry was, like, if you'd get a bike for your birthday or if you'd get to eat cookies for breakfast. 

Being an adult? Totally overrated. 

I mean seriously, don't be fooled by all the hot shoes and the great sex and the no parents anywhere telling you what to do. 

Adulthood is responsibility. Responsibility, it really does suck. Really, really sucks. Adults have to be places and do things and earn a living and pay the rent.

The scariest part about responsibility? When you screw up and let it slip right through your fingers. Responsibility. It really does suck. 

Unfortunately, once you get past the age of braces and training bras, responsibility doesn't go away. It can't be avoided. Either someone makes us face it or we suffer the consequences.

 And still adulthood has it perks. I mean the shoes, the sex, the no parents anywhere telling you what to do. 

That's, pretty damn good.

It's all about lines.

 

It's all about lines.  

The line separating you from people

It doesn't help to get too familiar. To make friends. 

You need boundaries between you and the rest of the world. 

Other people are far too messy. 

It's all about lines. Drawing lines in the sand, and praying like hell no one crosses them. 

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. 

So, you can waste your life, drawing lines, Or, you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines... that are way too dangerous to cross. 

But 

If you're willing to take the chance...the view from the other side is spectacular.

House Of Leaves

 

 

The book was followed by a companion piece called The Whalestoe Letters, a series of letters written to the character Johnny Truant by his mother while she was confined in a mental institution. 

Some (but not all) of the letters are included in the second edition.

 

House of Leaves was accompanied by a companion piece (or vice versa), a full-length album called Haunted recorded by Danielewski's sister, Anne Danielewski, known professionally as Poe. 

The two works cross-pollinated heavily over the course of their creations, each inspiring the other in various ways. Poe's statement on the connection between the two works is that they are parallax views of the same story. House of Leaves references Poe and her songs several times, not only limited to her album Haunted, but Hello as well. 

One example occurs when the character Karen Green is interviewing various academics on their interpretations of the short film "Exploration #4"; she consults a "Poet," but there is a space between the "Poe" and the "t," suggesting that Poe at one point commented on the book. It may also be a reference to Edgar Allan Poe.

The album Haunted also draws heavily from the novel, featuring tracks called "House of Leaves", "Exploration B" and "5&½ Minute Hallway", and many less obvious references. The video for "Hey Pretty" also features Mark Danielewski reading from House of Leaves (pp. 88–89), and in House of Leaves, the band Liberty Bell's lyrics were also songs on Poe's album.

 

Colors 

House of Leaves includes frequent and seemingly systematic color changes. While Danielewski leaves much of the interpretation of the choice of colors up to the reader, several distinct patterns emerge upon closer examination. 

Notable examples include:

• The word "house" is colored blue (gray for non-color editions of the book and light gray for red editions). In many places throughout the book, it is offset from the rest of the text in different directions at different times. Foreign-language equivalents of house, such as the German Haus and the French maison, are also blue. These colorizations even extend to text on the book's copyright page.
• In all colored editions, the word minotaur and all struckthrough passages are colored red.
• Many references to Johnny's mother are colored purple.

Font changes 

Throughout the book, various changes in font serve as a way for the reader to quickly determine which of its multiple narrators’ work they are currently following. In the book, there are four fonts used by the four narrators. These are: Times New Roman (Zampanò), Courier (Johnny), Bookman (The Editors), and Dante (Johnny's mother). (Additional font changes are used intermittently—Janson for film intertitles, Book Antiqua for a letter written by Navidson, and so on.)

 

The Navidson Record 

Will Navidson 

Will is the central character in The Navidson Record subplot of the novel.

A stint in the army early in his life leads him to a very successful career as a photographer, primarily in war-torn parts of the world; his role as an impartial documentarist of war affects him deeply. 

Later in his life, he moves to the eponymous house (located in the southeastern Virginia countryside), in an effort to find "[a] place to drink lemonade and watch the sun set", a place to "once and for all stay in and explore the quieter side of life" (page 9). 

However, the unnatural events that occur thereafter have a profound effect upon him and his relationship with his partner, Karen.

Karen Green 

Karen is Will's partner and a former fashion model. 

She suffers from claustrophobia, and throughout the novel refuses to enter the labyrinth within her house.

 She also seems to be extremely insecure regarding her relationship with Will; he is 'her rock,' though it is confirmed that she had at least three long-term affairs during the course of their relationship. Curiously, the events of the novel only seem to reduce her dependence on Will (as well as contributing to the eventual dissolution of their relationship). 

