tomcairnspoetry

There are many ways to navigate a maze.

Some people stop at every junction and try to second-guess the maze's intent, puzzling over whether that obvious-looking path is a trap, or perhaps a double bluff, or a triple? They feel each dead end as failure, promising to do better next time and finding with each choice a greater anxiety, a greater hesitance.

Others try to identify the pattern in the turnings, basing each decision on what they have seen already - is it an odd numbered turn on the left, then an even number on the right? They pour all the quicksilver of their mind into building a mental maze and inhabiting it, priding themselves on constantly revising as their model is proved wrong on the ground.

There are those who decide that it is a mistake to focus our gaze on the maze at all and that we should look to the wider world to show the way. They may decide that when it is cloudy one should always turn left, but when the sun shines clear then right is right, or that the maze's loops and folds are not fixed at all but in constant shift, answering only to the phases of the moon.

Still others come to believe that the maze in its entirety is a tyranny. For these enlightened souls the only true response is to refuse to walk, to stop and close ones eyes and drift into a purer plane where there is no maze, no path, no feet to walk the path, and no mind to direct those non-existent feet.

In my time I have tried all these ways through the maze. I have been a mystic and a philosopher, a scientist and a self-improver. But my favourite way to navigate is just to touch my left hand to the hedge and follow the foliage. Guided by the maze itself, I can run or amble, dance or walk softly with eyes closed. I can stop and sit where I want, look up at the sky and feel cool rain on my face, take off my shoes and push my bare feet into the grass. I can laugh at each dead end which is never a dead end but only a half-pirouette, and marvel as the shape of the maze unfolds so independently of my preconceptions. And that way - walking, running, dancing, skipping, breathing the resinous scent as my hand grows sticky with sap - I can experience the maze from start to finish in all its beautiful tangle.