Labyrinths
June 30, 2007
A seven ring labyrinth.
A medieval labyrinth.
A scythe-eyed laughing-faced labyrinth.
It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was much later than I had thought and that I had to hurry; the shock of this discovery made me feel uncertain of the way, I wasn’t very well acquainted with the town as yet; fortunately, there was a policeman at hand, I ran to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: “You asking me the way?” “Yes,” I said, “since I can’t find it myself.” “Give it up! Give it up!” said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.
The drawings were based on images found on Wikipedia, and a German site called “Mystery Labyrinth”:
The Kafka quote is from:
Kafka, Franz. “Give it up!” The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. 456.
Labyrinthine obsessions
June 28, 2007
I’m sixteen years old and I like to draw labyrinths. I like to draw a bunch of them. Then I look them over. I like to look at my work after I finish, solving each one, winding my gaze through the tunnels I’ve created. I looked up the word labyrinth in my high school’s encyclopedia. I found some stories and some pictures. I copied the pictures. I couldn’t wait to show Uncle Deddle. He gets a kick out of that kind of thing. He used to take me out butterfly hunting. I remember him stepping out of his pickup truck with two nets, one for me and one for Kitey. He’d been gone for two weeks, what’d seemed like some forever to me and Kitey. We’d spent the two weeks wishing he was back already. That day he left, he kissed me on the cheek, and I felt the whiskers rub against me, this time endearing, and he told me he’d be back in no time. Then he turned to Kitey and told her he loved her, and that he’d only be gone for a short time. Before that, we’d been talking every time at dinner about how he’d be going away, and thinking about it in between. “I can’t believe he’ll be gone!” He’d been living with us for so long. He would wake me and Kitey up every day on school days. He’d always find a new way to wake us up. Once he came in beating the drum that was always kept in the corner. Another time, I awoke to Ashes’s purring. We named our cat Ashes. Still another time, I was dreaming about walking along a condensing trail, condensing with vines, leaves, branches, roots. Everything was brushing against my face. The leaves, the vines . . . I kept pushing through. They were trying to get in my mouth, in my nose. They tickled. I used my hands to push them out of my way, but they were persistent. One of the vines was particularly persistent. It kept trying to work its way up my nose. At first it just tried to lay itself on my upper lip. It wished not to intrude. It was only seaching for a home. My upper lip, my upper lip would be its home. Not my nose. I slapped it off. It returned. I pushed it aside again, this time with less conviction. The third time, it knew it would be staying, and it planted itself in its new home, and started growing up there. I felt it graze against the roof of my nostril as it reached into my head, toward my space, toward my thunks. I saw Uncle Deddle above me, reaching into my nose with a feather. He was trying not to laugh. I pulled my upper lip down and to the left, trying to itch, squeezed my eyes shut, then wiped my nose with my hand, pretended to laugh so that he would go away, and turned onto my side, away from him, drifting off.
It used to be a hobby of mine, but I started devoting more and more time to it. It got to the point where I realized it was getting in the way of what had been my professional ambitions. A tiny beam of light came piercing through, you see. It would always disappear the moment I directed what would become my professional gaze toward it, like the little squiggly lines that floated around the foreground of my field of vision. The beam of light was always there, but just to the side . . . I knew it was there.
Hope dies like the dinosaurs
June 19, 2007
What’s worse than boredom is believing for a moment, or worse still, for a few moments, that excitement may be coming, only to remind yourself that your law is still in effect.
The message couldn’t be true because your law couldn’t possibly have been let up.
You don’t hold the breath, since you’ve learned in the past to always continue the breathing.
You will never find someone who wants to discontinue the breathing with you.
It gradually and painfully exposes itself.
It seems that you were correct in second-guessing the hint of hope.
Everything is still as it was.
You were wrong to doubt your law for that instant, and now . . . you plunge.
Don’t focus on it too intensely.
Fall asleep, some of it will go away by the morn.
It will add some darks to your palate, but nothing more.
Better to keep it away, where it’s not to be seen.
Keep hiking, intrepid travelor, the boredom will return.
The point of hope is still present.
It will die like the dinosaurs.
Remember that as a point contracts, it approaches everything.
You never know with people.
Living alone is always and never preferable to living a lie.
It was all a conceited idea in the first place.
Pointy shards
June 15, 2007
I sat with my back against the border of my cell, imagining the space I had to cover in order to make it.
We spent the evenings drinking excessively of the healthy, humid laughter of our companions, frantically throwing our arms and legs into the air, not searching, not finding, not caring.
You never stop attempting to stare at your chains, even though your seeing is your chains.
Rhythm will always be a chase, a hunt, a voyage with no destination, so arm yourself to the teeth with your despair and hit the path.
Rhythm will only and always present you with another leg of the footpath, where the arrival at every craggy peak of every ascented precipice reveals another precipice, another ascent.
What if she were following you down your chosen path, in your footprints, in your shadow, in the crackling of the underbrush as you intrepidly pushed on, thinking of what lay beyond the next corner?
