By Andreia Lewis
Edited by Elim Chan and Alloe Mak

The fabled architect Daedalus built a maze so complex that no one who dared enter could ever find their way out. Bound to its impenetrable mossy demarcations, the industrious thrill-seeker, regardless of his grit or brawn, would be condemned to meander the labyrinth forever. Within this maze lay the Minotaur, a mythological beast who fed on human sacrifices—he too but a martyr perilously searching for victims. The labyrinth’s valiant protagonist Theseus became somehow determined to conquer him. He received a ball of string from his beloved Ariadne, the daughter of a King, which he was meant to unravel as he journeyed through the labyrinth, ensuring his way back. As it were, Theseus slayed the Minotaur and emerged victorious.

Modern life is an arduous maze and vexing puzzle. A map of a suburban cityscape is to the cosmopolitan explorer but a counterfeit of certainty; a refuge for obstination which is actually fear concealed. Architectural historian Jan Pieper draws a parallel between the legend of the Labyrinth and self-discovery through unchartered territory: “The myth articulates this brand new city as a brilliant spectrum of unprecedented architectural elements considered to be both terrible and wonderful, disturbing and compelling, things of beauty that attract and repel.” Is Theseus’s string naught but a metaphor for life’s journey, understood backward yet lived forward? And, if so, how does one deal with the looming threat of a Minotaur on their tail? Perhaps this conundrum is similar to grief and terror, inextricably woven into our quotidian experience. The player will not survive the game. The walls are claustrophobic—you must encounter the violent ordeal of further uncovering yourself with each step. Nevertheless, you pull the string and retrace your steps.

Turn Left:

Disarmed, another year folds upon itself. Trains, planes, and automobiles—your virile body—delivered you as far as the earth reaches. Each hitch of your breath, your knotted veins, emblazoned with the covenants of this city. You saunter beyond its exterior, a freshly procured and agitated insomniac. Your life became at once far more salient than bargained for which begets opportunity for loss. You cannot hold its grandeur without fear of breaking your back. Now, the summer entails your restructuring, so that perhaps you’ll learn to coax the minotaur into submission with the lullaby of new horizons.

Liberation
Immortality thwarted for ephemeral fascination
The game player
Adrift
A novel indomitable will
A narrative, a code, the footpath – hardwired infinity –
Motherboards as etching on tombstone
Left right
Recurring recurring
Each step
Every utterance
An Elegy
To the screaming sun
Poised unmoving
Respawning
Unfettered sublimation

Turn Right:

On a gray beach, the air is thick with irreverence. The waves wane and cajole—you too could embody ease, like a swell rolling back to the ocean. But seawater is infinitely supplanted—whilst you cannot conjure romanticism with a dried reservoir, you wait for the supernatural to strike.

Blood is electric blue
Before friction with earth
Flayed crimson upon a labyrinthine thorn prick
How violently poisoned
So piously muddied
You are with desire and loss

Right again:

Unfeeling is a bitter truth. Life prattles on in protest; you are bound to nothing but your stubborn grip. There’s a familiar painting—the girl with the heart-shaped balloon—you recall it floats near her hand just out of reach. Did she ever chase after it like a frenzied junkie, you wonder? Did she inquire, “By what sorcery can I finally call this mine? What needs plucking, rearranging, or reinvigorating,” as you do? Because despite your antics –a lewd Jester, tapping away with bell-laden shoes, shaking their hips flirtatiously, the cavalier grin curling taut around hot cheeks – some audience goers flee the theater disappointed, as if there is somewhere better to be. This, you realize now, is simply a matter of personal taste. Even you are entitled to gauche and miscalculated interpretations of “what’s in” and “what’s out.” You decidedly unhook your teeth from the recesses of your mired dreams and do not wish upon their return. You feel like you’ve left yourself somewhere the same way an earring falls to the ground forgotten.

Tears priced half off in the beer shop
Freedom cheap and sordid as sin
Wandering hallowed entrails
Of the cider section
Chasing dying echoes
Of an open heart and steely resolve

Turn left:

Music whirs and recoils like an iron lung. Beneath your boots lies lacquered linoleum tiling, and in front, a friend. Between you, the pace and intensity of nightfall is resurrected through siphoned sticky liqueur. Ecstasy warms her face, and because you speak the same language you flitter in solidarity. Youth is best exercised through merciful overindulgence in calamity.

Queued in a procession
Souls rendezvous behind shadows
Quick quips like invitations
To the new comeuppance

Turn right:

Your eyes are feverish and lubricated in the mirror. What’s this aberration? Your shoulders are not broad – at best you are a quiet juxtaposition to a hero; their opulent bones and striking platitudes a testament to strength and salvation. But vitriol is inglorious. Instead, your personal brand of ennui should be subsumed into marble as the ultimate homage to resistance. You figure this statue should be emulated after a woman lying on her couch.

Theseus runs the gauntlet indefinitely
Erudition
Tenderness
His smoking gun
Strikes the minotaur in the nape
This evisceration
A cataclysmic consecration