labyrinth links
Apr. 4th, 2003 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennybut first an infinitesimal lament
*sigh*
The syndicated feed seems like such a good idea, and then you discover that Teresa Nielsen Hayden has been making posts hand over fist and you haven't seen any of them. Also, of course, the comments don't show up on LJ, and those are, as she says, sometimes the best part. So I unsubscribed from Electrolite and Making Light and will go back to checking them manually.
***
Labyrinth websites
As mentioned, one of the books I bought Wednesday (for research on The Project) was a book on the labyrinth as a meditation tool, viz. The Way of the Labyrinth: A Powerful Meditation for Everyday Life by Helen Curry (New York: Penguin Compass, 2000). I can't really recommend this book, sadly. My overall impressions (jotted down on the back of the title page, as is my wont) went:
Apparently--and this is something I learned about myself by reading this book, so at least it was helpful--I don't believe in any kind of spirituality that does not acknowledge and incorporate darkness. Which explain why New Age-y types so extraordinarily quickly activate my bullshit sensors. (Also explains why I can't read Natalie Goldberg without feeling like one of us needs to stick her head in a bucket of water.) In fact, that is my single biggest problem with Amy Zerner and Monte Farber's "Enchanted Tarot" deck (my mother's honorable attempt to indulge my interest in tarot when I was fifteen); their interpretation allows for no negativity. Even the Moon is a positive card, and that, for me, makes the entire system meaningless.
But, to get back to my point, Curry does have some handy things, including how-to instructions for drawing simple labyrinths, a listing of labyrinths in the U.S. and Canada (there are more than I'd expected), and a listing of websites. Some of which are as earthmuffin-y and vacuous as Curry's book; some of which are informative or helpful in one way or another. So. The ones I like:
Caerdroia: the journal of mazes and labyrinths.
The Labyrinth Society. Fairly pastel spirituality, but they have a lovely section on types of labyrinths, with little animations showing you how to draw them. Very cool.
Adrian Fisher is a maze-designer. Check out his portfolio, especially the Multi-Sensory Mobility Maze he built for the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
Jo Edkins is the first person I've found who points out that the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur makes no sense if you posit a unicursal labyrinth (a point Curry loftily ignores). Lots of good information on various maze and labyrinth designs.
Sadly, the descriptions for Mazes and Labyrinths in the Netherlands are in Dutch, but the pictures are fantastic.
The American Maze people are the ones who conspire with farmers to grow mazes--what they call the Amazing Maize Maze, "getting people lost since 1993."
And, the ObGeek link, Through Mazes to Mathematics.
***
The Kraken?
I meant to link to this yesterday, but never got around to it. Fishermen in the Ross Sea caught a half-grown colossal squid, mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, a couple weeks ago. Sad and scary and cool, all at the same time.
*sigh*
The syndicated feed seems like such a good idea, and then you discover that Teresa Nielsen Hayden has been making posts hand over fist and you haven't seen any of them. Also, of course, the comments don't show up on LJ, and those are, as she says, sometimes the best part. So I unsubscribed from Electrolite and Making Light and will go back to checking them manually.
***
Labyrinth websites
As mentioned, one of the books I bought Wednesday (for research on The Project) was a book on the labyrinth as a meditation tool, viz. The Way of the Labyrinth: A Powerful Meditation for Everyday Life by Helen Curry (New York: Penguin Compass, 2000). I can't really recommend this book, sadly. My overall impressions (jotted down on the back of the title page, as is my wont) went:
v. earthmuffin--no shadow, no minotaur
platitudinous and shallow
Apparently--and this is something I learned about myself by reading this book, so at least it was helpful--I don't believe in any kind of spirituality that does not acknowledge and incorporate darkness. Which explain why New Age-y types so extraordinarily quickly activate my bullshit sensors. (Also explains why I can't read Natalie Goldberg without feeling like one of us needs to stick her head in a bucket of water.) In fact, that is my single biggest problem with Amy Zerner and Monte Farber's "Enchanted Tarot" deck (my mother's honorable attempt to indulge my interest in tarot when I was fifteen); their interpretation allows for no negativity. Even the Moon is a positive card, and that, for me, makes the entire system meaningless.
