A Journal Wrapped in Red Leather Cord. The leather cover has faint lettering branded into it, as if taken from the skin of a farmer's animal. The words are impossible to make out.
The first day of the week the dew began to appear
Grecian, Roman columns. The stars, the seas, the fish- all european. The fireman called them Minotaurs. Pagan gods require sacrifices. Their favor can be won. I can only imagine this place is some god's private hell, that i've found myself on rather the wrong end of some kind of basilisk conjecture. The hallways twist away in geometric, random directions. In all things made, the Creator's hand is evident to those willing to look closely. Nowhere is this more apparent than in mazes. A maze requires you to surrender your context- your life, your wealth, your sense of orientation in the real world. Who you are does not matter. What you want does not matter. Context, legibility, your ability to even see the boundaries of your self, your perception, where your feet end and the bricks begin. All the rules of the world you learned mean nothing. Our brains are more malleable than we think, even into old age. The rules of the "real" world are simply very reliable. To think outside of those rules introduces a grand shift. We are only able to function on one "ruleset" at a time. This is why it's so important to teach children that things are one way. That this world is real, and dreams are not. It's why we fear those who see things, who operate on rules that resemble ours but are dented and warped by the maddening sensation of a rule bending underfoot. Once doubt is introduced, the mind cannot trust rules anymore. This is real because there is nothing else. All else is false, is play, is a symptom of madness. There is nothing else because if this is not all there is, then why would we play by these rules? Why would we not play a game we prefer? No, we must all play the same game, by the same rules, or there is no authoritative reality. This is the religon-of-reality.
Mazes are the first crack in this facade. Mazes are spirals in the line of time. On the back of a cereal box. At a country festival, cut in fields of corn. Lines intersect, oppose, refuse to be traced out. They are a thing deliberately not legible; a challenge. A temptation of opting out. When you are a child, a maze is a wonderful, powerful thing. A maze is a heaven-sent sword, a weapon forged of that meteorite iron that makes up the girders that hold the sky in place. Slip your parent's guiding hand, and dissapear into a place welcoming and impassable. The maze is easy to walk. It is hard to navigate. Your parent cannot simply step over your efforts, as they do with locked doors, hidden magazines, amateurish lies. Here is a sharpened fragment of the very material adults build the world out of, and it snags those who wish to move past it, and protects those who stay with it. You are more willing to engage with these rules than theirs. Lost in a maze, you opt out of the still-cherry-red and pliable iron shackles you are being fitted for. Especially for those for whom the rules of this game "Life" are disadvantageous or distasteful- this is a feeling deep in the gut. A glint of star through slats of a slave ship. A unlocked door. A knife hidden under the blankets as father's footsteps draw near.
Of course, a hedge maze will eventually be scoured for a hiding child. But this development cracks the facade. The rules are not True, simply very accurate. Something else exists. You can tolerate this existence. You know there was something else there. You tasted it, felt it, lived it, was it. At the depths of the labyrinth, there was a corner that was darker than all the others. You stared at it, and did not approach. The house stared back through parted lips.
The firefigher. The homeless man. The little boy. The whore. The tower-climber. The fisher. The woman with the tattoo. Even the Others. The sable, The Slate, the Granite, The Onyx. The look in the eyes, the exhaustion that sleep does not abate. The wish to return. The wary disbelief as they wake on cold marble. The tinge of embarassment at how quickly they adapt. When they wake up here, it is as if waking up from a horrible dream that stretched for your whole life. The House affords no human comforts. It levies no human cruelties. It is a weapon that can only be raised in self-defence. It is the dark that obscures the thief, the salvation of those with one foot out of the world. It is warm, soft, and terribly dark. The door is unlocked. You step outside, feeling the asphalt strangely warm under your bare feet. The street is bathed in orange. You look down, see your shadow spill out over the curb. The houses fade into the horizon. You walk. The cell wall dissolves. The walls resist categorization, understanding, legibility. That is their purpouse. They are caltrops to the feet of the slaver, the parent, the police-officer, but to you, who wants only to be someplace, they are underfoot as blades of grass. You walk down the gently sloping hill, past the treeline. Your parents feel the draft of the door. You will never be found if you wish not to be. Relax your body and feel the barrier between the self and The House dissolve. You will feel the stone warm. You will feel your flesh become firm.
