ten year old boy should ever have to recollect let alone see, even if it is only in half—tone, the ink, all of it, over and over again, finally gathered on his delicate finger tips, as if by tracing the picture printed in the newspaper, he could in some way retract the details of death, smooth away the cab where the man he saw and loved like a god, agonized and died with no word of his own, illegible or otherwise, no god at all, and so by dissolving the black sky bring back the blue. But he never did. He only wore through one newspaper after another which was when the officials responsible for the custody of parentless children decided something was gravely wrong with him and sent him away, making sure he had no more clippings and all the ink, all that remained of his father, was washed from my hands .
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 conversation. In this respect, Karen acts as the quintessential gatherer. She keeps close to the homestead and while she may not forage for berries and mushrooms she does accumulate tiny bits of sense.
Navidson and Tom, on the other hand, are classic hunters. They select weapons (tools; reason) and they track their prey (a solution). Billy Reston is the one they hope will help them achieve their goal. He is a gruff man, frequently caustic and more like a drill sergeant than a tenured professor. He is also a paraplegic who has spent almost half his life in an aluminum wheelchair. Navidson was barely twenty-seven when he first met Reston. Actually it was a photograph that brought them together. Navidson had been on assignment in India, taking pictures of trains, rail workers, engineers, whatever caught his attention. The piece was supposed to capture the clamor of industry outside of Hyderabad. What ended up plastered on the pages of more than a few newspapers, however, was a photograph of a black American engineer desperately trying to out run a falling high voltage wire. The cable had been cut when an inexperienced crane operator had swung wide of a freight car and accidentally collided with an electrical pole. The wood had instantly splintered, tearing in half one of the power cables which descended toward the helpless Billy Reston, spitting sparks, and lashing the air like Nag or Nagaina. [ 43 — Nag and Nagaina were the names of the two cobras iii Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Eventually both were defeated by the mongoose Rikki -Tikki- Tavi. ]
That very photograph hangs on Reston’s office wall. It captures the mixture of fear and disbelief on Reston’s. face as he suddenly finds himself running for his life. One moment he was casually scanning the yard, thinking about lunch, and in the next he was about to die. His stride is stretched, back toes trying to push him out of the way, hands reaching for something, anything, to pull him out of the way. But he is too late. That serpentine shape surrounds him, moving much too fast for any last ditch effort at escape. As Fred de Stabenrath remarked in April 1954, “L es jeux sontfait. Nous sommes fu cked.” [44—Fred de Stabenrath purportedly exclaimed this right before he was ki[ xxxxxx part missing xxxxxxxx] [45— Zampanô left the rest of this footnote buried beneath a particularly dark spill of ink. At least I’m assuming it’s ink. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s something else. But then that’s not really important.. In some cases, I’ve managed to recover the lost text (see Chapter Nine). Here, however, I failed. Five lines gone along with the rest of Mr. Stabenrath.]
Tom takes a hard look at this remarkable 11 x 14 black and white print. “That was the last time I had legs,” Reston tells him. “Right before that ugly snake bit ‘em off. I used to hate the
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 conversation. In this respect, Karen acts as the quintessential gatherer. She keeps close to the homestead and while she may not forage for berries and mushrooms she does accumulate tiny bits of sense.
Navidson and Tom, on the other hand, are classic hunters. They select weapons (tools; reason) and they track their prey (a solution). Billy Reston is the one they hope will help them achieve their goal. He is a gruff man, frequently caustic and more like a drill sergeant than a tenured professor. He is also a paraplegic who has spent almost half his life in an aluminum wheelchair. Navidson was barely twenty-seven when he first met Reston. Actually it was a photograph that brought them together. Navidson had been on assignment in India, taking pictures of trains, rail workers, engineers, whatever caught his attention. The piece was supposed to capture the clamor of industry outside of Hyderabad. What ended up plastered on the pages of more than a few newspapers, however, was a photograph of a black American engineer desperately trying to out run a falling high voltage wire. The cable had been cut when an inexperienced crane operator had swung wide of a freight car and accidentally collided with an electrical pole. The wood had instantly splintered, tearing in half one of the power cables which descended toward the helpless Billy Reston, spitting sparks, and lashing the air like Nag or Nagaina. [ 43 — Nag and Nagaina were the names of the two cobras iii Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Eventually both were defeated by the mongoose Rikki -Tikki- Tavi. ]
That very photograph hangs on Reston’s office wall. It captures the mixture of fear and disbelief on Reston’s. face as he suddenly finds himself running for his life. One moment he was casually scanning the yard, thinking about lunch, and in the next he was about to die. His stride is stretched, back toes trying to push him out of the way, hands reaching for something, anything, to pull him out of the way. But he is too late. That serpentine shape surrounds him, moving much too fast for any last ditch effort at escape. As Fred de Stabenrath remarked in April 1954, “L es jeux sontfait. Nous sommes fu cked.” [44—Fred de Stabenrath purportedly exclaimed this right before he was ki[ xxxxxx part missing xxxxxxxx] [45— Zampanô left the rest of this footnote buried beneath a particularly dark spill of ink. At least I’m assuming it’s ink. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s something else. But then that’s not really important.. In some cases, I’ve managed to recover the lost text (see Chapter Nine). Here, however, I failed. Five lines gone along with the rest of Mr. Stabenrath.]
Tom takes a hard look at this remarkable 11 x 14 black and white print. “That was the last time I had legs,” Reston tells him. “Right before that ugly snake bit ‘em off. I used to hate the
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