in his grasp).
Larry thinks how the alstroemeria head he cups in his hand has no memory and no gratitude toward those who delivered it to this moment. It toils not, neither does it spin. It’s sprouted, grown, bloomed, that’s all. But Larry, placing it beside a branch of rosy kangaroo paw from British Columbia and a spray of Dutch leather leaf and a spear or two of local bear grass, feels himself a fortunate man. He’s worried sick at the moment about the distance that’s grown between himself and his wife, about the night terrors that trouble his only child, about money, about broken or neglected friendships, about the pressure of too much silence, about whether his hedges will weather the winter, but he is, nevertheless, plugged into the planet. He’s part of the action, part of the world’s work, a cog in the great turning wheel of desire and intention.
The day will arrive in his life when work - devotion to work, work’s steady pressure and application - will be all that stands between himself and the bankruptcy of his soul. “At least you have your work,” his worried, kind-hearted friends will murmur, and if they don’t, if they forget the availability of this single consolation - well then, he’ll say it to himself: at least I have my work.
CHAPTER FIVE
Larry’s Words 1983
The word labyrinth has only recently come into the vocabulary of Larry Weller, aged thirty-two, a heterosexual male (married, one child) living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He doesn’t bother himself with the etymology of the word labyrinth; in fact, at this time in his life he has zero interest in word derivations, but he can tell you plain and simple what a labyrinth is. A labyrinth is a complex path. That’s it. It’s not necessarily something complicated or classical, as you might think. The overpass out on Highway 2 is a kind of labyrinth, as Larry will be happy to tell you. So is the fox-and-geese tracery he stamped into the backyard snow as a child in Winnipeg’s West End. He sees that now. So’s a modern golf course. Take St. George’s Country Club out in the St. James area of the city, for instance, the way it nudges you along gently from hole to hole, each step plotted in a forward direction so that you wouldn’t dream of attacking the whole thing backwards or bucking in any way the ongoing, numerically predetermined scheme. And an airport is a labyrinth too, or a commercial building or, say, a city subway system. It seems those who live in the twentieth century have a liking for putting ourselves on a predetermined conveyor track and letting it carry us along.
A maze, though, is different from a labyrinth, at least in the opinion of some. A maze is more likely to baffle and mislead those who tread its paths. A maze is a puzzle. A maze is designed to deceive the travelers who seek a promised goal. It’s possible that a labyrinth can be a maze, and that a maze can be a labyrinth, but strictly speaking the two words call up different ideas. (Larry read these definitions, and their relationship to each other, three years ago, in a library book called Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development. )
If he had not married Dorrie Shaw, if he had never visited Hampton Court, his life would have swerved on an alternate course, and the word labyrinth would have floated by him like one of those specks in the fluid of his eye.
He finds it paradoxical that while his life is shrinking before his very eyes, his vocabulary should be expanding. It’s weird. It’s far-out. It’s paradoxical - that’s the bouncy new word he’s been saying out loud lately, not to show off, but because it “pops” on his tongue. It’s a word he’s only recently taken into his brain, last week in fact. “Isn’t it paradoxical,” his sister Midge said to him over the phone, “that I kicked my husband out because he was just plain queer, and now I’ve moved in with him because he’s queer and he’s sick and maybe
Larry thinks how the alstroemeria head he cups in his hand has no memory and no gratitude toward those who delivered it to this moment. It toils not, neither does it spin. It’s sprouted, grown, bloomed, that’s all. But Larry, placing it beside a branch of rosy kangaroo paw from British Columbia and a spray of Dutch leather leaf and a spear or two of local bear grass, feels himself a fortunate man. He’s worried sick at the moment about the distance that’s grown between himself and his wife, about the night terrors that trouble his only child, about money, about broken or neglected friendships, about the pressure of too much silence, about whether his hedges will weather the winter, but he is, nevertheless, plugged into the planet. He’s part of the action, part of the world’s work, a cog in the great turning wheel of desire and intention.
The day will arrive in his life when work - devotion to work, work’s steady pressure and application - will be all that stands between himself and the bankruptcy of his soul. “At least you have your work,” his worried, kind-hearted friends will murmur, and if they don’t, if they forget the availability of this single consolation - well then, he’ll say it to himself: at least I have my work.
CHAPTER FIVE
Larry’s Words 1983
The word labyrinth has only recently come into the vocabulary of Larry Weller, aged thirty-two, a heterosexual male (married, one child) living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He doesn’t bother himself with the etymology of the word labyrinth; in fact, at this time in his life he has zero interest in word derivations, but he can tell you plain and simple what a labyrinth is. A labyrinth is a complex path. That’s it. It’s not necessarily something complicated or classical, as you might think. The overpass out on Highway 2 is a kind of labyrinth, as Larry will be happy to tell you. So is the fox-and-geese tracery he stamped into the backyard snow as a child in Winnipeg’s West End. He sees that now. So’s a modern golf course. Take St. George’s Country Club out in the St. James area of the city, for instance, the way it nudges you along gently from hole to hole, each step plotted in a forward direction so that you wouldn’t dream of attacking the whole thing backwards or bucking in any way the ongoing, numerically predetermined scheme. And an airport is a labyrinth too, or a commercial building or, say, a city subway system. It seems those who live in the twentieth century have a liking for putting ourselves on a predetermined conveyor track and letting it carry us along.
A maze, though, is different from a labyrinth, at least in the opinion of some. A maze is more likely to baffle and mislead those who tread its paths. A maze is a puzzle. A maze is designed to deceive the travelers who seek a promised goal. It’s possible that a labyrinth can be a maze, and that a maze can be a labyrinth, but strictly speaking the two words call up different ideas. (Larry read these definitions, and their relationship to each other, three years ago, in a library book called Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development. )
If he had not married Dorrie Shaw, if he had never visited Hampton Court, his life would have swerved on an alternate course, and the word labyrinth would have floated by him like one of those specks in the fluid of his eye.
He finds it paradoxical that while his life is shrinking before his very eyes, his vocabulary should be expanding. It’s weird. It’s far-out. It’s paradoxical - that’s the bouncy new word he’s been saying out loud lately, not to show off, but because it “pops” on his tongue. It’s a word he’s only recently taken into his brain, last week in fact. “Isn’t it paradoxical,” his sister Midge said to him over the phone, “that I kicked my husband out because he was just plain queer, and now I’ve moved in with him because he’s queer and he’s sick and maybe
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