"Surviving House, Kalapana, Hawaii, 1993" — Diane Cook

In Passion For Pity and Other Recipes For Disaster (London: Greenhill Books, 1996) Helmut Muir cried: "They both live. They even get married. It's a happy ending."

Which is true. Both Karen and Will Navidson survive their ordeal and they do exchange conjugal vows in Vermont. Of course, is it really possible to look at Navidson's ravaged face, the patch covering his left eye, the absence of a hand, the crutch wedged under his armpit, and call it a "happy" ending? Even putting aside the physical cost, what about the unseen emotional trauma which Muir so casually dismisses?

The Navidsons may have left the house, they may have even left Virginia, but they will never be able to leave the memory of that place.

"It is late October," Navidson tells us in the closing sequence to The Navidson Record. Almost a year and a half has passed since he emerged from the house. He is still recovering but making progress, pouring his life into finishing this project. "At least one good thing to come out of all this," he says with a smile. "The skin condition plaguing my feet for all these years has completely vanished."

The children seem to approve of Vermont. Daisy adamantly believes faeries inhabit the countryside and spirits possess her collection of stuffed animals and dolls, in particular a red and gold one. Chad on the other hand has become obsessed with Lego, spending countless hours with pounds and pounds of their arrangement. When questioned about this newfound interest, he only says that someday he wants to become an architect.

Karen struggles every day to keep up with everyone's energies. Only recently she was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer. The mastectomy was considered "successful" and subsequent chemotherapy

declared "very effective." Nevertheless hair loss and severe stomach ulceration have left Karen gaunt and grey. She has lost too much weight and constantly needs to sit down to catch her breath. Still, as Navidson tenderly shows us, her will-o'-the-wisp smiles seem impervious to the ravaging effects of disease and whenever she laughs the notes sing a call to Victory.

Navidson captures all this in simple, warmly lit shots: simmering milk, roasted walnuts and against a backdrop of black ash and pine, Karen's graceful fingers braiding her daughter's long auburn hair. Despite Karen's infrequently removed woolen hat, she and Daisy still both share a remarkable radiance. What Massel Laughton once described as "a kind of beautiful mischief." [210]

Nor is this the only shot of mother and child. Hundreds of photographs hang on the walls of their home. Every room, stairway, and corridor supports pictures of Karen, Daisy, Chad, and Navidson as well as Tom, Reston, Karen's mother, their friends, distant relatives, ancient relatives, even Mallory and Hillary.

Though this collage is immensely appealing, Navidson is wise enough to know he cannot close on such images. They may be heart warming but what they imply rings false. As Navidson says himself: "I kept looking for assurances, for that gentle ending, but I never found it. Maybe because I know that place is still there. And it always will be there."

Navidson has never stopped wrestling with the meaning of his experience. And even though it has literally crippled him, he somehow manages to remain passionate about his work. Mercifully, in her captivating book on art, culture, and politics, in which she includes The Navidson Record in the spire of her analysis, Daphne Kaplan reminds the reader what it means to be passionate:

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ^A

Navidson suffers the responsibilities of his art and consequently must turn from the blind comfort found in those neatly framed photographs filling his home to follow his costume clad children out into the New England streets, their hearts set on sacks of candy, their paths hidden beneath cold coloured leaves.

In those final shots, Navidson gives a wink to the genre his work will always resist but invariably join. Halloween. Jack O'lanterns. Vampires, witches, and politicians. A whole slew of eight year old ghouls haunting the streets of Dorset, plundering its homes for apples and MilkyWays, all while tossing up high-pitched screams into the sparkling blackness forever closing in above them.

Tongues of grey ice cover the roads, candles flicker unevenly, and grownups gulp hot cider from styrofoam cups, always keeping watch over their sheep in wolves' clothing lest something disturb their pantomime. Each squeal and cry arrests a sip of warmth as parents everywhere