But, to get back to my point, Curry does have some handy things, including how-to instructions for drawing simple labyrinths, a listing of labyrinths in the U.S. and Canada (there are more than I'd expected), and a listing of websites. Some of which are as earthmuffin-y and vacuous as Curry's book; some of which are informative or helpful in one way or another. So. The ones I like:
Caerdroia: the journal of mazes and labyrinths.
The Labyrinth Society. Fairly pastel spirituality, but they have a lovely section on types of labyrinths, with little animations showing you how to draw them. Very cool.
Adrian Fisher is a maze-designer. Check out his portfolio, especially the Multi-Sensory Mobility Maze he built for the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
Jo Edkins is the first person I've found who points out that the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur makes no sense if you posit a unicursal labyrinth (a point Curry loftily ignores). Lots of good information on various maze and labyrinth designs.
Sadly, the descriptions for Mazes and Labyrinths in the Netherlands are in Dutch, but the pictures are fantastic.
The American Maze people are the ones who conspire with farmers to grow mazes--what they call the Amazing Maize Maze, "getting people lost since 1993."
And, the ObGeek link, Through Mazes to Mathematics.
***
The Kraken?
I meant to link to this yesterday, but never got around to it. Fishermen in the Ross Sea caught a half-grown colossal squid, mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, a couple weeks ago. Sad and scary and cool, all at the same time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 07:15 am (UTC)The webpage also has the Left Foot Living Review, which I'm very sad to say, he's just finished doing after fifty glorious weeks.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 09:01 am (UTC)(Also, I very much liked the Uncarrot Tarot. That was just fun. Although now I want a Tarot deck with the Suit of Pencils.)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 03:33 pm (UTC)*waves*
As for distance, I should think it would depend on how you're defining "near." You pack the Sprecher and I'll drive.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)Yay for friends who share my weirdness!
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 09:04 am (UTC)I don't THINK Walking the Labyrinth was one of the ones I read, but since I no longer remember titles or much in the way of plots, I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 11:41 am (UTC)I think I read her anyway, because all of her novels I have read so far have wonderful atmospheres and lovely reading moments of coming around a corner and finding something unexpected. I haven't read Walking the Labyrinth yet though -- oh gosh, yes I have. Don't, if that's what you don't like about her it's got that in spades.
Tourists and The Dream Years are the ones with the most bite.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 11:14 am (UTC)I've walked the labyrinth a few times; our church has a canvas reproduction of the one at Chartres. It's a powerful experience -- astonishingly physical. I came up with some insights, as expected, but I was surprised to feel the effect of the walk resonating in gut and muscles for an hour afterward.
As for the Minotaur, the death, betrayal, lust, and horror in that myth should defy prettying up. We don't read Oedipus as the story of a man who was kind to his mother.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 11:40 am (UTC)I like both those descriptions, and can think of former acquaintances for whom they would be a nigh-perfect fit.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 06:51 pm (UTC)You are evil. And funny.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 03:22 pm (UTC)*chortles* That is now officially my favorite snarky descriptor of the week. Thanks to both of you.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 06:50 pm (UTC)And, yeah, I'm a little puzzled at how anyone can simultaneously trace the tradition of labyrinths back to Crete AND ignore all the really dreadful elements of the Theseus myth. Curry conveniently elides past the moment where Theseus abandons Ariadne, and while she admits the existence of the Minotaur, she doesn't allow it to color her vision of what labyrinths mean. She also doesn't mention that the Minotaur, the creature at the center of the labyrinth (a space which she tends to describe as a kind of spiritual G-spot, and now I'm just being catty), is the product of Pasiphae's lust for a bull. That's ALSO part of the myth, and I think it does a great disservice to the whole experience/symbolic system/project of a labyrinth to deny it.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-04 07:32 pm (UTC)The feed is great for BBC news and Slashdot, and I actually like it for Neil Gaiman's blog because the width on his journal page is wrong for my particular visual needs. And that feed they seem to have gotten sorted out properly.