So one thing that I feel NO ONE gets right (except Zampanio, of course) about House of Leaves is the cognito hazard part of it. Everyone gets all caught up in the visuals of "oooo spooky house" they miss what I think the best part is! NOW, granted, I basically can't visualize anything so I'm immune to that particular branch. BUT STILL!!!! The cognitohazard part of it is so fun! And I wish it got more attention! SO, I'm still mid-move, unpacking eternally, on month two at this point. And what do I find but my copy of House of Leaves? So I crack it open and go hunting for the bit. I find something SIMILAR on page 407. Similar but not quite right. It's where that quote I used for the chant in EastEast comes from. About there being immense psychological benefits to obsession. Maybe i'll copy the chant to this directory, just so future me knows what I'm talking about. So. Anyways. I'm lost. Big surprise, given its a maze. BUT! I have vague memories of having been Theseus in my first exploration of this maze. I took NOTES. If you know me you know they probably weren't particularly COHERENT ones. But still. I figured if I could just find that thread I could follow it back to the place I'm trying to reach. Let me tell you, the sheer fucking NOSTALGIA of looking through emails I sent myself with "house of leaves" in it. 2016 was a fucking year. I was still really disabled. Hadn't made SBURBSim yet. HAD read homestuck tho, a year before, because I got into House of Leaves in the first place because the wikipedia article for homestuck listed it as a similar body of work. So. I can't find my thread. I'm getting frustrated because I KNOW I sent myself email notes (since emails have handy dandy time stamps I prefer to do note taking that way). out of desperation, i click a thread titled "Homestuck". and what do i find but my house of leaves notes. thanks past me, as coherent as always. so. i'm gonna take screenshots of those notes, and passages i thought were releveant to my thesis during my skimmed re-read. but im also gonna put the raw text of my notes here as well. so i am less likely to forget them. AND, to be better to future me (and I suppose any Observers) than past me was, I'll LABEL THIS CORRECTLY THIS TIME instead of inexplicablly calling it homestuck. SPOILER ALERT: I have a suprising amount of page numbers and organization in my notes! EXCEPT FOR THE ONE PART I AM LOOKING FOR. I'll do <>> for the part that SHOULD lead me to my goal but does not. or honestly if i have any comments at all. i know how i am. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wed, May 4, 2016, 10:44 AM <> What I really liked about the first few acts of homestuck was the feeling of confusion. Of concepts sliding off my mind, of things not sticking into memory. Of whole concepts being marked 'this will probably make sense later' in my brain. It made me feel like...I was exploring. The Witness was the same way. In fact, the first few acts of Homestuck felt very much like a video game to me, and the challenge was to figure out the lingo and mechanics. One thing I LOVED about Homestuck is all those 'here there be Dragons' sections of my map really did get filled in, and there is very little left in it I feel confused about. Things I couldn't keep in memory at the time jump back into retroactive focus once I have unlocked their meaning. And a second reading provides even more clarity. I am about to read house of leaves, and have a similar expectation, especially about colored words. ~~~~ Wed, May 4, 2016, 11:09 AM Narrator talks about learning big words in ensuing months. I know book gets weird...does something happen to his ability to use or reuse language? ~~~~ Wed May 4, 2016, 11:11 AM All this is page xvi, love the foreshadowing....the description of what seems relevant in hindsight in the room vs his total memories. WHY such random details are relevant is a delicious mystery with an implicit promise of satisfaction ~~~~ Thu, May 5, 2016, 6:33 PM In a footnote, narrator wants to use the word incapacitated, but it comes out decapacitated...the says "I mean in-'. Loss of words? ~~~~ Fri May 6, 2016, 6:54 PM Another wrong word. 'Tore her to pisces' instead of pieces. This time in actual text, not footnote. Or DID she get torn to fishes ~~~~ Fri, May 6, 2016, 7:31 PM Page 50 footnote outright has. -can't write the word- Instead of a word ~~~~ May 13, 2016, 3:07 PM On page 97, love the way the book keeps suspending my disbelief and then purposefully shocking me back into it. It keeps remind me that every layer of the edits about a book about a movie is a flakey fake fake that I shouldn't trust. Footnotes have rambled from the beginning, sure, but usually only in the first editor layer. Then a single footnote cites hundreds of authors in the book layer, and this is wrong even before the editor layer points out the names were chosen at random. Like...Like somehow I believed in the INTEGRITY of the fake nonfiction book about a fake maybe fiction movie. That yeah, I knew the cited books (themselves also about the fake movie) didn't exist...but I didn't expect Zampano to a knowledge that. I thought he believed in it all... Now *I* am rambling. I wanted to talk about the latest thing that slapped me out of suspended disbelief, the footnotes asking me to check appendices for interview transcripts that don't exist. Like, the book in my hands is mocking me, emphasizing the holes in the narrative. And yet also drawing my attention to the fact that it IS a narrative,however much it dresses Like non fiction. It even claims Zampano was told it was inappropriate to be so much a narrative in non fiction, that you have to assume your audience has seen the source material.... ~~~~ May 13, 2016, 3:15 PM Man, it also occurs to me that by having the inner book be a critical review of a confusing subject, it primes the reader to think critically about the confusing physical book ~~~~ Fri, May 13, 2016, 3:28 PM Wait was it page 97 before??? In 97 now. There is a FUCKING CHECKMARK...which the letters from truants mother means secret messages. And there is dots in the chapter, which I somehow didn't notice for nearly two pages. And there is a quote about Morse code SOS ...but no dashes...do the dashes in the text count? Do the dots? ~~~~ May 13, 2016, 4:12 PM Oh my fucking God. The book just DARED me to read ahead. Not told me, like when there is an index or some shit. No, it DARED me. Page 113. Footnotes talks about hinted Escher themes, except on page 30, 356 and 441. 