Labyrinths are convergent cultural evolution. And some writing prompts (poeming toward acceptance; unprompted AIs).
🌝 Happy Pink Moon!
We walked a labyrinth in December. It was fine!
There were six of us. Two of us were first-time labyrinthers.
But before I get into my experience, let’s clear up misconceptions.
They're not mazes.
First of all, the walls are v short. Not really walls at all. Just stones on the ground. Tina, the dog that was with us, ran right across the whole thing, without even needing to hop over the walls (and she’s a short dog!).
Second of all, there's only one way to go. You can't get lost.
It's meditative-ish.
Like, instead of sitting silently and focusing on your breath or whatever, some people like walking a labyrinth.
The nearby Unitarian Universalist Church has a labyrinth in their basement. You can go walk theirs every first Sunday of the month. There's a "labyrinth keeper" who greets you and explains the way they do things. The rules aren't "correct" or "the best way," just some helpful guidelines they've found for getting the most out of the experience. To help your chattering monkey brain get out of the way. I'll get more into my own experience later, but I think this sounds wonderful. I certainly wouldn't get much out of meditation if I hadn't had some guidance early on.
There's a whole Labyrinth Society or something? People are real into this. There's been a sort of labyrinth revival going on since the 1990s?
My favorite thing I learned about labyrinths while organizing the event: labyrinths are a cool example of convergent cultural evolution. You know, convergent evolution? The thing where sensing light is so useful that eyeballs evolved separately in, what? Three different evolutionary branches? No genetic material was shared between the branches; they all re-invented sight from scratch.
Well, apparently labyrinths are such a useful and universal metaphor for journeying that they were invented from scratch by at least a couple civilizations. Civilizations that definitely weren't talking to each other. For example, Europeans about 6,000 years ago loved this labyrinth design:
While over in Papagueria, tens of thousands of years separated from the Europeans, the Tohono Oʼodham couldn't get enough of this one:
See? They're the same basic layout, just flipped.
Ok so what was it like?
A metaphor for journeying. A metaphor for completing a task. What kind of task?
I personally didn't have a profound experience. Some people want the metaphorical task to be a spiritual journey. And sure, that too. But I thought of things more quotidian.
The labyrinth winds you around and around. You start off sort of in the middle, then go to the outside, more middle, the very center, maybe you pause, then back out the way you came. It's hard to tell how far in or out you are. Maybe if you kept really close track, it would be easy, but I didn't. Seemed like I wasn't supposed to.
I was fine with meandering. Just taking my time, occasionally pausing, feeling the pine needles on the ground, looking at the fog and trees. Trying to get into a meditative mindset despite being around other people. I find this challenging! There's a burden of meaning—"time to have a meaningful experience"—and I end up performing what I think I'm supposed to be doing instead of just having an interior experience. So I was trying to get out of that, and just do the thing.
It was fine, in its way. I wasn't thinking about the time, or wishing it would be over.
Until I thought I was about to be done.
It looked like I was in the corral that led right to the exit. But then it wound me back toward the middle. And at that point, I couldn't stop wanting to be done. Now I was annoyed that it was taking so long. Wondering when I'd get to leave.
And isn’t that just the way it goes? It made me think about boring work tasks. That point 80% through where I just can't wait to be done. I thought this would be quick! But now it’s dragging on and on.
Or when I’m tidying the kitchen before bed, and almost done, feeling good, but oops! I never cleared the table. And now what could have felt like an easy subtask feels overwhelming.
Or the workers at the coffee shop today, when we showed up 5 minutes before closing time, and they couldn’t hold our orders in their heads for 5 seconds. Even though they closed earlier, it being Sunday, than they usually do. If you start to think you’re almost done, it’s hard to reengage.
You can see how this would apply to all sorts of heavy things, too. The tiny-rudder-on-a-big-ship effort to steer an organization. The glacial pace of social change. The future-aborting fog of infertility. The indiscernible fatigue of long-term illness. The will-it-ever-feel-ok-again of trauma. The I-don’t-ever-want-to-feel-ok-again of grief. Some journeys may never end; we may never escape some labyrinths. At least with one made of stones on the ground, you know you get to leave.
So yes, as I said: a universal metaphor for journeying.
I’d do it again.
Some writing prompts
No transition here. Just a 2-for-1. Thoughts on labyrinths, and: some writing prompts. Lucky you! There’s a chronological connection, I suppose, for me. Labyrinth was December, and January’s when I brought these prompts to my writing group. I liked these prompts; they liked these prompts; and these prompts tie into Scientific Animism in ways that seem obvious enough to not bother stating. (If I’m wrong about that, I direct you, as always, with earnest anticipation for the conversations we can have, to the comments section.) So without further ado, get your writing fingers ready, or at least your brain in an open-ended exploratory space, and—
Writing Prompt 1: poeming toward acceptance
Especially at points in my life when I've been trying to convince myself to believe things that I suspected were true but too ugly to accept, I've written poetry. I eased my cognitive dissonance by looking at things more closely. By finding metaphors. By using difficult concepts as building blocks in some different project of meaning.
Pick something that you don't like to look at but suspect might be true. If you don't have anything, maybe: the evolutionary origins of life (this was the one for me), death, a possible loss (be specific!), rising sea levels, extinction (mass, human, or some poignant-to-you creature), colonization, war, genocide, etc etc. Spend ten minutes writing about it, maybe using the concept as a metaphor for something else.
Some writing that kinda sorta does this:
example 1: about stories, excerpted from The Overstory by Richard Powers
...[stories] diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given: everyone imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with a surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It's a child's creed, of course. Just one small step up from the belief that the creator of the universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one. And to mistake Life for something huge with two legs. No. Life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale. And the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.
example 2: ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I’VE GOT IS A LOVE POEM, by Ayisha Siddiqa
What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight. Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves. To withstand your own end is difficult. The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right. Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet. If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing. What if we convince her to stay? How rare and beautiful it is that we exist. What if we stun existence one more time? When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin with her ruptured belly tags along. Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins and the violent shape of their drinking water. The earth remembers everything, our bodies are the color of the earth and we are nobodies. Been born from so many apocalypses, what's one more? Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire. But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again. Gamble on humanity one hundred times over Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them. I’d follow love into extinction.
Writing Prompt 2: unprompted
My teammate set up a new image generating AI on our private server and suggested I try generating 30 images. But the catch: don’t enter a prompt. Ask it to generate images, without telling it of what. Just peer into the undirected mind of the image generating model. Here's some of the whackadoodle, abject kinda stuff it came up with. Spend ten minutes writing a poem inspired by any of these, or by this very idea.
Are you still here?
Wow! Thanks!
If you’re in the Lancaster area, our local Scientific Animist chapter (lol, it’s just me and some friends, but you could start a just-you-and-some-friends chapter in your area!) is going foraging tomorrow morning. Join us! It’s at an awkward time because of the organizers’ schedules, and group size is limited, but I think maybe we’ll start hosting these more often. Every quarter moon? (New moons for quiet contemplation; full moons for celebration; quarter moons for finding shit to eat. And learning about nearby nature. Maybe? We’ll see.)
Thanks again for sticking with me. You’re great. A happy Pink Moon to you!
I suppose like everything else, a labyrinth is a personal experience. These images are beautiful!