Only a Mark

It's the small things that hit home.  That get under the skin, give you the creeps.  The little connections that you never see until you're not looking for them.

It's late, and I'm reading a book.  House of Leaves.  An excellent read, non-standard by all definitions.  Never read a book like it.  Probably never will again, unless it ends up changing the way people write, and read, the way I hope it does, but know it never will.

VIII, the heading to the page, the beginning of a new section.  No title, though Webster's definition of SOS does lend a vague insight to the following pages.  Pages which cover a lot of ground.  That distance isn't important though.  Not tonight.  Not right now.  How do we know that even Johnny and his footnotes lend insight to something we can't see. 

There's more.  Something I notice early on, but don't comprehend until the end of the chapter, nudged slowly to understanding by the torrent of words and images, all of which gathers together, puddling at the edges of my mind.  Everything means something.  There is no accident, no whim.  Not here, not in this world, this realm, which as I read, I find cannot be confined to a page.  No, refuses to be.  Opening eyes to something which was always there, but which I did not see.  Like the house, ever growing, changing.

I returned to the beginning, placing a flag, a reminder of things I can't, or won't, discover now.  Cut short in my idle wondering, doubting of my future fidelity to my desire.  Cut short by a simple check-mark, nothing too large or too small, nothing of consequence, a simple check-mark made purposely as it was, not to be noticed.  I can only exist, a remembrance somehow of the reason I once feared the dark.  That which seemed so infinite, so intimidating, and most importantly, so unknown.

All stops as I see it, many precious seconds are lost, minutes for all I know.  My lungs remind me with a searing pain that I must breath. This because of simple mark, though more.  The reassurance of a scarred, embittered, and lonely boy to his mother.  Reassurance that he had received her letter.  The question laps 'round my thoughts though, was the mark meant for her? or for me?  If for me, did it know I would find it?  Not in a search, but by accident, out of the periphery of my sight.

The mark frightens me.  Like all unknown.  Simply because it's a way for the book, taking cues from the house, to assert that it cannot be limited, and that all beyond is unknown.

Against reason, I'm jumping at shadows.  Shadows of what will be found as I delve deeper into this ever shifting realm.


SOS