'Though not really'. So, after a lot of cursing, I look. Page 356 is in a play format with Karen (movie character) chatting with THE FUCKING AUTHOR OF GOEDEL ESCHER BACH about xeno's paradox, using the same format as the xeno's paradox play in the book. GAH ~~~~ Mon, May 16, 2016, 6:12 PM Page 122. If the house and the book are both labyrinths...then is the book also bigger on the inside? Do some pages, read out if order, provide new content? That would be one way to do it. ~~~~ May 17, 2016, 7:25 PM <> I'm on page 147. Holy Fuck. What must it have been like reading this book before ubiquitous internet? The book was talking about how the Navidson Report (inner movie) was too gritty, too "rumpled" to be easily dismissed as fake. That there were "seemingly functionless details" in it that are a hallmark of reality. Then, in a footnote (footnotes being increasingly unreliable as I'm well in the maze of upside down and hole-in-the-book footnotes), they provide an extra example of the opposite: Something too slickly produced to be interpreted as real. The footnote references an article (with very specific information citing it) about an independent film that won several explicitly named rewards about the murder of a little girl that turned out to be a real murder, but no one believed it at first and there was scandal when it came out. Of course, horrified, I immediately google the title: "La belle nicoise et le beau chien" and discover that, of course, that didn't really happen and it is complete fiction. The footnote was "rumpled" enough, with enough unnecessary details that for a horrified second I believed it (but not enough to take it at face value). I am totally getting "999"ed by this book, aren't I? Sure, I am catching SOME of the bullshit that's working it's way into my personal mythos (a la homestuck), but some percentage of it is probably rooting in my brain as we speak. How much dumbshit do I now take as fact? Hell...I would argue I might only be catching the bullshit it's explicitly WARNING me about... How hard would it be to interpret the book as anything other than what it's instructed me to think? Would I see a labyrinth metaphor otherwise? Probabl...but ...damn. ~~~~ May 25, 2016, 6:04 PM Page 320. "He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me". There has never been a 'me' in the main story before. Is zampano Tom, the brother? ~~~~ May 25, 2016, 6:34 PM Page 326, Johnny truant has the irrational fear that the book created him, that the book is fiction written by neither him not zampano. It's gonna get meta ~~~~ May 25, 2016, 6:41 PM Page 330, burn marks obscure the text, marked by brackets, and yet []ou[]e is still house blue ~~~~ Mon, May 30, 2016, 2:05 PM Page 354, more meta. Footnote notes that this section was considered to be too off tone and broke the paving in the theatrical release of the movie, but was included in dvds ~~~~ Mon, May 30, 2016, 2:14 PM <> Page 356 has me finally caught up to the glimpse of the goedel Escher Bach zeno's paradox page, and I am delighted to note it makes sense in context. Homestuck had a lot of sections like that, where you read not to further the plot, or not JUST that, but to get your mind in a receptive state for what comes next. I love moments when i realize that what I am reading is understandable only because of everything that has come before. It's almost religious. I have done the rituals, I have purified my mind, and now I have enlightenment. There are no shortcuts. ~~~~ May 30, 2016, 2:39 PM <> Page 361; anytime Jennifer Antipala the architecture engineer, says anything, it reminds me of the hole in the book listing what the house doesn't have. Her sections are just lists of all the laws of physics the house breaks ~~~~ Jun 1, 2016, 6:11 PM <> Page 407. Nonfiction book mentions physical and mental health effects not just for people who enter house, but people who write about it(and, to a lesser extent, simply know about it). ~~~~ Wed, Jun 1, 2016, 6:13 PM <> Thinking about how much the empty house makes you feel, or talking about it helps reduce symptoms. Thus the ridiculously long books referenced 200 page literary theories, anyone?). And also the sheer amount of people who have documented opinions. ~~~~ Jun 6, 2016, 5:25 PM <> 467. Holy shit. Navidson inside the deepest level of the book 'and house) so far is reading House of Leaves by matchlight, burning the pages as he goes. But he can't keep up 'maybe the words in the book have been arranged in such a way as to make them practically impossible to read'. The house /book doesn't want to be finished... ~~~~ Jun 6, 2016, 5:26 PM Also, claims house of leaves is 736 pages versus 709 I can see (by page count) ~~~~ Mon, Jun 6, 2016, 5:36 PM The house is ash colored. Made of rock, tho. But still, like already read pages of a burnt book ~~~~ Jun 6, 2016, 5:48 PM Page 507. Nothing is more evidence of a psychotic break than Johnny truant claiming he is happy and healthy. Not even his murder hallucinations. I especially like him claiming that after two weeks of rehibilitation he is so healthy he can run a six minutes mile. This REALLY reminds me of his mothers letters, both his presumed words and hers. ~~~~ Jun 6, 2016, 6:06 PM Lol, and now Johnny is mocking me for 'believing' his tall tale ~~~~ Mon, Jun 6, 2016, 6:15 PM Page 513, Johnny never did fine the house, but he did find house of leaves, written by zampano with notes and edits by Johnny truant ~~~~ Mon, Jun 6, 2016, 6:53 PM Complete ~~~~ Jun 6, 2016, 7:04 PM Hell, even the credits have wrongness. "Special thanks to the Talmor Zedactur Repository for providing a VHS copy of Exploration #4". Of course that can't be right. None of the tapes are real. Internet says tzr are authors fathers initials. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ now I'm just adding screenshots of relevant emails with 'house of leaves' in it. just in case it helps me find the quote.