SLPAD - 98 - "Low-Lands" - 11

[Michael Bailey]

Description of the house description - maybe some wilful distortion on my
part, in the direction of horror?

Flange seems comfortable there,
"...had come to feel attached to the place by an umbilical cord woven of
lichen and sedge, furze and gorse; he called it his womb with a view"

But even that summons horror-flick images like Stephen King's acting tour
de force, "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", or at least one episode of
"Sleepy Hollow" where plants try to take over. Or that ad I keep seeing on
Hulu. And rather than Flange offspring, or circles of friends, or creative
endeavors, gestating in the house is Flange himself - (what rough beast?)

Less horrible would be a resonance with Marvell: "our vegetable love should
grow faster than empires and more slow" which is what he keeps singing to
Cindy about, perhaps, but she's not into it.


Using an Iceland Spar double view, it's possible to arrive at the notion of
a double intention on the part of the omniscient narrator.

Reading through with Flange-centered consciousness, it's a big nice roomy
nurturing place, he keeps saying.

Engaging the passage as a neutral observer with the usual societal norms,
there's morbidity in "tumulus" - disorientation in "oddly angled rooms" -
then "innumerable tunnels which writhed away radically like the tentacles
of a spastic octopus into dead ends, storm drains, abandoned sewers and
occasionally a secret wine cellar." At the very least it's got to smell
when it rains. Also "innumerable tunnels" - how many tunnels can lead away
from a single rumpus room? How hard could it be to count them? Maybe he
just can't be bothered, or maybe his surroundings have put him into an
innumerate daze.The clincher is the spastic octopus, if one isn't already
engulfed by dread.

Connotation of house, taking off from "where one lives" : house as position
in the community and ecosystem - the occasional wine cellar a bright spot
amongst all these connections with dead ends, storm drains, abandoned
sewers;
but the wine bibbers are bibbing Rocco's home vintage rather than the
fruits of diligent tunnel exploration on Dennis's part.

Sloth - John Phillips in his autobiography mentioned a house he and
Michelle shared which had a massive chandelier in the front room, with many
light bulbs, each eventually burning out. Michelle told him, "When the last
bulb burns out, I'm leaving." And she did.