A Meditation on Labyrinths

Several brilliant paragraphs in search of a unifying theme.

A couple of weeks ago, the Diva and I found, and walked, the labyrinth pictured below. It’s at Land’s End, and has a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s one of at least four in San Francisco—there are two at Grace Cathedral, and one at the California Pacific Medical Center; as it happens, I’ve walked them all. The Land’s End labyrinth is easily the most vulnerable of the four, made simply of rocks and gravel found nearby and raked and set into the labyrinth outlines—in fact, it’s been destroyed by cretins, and remade, at least once. It’s beautifully sited on a promontory, with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. Though it must have taken substantial effort to make, and appears timeless, in fact it was laid out in 2004 by one man, Eduardo Aguilera.

The Land’s End labyrinth depends for its survival on the kindness of strangers, and as the Diva and I negotiated its twisty inevitability we both, without discussion or premeditation, found ourselves tidying and rectifying the pattern by nudging stray rocks back into place. It felt like instinct.

I was reminded of the medicine wheels that appear in (presumably) sacred sites across vast swathes of North America. They are referred to as ‘Indian’ or ‘Native American’ but in fact they are far older than any extant culture and archaeologists tell us that they have existed for several millennia, serving—and being served by—several of the cultures that washed across their range like oceans receding and swelling. Think about that. Medicine wheels—which, like the Land’s End labyrinth are simple patterns of rock laid on the ground—have proven more durable than several civilizations, while also depending on civilizations for their creation, maintenance, and renewal; is it not flabbergasting? Our own civilization protects them carefully, with fences and guards, preserving them for… what?

placing our feet with Jain-like care

Of course, much the same can be said of cities, languages, religions, and other human constructs that outlive humans, and nations, and yet depend on humans for continued existence. It’s as if we are parasitized by patterns of varying complexity who make use of our bodies and minds as a means of life. Think of a medicine wheel filmed from above, its 1,000s of years of existence compressed into a movie of, say, an hour’s duration; it alone would persist while forests shimmered in its margins, while humans, like flickering brown worms, swarmed about and kept it repaired, occasionally adding or deleting pieces of the pattern according to some unguessable logic. I think it would look much like a cell under a microscope, or like a city seen from a satellite. It would be a living, lordly thing, and we its vassals.

The Diva and I walked the labyrinth with something like trepidation, eyes cast down, placing our feet with Jain-like care. I can’t tell you the unknowable vastness of her thoughts, but I know that I was contemplating the labyrinth as a metaphor. Because they are twisty and surprising and yet, in retrospect, inevitable, labyrinths are unavoidable metaphors for relationships, careers, and life itself. And so the walking of a labyrinth should be conducted reverentially, for our passage through it is like our passage through this life. Missteps are likely to find some expression in our circumstances.

I know whereof I speak. For once I walked another labyrinth, with another girl, and though we arrived at its center without mishap she made a fetish of being unrestrained by convention and walked straight out, across the lines, without a backward glance. I felt it like a blow to my heart, and followed her with dread. And in fact that was our last good day together—everything went bad after that, and we both crossed lines that I, at least, came to regret.

These patterns we walk, and live within, and build and maintain and renew; we make them and then they shape us. So much of what we do is set in stone, long before our individual selves exist. So much of what we do is inevitable, but only in retrospect—in the moment of walking, the best we can do is note the lines as best we can and walk with care. And should we choose to flout a line, as sometimes we must, we should do so consciously and face the consequences with open eyes.

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Tagged as: belief systems, geospatial, history, philosophy, weird beliefs