The End

I finished all 709 pages of House of Leaves at last this afternoon. I will next reread the much thinner The Whalestoe Letters as a separate volume. Touching and frightening in a balance of cloud and light. Hallways and beaches… It’s beauty and ugliness on the same page, in the same walls. It will change your life, or at least affirm that you are indeed alive.

A book of letters awaits the end of this journey, yet it is where Johnny’s began as well. Each letter ends.

And some endings here are:

I love you so much.
You are all I have.

I am truly
only yours,

As always,
all my love,

I am here. Ever devoted. Still
surfeit with tenderness, affection
and most of alllove,

I have nothing.
I am nothing.
Only love for youmakes that not true.

Love, love, undying,

Love’s word,

Devoted beyond death,

With too much love for even
the world to hold

Love’s every word,

Eternally yours,

Words, even ones spelling out The End, can have more meaning that we ever understand… In the days before we took language for granted, those who could write were the closest to the gods. Writing was an act of enchantment. Each symbol meaning much more than it meant, it was an act of creation bettered only by giving life. Yet the words themselves were alive with magic and truth. Why have words become corrupted in our world? When most are used to spread lies. Lies, you see, come in many forms. I don’t mean fiction, and stories, for they are more true than nearly any news story commonly is, for stories can hold deep truths. Myths shape us more than “real” events can ever, at times. Words were sacred once. Holy waters, holy bloods, divine ink spilling forth something more than the writer, something muses danced in, drank of and bled into.

Have we lost the ability to create sacred words? No, we never shall as long as we seek truth. True words are just harder to find among the disease of Lies, Fear and Hate. Three beasts let loose upon the world to keep us from the sweet rain of Peace.