doogiewray ([info]doogiewray) wrote,
@ 2005-02-23 08:10:00
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The Labyrinth Metaphor
I've drawn labyinths since I was a kid, memorizing the classic design from a picture of a coin from Crete that was in my mother's High School Latin book. Since then, I've drawn them in sand at beaches or in the snow or one BIG one in the desert, I've mowed them into my neighbor's lawn and put them on name-tags, etc. and so forth...



You know, when you look at your Life from the front end, it seems that it is full of many, many choices and branches and roads to take or ignore - a true maze (multipath circuit with many, many dead-ends ("mistakes?") - as opposed to the labyrinth, which has only one path).

But, you know what? ... when you start to get towards the other end of Life and you look back, all you see is that One Path that you took and it's straight as an arrow. Who'd of thunk it, huh?! So, is that what it's all about? (?)

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[info]benhimself
2005-02-23 07:51 pm UTC (link)
Interestingly, I was doing a search on mazes, and found a site which claims that the seven-circuit labyrinth has been linked to the motion of the planet mercury in the sky, going back and forth.

I think life is a bit more like a braid maze, the kind of maze that doesn't have dead-ends, but rather many branches looping back into eachother. And it's an unsolved question, for life, of whether or not there actually is a "right" path to take or not, or whether the difference between your end goal and a loop distracting you from reaching it is a matter of perspective.

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The Zen Labyrinth
[info]doogiewray
2005-02-24 09:03 pm UTC (link)
You are so right about there not being any "right" path (heh heh). I was just writing those words earlier today to my brother. There are just paths, just choices, we make them and take them and move on (Oh, read Delmore Schwartz's poem - "All Clowns are Personae").

But, you know?, looking back ... there are some, no, "many" really stupid or hurtful or "wrong" things that, if I had it to do over again, I would gladly jump at the chance to somehow resolve in a different way (sort of like when you half-wake up remember a dream and lie there trying to rewrite it). There are a few things, on the other hand, that I did OK ("right?"). One hopes to learn from all the paths one has walked (though, more often than not, we repeat ourselves in a sadly Pavlovian manner ... sometimes knowingly, sometimes with a continual drooling indifference to obvious resulting effects).

Still again, if we shift our frame of reference to the Now, it makes for an interesting labyrinth - where the labyrinth is flowing around us as we remain still. Then, are there really any choices at all? Is it random or part of a greater scheme? Does it really matter?

(So many questions, so little t...

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Re: The Zen Labyrinth
[info]doogiewray
2005-12-02 04:40 pm UTC (link)
(One of my favorite poems)

All Clowns are masked and all personae

Delmore Schwartz

All clowns are masked and all personae
Flow from choices; sad and gay, wise,
Moody and humorous are chosen faces,
And yet not so! For all are circumstances,
Given, like a tendency
To colds or like blond hair and wealth,
Or war and peace or gifts for mathematics,
Fall from the sky, rise from the ground, stick to us
In time, surround us: Socrates is mortal.

Gifts and choices! All men are masked,
And we are clowns who think to choose our faces
And we are taught in time of circumstances
And we have colds, blond hair and mathematics,
For we have gifts which interrupt our choices,
And all our choices grasp in Blind Man’s Buff:
“My wife was very different, after marriage,”
“I practice law, but botany’s my pleasure’”
Save postage stamps or photographs,
But save your soul! Only the past is immortal.

Decide to take a trip, read books of travel,
Go quickly! Even Socrates is mortal,
Mention the name of happiness: it is
Atlantis, Ultima Thule, or the limelight,
Cathay or Heaven. But go quickly
And remember: there are circumstances,
And he who chooses chooses what is given,
He who chooses is ignorant of Choice
- Choose love, for love is full of children,
Full of choices, children choosing
Botany, mathematics, law and love,
So full of choices! So full of children!
And the past is immortal, the future is inexhaustible!

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