The first is an an investigation of the maze and labyrinth, and how one begins her journey on each of these paths. It was my goal to show how mazes have the ability to become labyrinths if the traveler faces the challenge of the maze by working through the difficult corners and dead ends. This is no easy task, but once it is taken on, the body of one's navigational difficulty transforms. Paths clear for one to arrive at his destination.

The second explores how poetry can be used as a system of navigation. It can also be seen in this form. Poetry becomes a valid way of reaching an understanding and at many times, a solution.

In a labyrinth, appearance and feeling are circular. A maze seems somewhat different, but using imagination we can envision a center that might not exist in the physical. The center does not always need to be in the middle. The center is where someone needs to be, it is a destination in many cases, and sometimes the center can be located in a corner, or within a dead end, for instance.

Lets take a look at various forms of labyrinths:

Spiritual-finding oneself amid chaos, maintaining balance
Physical-taking a walk
Intellectual- finding a solution to a difficult problem

All of these can be converted into a maze. That is, the mapping of these journeys can take on new forms with different folds. With a maze, we may get lost, but getting found is always a possibility. If we approach a dead end, we either stay there upon realizing it is our center, or, we retrace our steps in order to continue our journey.

With labyrinths, there is almost always one way of reaching a destination. Sometimes there is more than one way of arriving at an answer, and sometimes there is even more than one answer. Perhaps the form of a maze allows for this realization.

If this is the case, I'd like to explore the directions we are given (or not given) when we walk labyrinths. If we are without footprints, are we to assume that our journey is already pre-mapped? That is, are we to only follow the direction we start in and not make any turns? Do turns even exist in labyrinths? What is allowed?

Traffic slows. The nun
plants the pill beneath the sheets.
I’ve got plenty more.

The chain-smoking niece
calmly sets fire to her hair.
Where did the time go?

His ex-fiancee
covers her eyes with sack-cloth.
It's all circular.

The Czech go-go girl
covers her eyes with sack-cloth.
There is never time.

The notion of labyrinths is that the path to the center, the destination, is circular, and perhaps symmetric. On the contrary, a maze is meant to confuse; its a puzzle which is difficult to navigate. It is somewhat of a bifurcating system. Labyrinths do not welcome dead ends. This is as if to suggest that the only way to the center is via the route provided, which, although isn't a straight line, will eventually lead you back to where you started.

I propose a question that I am currently working on in my semester project. Which is, can there be a maze within the labyrinth we are walking? For instance, is it possible to arrive at the center through another mode? Is it possible that we get sidetracked on our journeys through the labyrinth?

Can we depart from its original path, and surrender into the temptation of deviating for awhile?

For the purpose of seeing what is possible? (Isn't this a valid reason to do anything?)

Perhaps we need to get lost first before we find our way back to the center, and maybe its not even the center that we desire -- what about corners? This idea adds some asymmetry to a perfectly rounded, symmetric labyrinth.

This path may not always guarantee us the destination we desire, but how can we know for sure if we do not try?

1) People interact with them in different ways. And the way they interact with them is a result of how they asses the structure and the whole idea of the beads.
2) When two separate beaded necklaces interact, an interlocking system is formed.
3) This achievement is made possible through a support system — the table — in this case.
4) The meaning of the beads changes as we interact with them. There is a departure from its inherited identity.
5) We experiment with what is possible.
6) There is a need to see each bead as its own and not as a collection, an entity.
7) To say that they are all the same may be belittling the work that goes into the making of the beads.
8) They have the same appearance, but upon our interaction with them we can change them, manipulate their appearance, and experiment with the purposes they may serve. Once we interact with them, or noticeably alter their appearance, they are never the same, and they have become somehow different.
9) Sometimes we can document this change by taking pictures — this is a way to satisfies people’s desire to maintain a degree of permanence.
10) Impressions and markings are made that can’t always be seen.

This book led me to ponder the consequences of asymmetry. Can the things that are deemed asymmetric exist just as fully and endure in the same way that symmetric things can? And can what seems to be symmetric actually be asymmetric? (Like the design on the cover of the book, for instance). This is something I discovered last week in class with the paper folding experiment. I began with one diagonal fold, having no intention of maintaining evenness on each side. I folded in no particular pattern, but what I ended up with was a shape that looked like a perfectly structured cone. With its folds, it appeared symmetric. It was only with the unfolding, when the paper became flat again, that the creased lines appeared to have no symmetry at all. So perhaps what we see as containing equality and perfect harmony is only playing tricks on us.