It is speculated that, during Karen's childhood, her stepfather once took Karen and her sister into a barn in their backyard, putting one sister in a well while he raped the other, and vice versa. This event is widely considered to be the cause of her claustrophobia. However, several footnotes and comments about the incident question this claim (another of many examples of the use of an unreliable narrator in the novel). 

In the aftermath of the events in the house, she becomes an unlikely editor, approaching many real characters (including Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Hofstadter, Harold Bloom, and Jacques Derrida) for comment on The Navidson Record, albeit comment within the fictional universe of the novel. 

Eventually, she is reunited with Navidson after she conquers her claustrophobia and saves him from the abyss of the labyrinth.

Tom Navidson 

Tom is Will Navidson's somewhat estranged twin brother; 

Tom is a carpenter with substance addiction problems, who is markedly less successful than Will in his personal and professional life. 

After approximately 8 years of little contact, Will contacts Tom when he notices that his house is larger on the inside than the outside. 

A section of the novel, called "Tom's Story", is a partial transcript of documentary evidence and radio communication with the outside world during his vigil within the labyrinth, which he spends alone with his radio, waiting for Will. This section is referred to in the book as a "sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre history of thoughts passing away in the atrocity of that darkness" (page 252). 

He often refers to "Mr. Monster" and many of the jokes and anecdotes he provides are religious in nature. However, in a test of his true character, he bravely saves Will's children from being swallowed by the house before being swallowed himself.

Billy Reston 

Billy is an engineer and a friend of Will's, whom Will enlists early on in the story to help him try to find a rational explanation for the house's oddities. 

Billy uses a wheelchair, having been paralyzed from the waist down in a freak engineering accident in India; Will happened to be on the scene and took a photo of Billy moments before he became paralyzed. Billy came across the photo after his accident and kept it as a reminder that he was fortunate to have survived.

 Once the house's irregularities become more extreme, Billy joins Will and Tom in a thorough analysis; after Holloway and his men go missing, Billy insists on joining Will on the rescue mission, navigating the maze in his wheelchair. 

He eventually saves Will and Holloway's men from Holloway by engaging in a firefight with him, holding him back long enough for the house to "consume" Holloway. 

Billy survives the journey into the maze, but suffers persistent cold spells afterward as well as sustaining damage to his wheelchair.

Holloway Roberts 

Holloway is an experienced explorer whom Will contacts in an effort to properly explore the labyrinth beneath his house. 

Holloway is presented as the consummate outdoorsman: He has successfully engaged in numerous expeditions which would have killed normal men, and is an expert in all forms of survivalist equipment, from spelunking gear to firearms. 

He engages in two brief explorations of the labyrinth before deciding to take his men on a third, prolonged expedition, prior to which they load themselves up with enough food and water to last several days and enough provisions to—they believe—safely guide them back home. During the course of this exploration, Holloway reaches the bottom of the Great Staircase and becomes deranged due to finding nothing but more empty hallways. 

The house's bizarre architecture leads him to believe an image he sees down a hall is the "monster" stalking them when, in fact, he is actually looking at his own men; he shoots one of them, and, upon realizing what he has done, suffers a complete psychological breakdown and tries to murder them. Eventually, the house "traps" him by sealing him inside a series of locked chambers; alone and insane, Holloway records a series of unsettling final messages on a video camera before filming himself committing suicide. 

The tape of his death is recovered by Will from the labyrinth. The seconds leading up to the end of the tape reveal that either 1) Holloway's corpse is devoured by the "monster" he is convinced is real or 2) Holloway merely disappears into the blackness of the house.

When the House begins to attempt to harm the others late in the novel, Reston calls out Holloway's name. Whether Holloway had some influence on the house's actions (before or after his suicide) is left ambiguous.

Minor characters in The Navidson Record 

Kirby 'Wax' Hook: Another explorer of the labyrinth in Navidson's house. He is ultimately shot in the shoulder by Holloway, but he survives. The House leaves him with limited functionality in that shoulder, and an inexplicable case of impotence. However, after Navidson reenters the House for a fifth and final exploration, these symptoms disappear. Wax has a reputation as a flirt, who constantly attempts to hook up with women. He kisses Karen Green, a scene which Will later witnesses on camera.

Jed Leeder: The third explorer of the labyrinth in Navidson's house. He is shot by Holloway in the jaw, killing him.

Chad Navidson: Will Navidson and Karen Green's son, the older sibling. Around the times of the explorations, Chad is described as becoming increasingly aggressive and wandering.

Daisy Navidson: Will Navidson and Karen Green's daughter. During the explorations of the house, Daisy is described as suffering from echolalia.