Beneath the Poet’s House Quotes

“Anyway,” Lucretia capitulates, “the last major nineteenth-century idea associated with the Stone Tape Theory is psychometry, the belief that it’s possible to obtain knowledge about the history associated with an object through physical contact with it.”
― Christa Carmen, Beneath the Poet’s House

“The Stone Tape Theory is the speculation that ghosts and hauntings are analogous to tape recordings, and that mental impressions during emotional events can be projected in the form of energy, ‘recorded’ onto rocks or other items, and ‘replayed’ under certain conditions.”
― Christa Carmen, Beneath the Poet’s House

“Why didn’t you just leave? she imagines they’d ask. That question simultaneously infuriates and demoralizes her. Imagine the frog in the pot of boiling water, she can see herself saying. Then imagine that, during the first few instances of the water warming by a few degrees, the frog was also systematically belittled, worn down, stripped of its agency, and gaslit out of taking the very remedies that could have motivated it to escape. Do you see now? Do you see why leaving wasn’t only not an option, it was as likely as starting a little frog pond on the dark side of the moon?”
― Christa Carmen, Beneath the Poet’s House