It seems that almost all things may start out being symmetric, but later deviate towards something else, a different pattern. Is it possible for the same thing to be both symmetric and asymmetric? If so, what do we identify it as? Consider the shape of a fork. If this object is cut horizontally and folded over, we have asymmetry. The opposite is true if we divide it vertically.

Five interlocking tetahedra. Is this symmetric?

1) How many frames are allowed?
2) Does a frame need to enclose? Is it possible that the content within the frame can escape via loose boundaries?
3) Are frames seen differently by people? how many perspectives are allowed upon viewing or thinking about a frame?
4) Is a frame even necessary? Can an idea, thought, tangible object go without being surrounded by a frame?
5) What is the structure of the frame? Can something be framed without it being seen? Or is some sort of evidence (perhaps remnants) of the framing need to occur?
6) What happens when the content within a frame is unframed? Does the content get lost?
7) Can there be multiple frames surrounding one thing in layers? (i.e. a subystem of frames)

When I searched for ideas on the concept of the frame I realized that there are no rules that apply to what can be framed, what the frame might look like, and where the frame comes from and lives, etc. I hope these pictures can begin to justify some of these implications and maybe trigger some answers to a few of the questions I have posted above.

One may also see the frame being the basic skeleton of this 3-D display. The skeleton provides the support; it is what holds together whatever muscle and organs we are seeing.

Framing is also occurring in a sense that this image provides a way of knowing, a way of looking at things from a different perspective. It illustrates to the viewer the functions of the complex systems of the human body.

On page 168 we see how the perspective of an x-ray provides framing to the image (flowers) that is being examined. We are given a new way to identify the flower as we are able to not only see it, but to see through it. The x-ray gives a new type of framing that the human eyes cannot. The petals which provide the frame (layers of protection) of the flower as well as the interior of the flower can be viewed simultaneously. Looking at this, I believe that both coexist, I don’t need to assume anymore.

Seeing it

Seeing through it

Because we are unsure about the amount of space that links each stanza together, we can only imagine the duration of the spaces. In “3 X 111 TRISTYCHS” (p. 95 Poems for the Millennium), the numbers of each stanza are not ordered in any particular way, at least to the reader. Whatever the unit of measurement is (if it is a unit of measurement at all), the reader travels to the next stanza at a constant speed, because visually, they are all evenly spaced. However, the numbers of each stanza don’t imply this. Some gaps are so large that I wonder if the writer is pretending that stanzas are actually left out. This suggested absence allows the reader to imagine what might have been there, or what could be there.

In “Blanco,” By Octavio Paz, stanzas aren’t numbered, but spaces appear between actual words. Some lines start on the right side of the page, some on the left. It is as though the reader is given a map to follow, as directions are implicitly given so we can navigate through each word. The gaps between some of the stanzas are like stop signs on our journey, visual and vocal pauses. Some stanzas are in bold, some in italics (I am not exactly what to make of these differentiations). They also lie side by side to one another, so I wonder if one is meant to be read first. I wonder what might happen, how the meaning might change, if the italicized part is read first, then the bold, or vice versa. What might change if we backtrack and go in reverse? This may be taking a road less traveled, one that is more difficult, but perhaps this is the more exciting or illuminating route. Its uncommonness may provide a different perspective. The ambiguity of the spacing lends multiple routes, I think, to the final lines of a poem. This is something I appreciate — the fact that there is more than one way to approach and come to achieve something.

Langston Hughes- Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Stanley Kunitz- First Love

At his incipient sun
The ice of twenty winters broke,
Crackling, in her eyes.

Her mirroring, still mind,
That held the world (made double) calm,
Went fluid, and it ran.

There was a stir of music,
Mixed with flowers, in her blood;
A swift impulsive balm

From obscure roots;
Gold bees of clinging light
Swarmed in her brow.

Her throat is full of songs,
She hums, she is sensible of wings
Growing on her heart.

She is a tree in spring
Trembling with the hope of leaves,
Of which the leaves are tongues.

Metaphor can also be illustrated visually, as this painting shows: