#bear barks

A house of cards is fragile but provides more weight, structure, and strength than a house of leaves."

I consider now that the title represents the house, the way it indicates the unstable nature of the house and how it is so easily influenced by the people in and around it. A house of cards can withstand a breath, spoken word, admiration and speculation. Delicate as it may be, it still stands under gentle scrutiny. However, should it be made of foliage...the leaves that make up its structure, lighter than card stock with less grip on its surface and less will to stand on its own...it has no chance against the breath of its observer. It will change and collapse, be rebuilt anew until the cycle becomes to burdensome to continue.

It is not the house that fails to obey at the hands of its creator, but rather the creator that fails to see the nature of the house. In that sense, this house is not full of malice and monsters. It is broken down by assumed perception, breath, and built back up by observation, exploration.

It would seem to me that there is no monster in the house. It doesn't go on forever and does not expand past the confines of the earth's core, nor was the door ever keeping that space at bay. It was shaped by the assumptions held by the people who came in contact with it. Each person who interacts with that space has a chance to get too close and knock it down, has a chance to hastily fumble with the leaves and stick them back together again, each time more different than it was before.

The house isn't a space. It's imagination.

It is the imagined safety of the door and its locks that keep it at bay. It is the imagined bottom of the staircase that makes it shorter, it is the imagined danger that brings about the growls and claw marks. And it was the self same power that destroyed anything that dwelled within it for too long, that nearly killed Reston and Navidson, that made it spill out from the door as it was willed into the living room through collective fear, that turned the kitchen into a death trap and took Tom.

There is no light. There is no furniture. There is no conceivable object belonging to the construction of a physical building here, the walls are black and ashen, the hallways go on forever, simply because there was no further expectation upon finding that space.

The place is mostly hallway and rooms. Hallways always go to rooms. rooms come in many different shapes and sizes, hallways come in many different shapes and sizes. this house has stairs so why not too this space? Each influence is directly reflected in how the space shapes itself and this is seen time and again with every Exploration.