Labyrinth
A labyrinth has only one path. So you cannot get lost in it unlike in a maze that gives you choices and dead ends. Yet walking a labyrinth feels like being lost. I first met the labyrinth in a child’s magazine decades ago, in the story of Theseus. A monster at the centre, a hero with a sword, a girl with a ball of thread. It was a simple story of courage rewarded. It took me years to notice what the story quietly assumes: that the labyrinth is a problem to be solved, an obstacle on the way to somewhere. Daedalus, who built it, knew better. When he had to leave Crete, he did not re-enter his own creation to walk out of it. He went over it, on the wings of wax and feathers. The builder did not trust the path he had built himself. The labyrinth is quite strange compared with a maze. It winds, doubles back, takes you near the centre and then away from it soon, but there are no junctions, no choices, no dead ends – unlike the maze. You cannot get lost in a labyrinth. And yet, ...
