Emptiness

Last night at about this same time I was lying on the couch reading House of Leaves and listening to Nine Inch Nails's Ghosts . Although I found With Teeth, Year Zero and The Slip to basically be Trent Reznor rehashing the adolescent angst formula he's used so well over the years, this collection of 36 instrumental tracks highlights his talent as a composer. Austere yet exquisite.

So I have this creepy music playing and I'm reading this book about a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. This creates an uncanny echo, as a hallway that seems to leak darkness into the surrounding room just appears in this house, evoking emptiness, space, and simultaneous feelings of claustrophobia and agorophobia.

I'm scared of the ocean because it seems so large. I wrap the covers around myself at night because empty outside threatens to devour me. The hallway behind me opens to abandoned rooms. Without their auras I feel the silence staring at me. I can't even look that way without imagining something that isn't supposed to be there walking out of one of their rooms. It is very tall and it knows me, but I know it not.

In the corner of my eye I expect to look out the sliding-glass door onto our back porch and see it watching me.




mm


np: Radiohead In Rainbows