WE THINK IT 'MAZING

My friend Matt was relating the story of his family’s trip to Tasmazia yesterday, a popular tourist spot comprising several mazes. The last time they visited the kids were just little tackers, so Mum and Dad had the unenviable task of making sure the kidlets didn’t wander out of sight for fear of being swallowed by the greenery and never spat out again.

This time they encouraged the kids to go a-wandering, not that they wanted them to disappear, but letting them negotiate the twists and turns without help would give them a chance to find their own way. At one point their younger son obviously became hedged in (hah!) so climbed a pole to get his bearings, whereupon he found he was stuck and couldn’t get down again.

Matt, being the good dad he is, went to the rescue, only to come up against a dead end. Back up, turn left, head in the right direction, another dead end. Try again, different way this time, yet another dead end. Finally, on the fourth attempt father and son were reunited and son dutifully rescued. Funny how going in what you think is the right direction doesn’t always guarantee you’ll reach your destination.

Wally Lamb’s character Caelum Quirk in The Hour I First Believed (see yesterday’s entry) eventually applies his teaching skills with the inmates at the women’s prison founded by his great grandmother. There, he discovers the therapeutic effect his creative writing classes have on these damaged women. For them, simply surviving is like facing an endless maze, and finding the way out can sometimes take so long, it is no wonder that prolonged frustration, anger, isolation, poverty and oppression can result in violence and criminal activity.

So how do you negotiate the maze so the surroundings which are not of your design, and which are out of your control, don’t overwhelm you? Caelum Quirk’s thoughts no doubt reflect those of his creator, for Lamb has a similar position at Connecticut’s York Correctional Institute.

Mostly, the women want to write about themselves….it gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That’s the funny thing about mazes: what’s baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself.