recircling stomach when the ferry ’ s in sight but
right when you rise over that little bump your
gut unrights you face the rear view mirror see the setting sun and you stop spin heaving wet slop of scum sprayed on six windows
inc . the sunroof Benjamin King
The Labyrinth : Letter from California
There are streets in San Francisco so steep I had to use my fingertips to climb the hot pavement . A world of concrete hills and wide avenues that sweep down to the bay , as though you should be always rolling toward the water . In this heat , the city says , upwards is not the right way . You can taste that blue below .
Some of the steepest hills are to be found in the Heights . I am concerned with California Street . It runs along the ridge of upper San Francisco , eponymously stately and for the same reason oddly mundane . The street peaks and troughs as it spans the breadth of San Francisco , snaking the delis of Nob Hill and opening out onto the lavish boulevards of the Heights . On one of the peaks of California Street there is a cathedral called Grace . And in Grace , there is a labyrinth .
I do not first encounter the labyrinth in the sun , the golden glow that colours all those months in California – though when I look back , it seems the labyrinth and Grace were there throughout , twisting and looping into the dust and the sweat and the ache behind the eyes .
California , in those initial months , is a scorched miracle . More so across the Bay , where there is no respite – none of that clouding of the peaks that occurs in San Francisco , and which eases the heat of the streets . Palms tower in front yards everywhere . What greenery there is stands up to a ceaseless sun , steady through autumn , through October and November . Bay inhabitants tell me this isn ’ t normal , but I have known nothing else here , so in at least some realities it is forever sun . People put up Halloween decorations , then Christmas lights , among the weary cacti , still roasting daily . In a coffee shop one day I watch a girl touch a guy ’ s thigh and whip her fingers away from his black jeans as if burned . She ’ s flirting , but denim does cook limbs .
Labyrinths whorl through history , across cultures and continents . In the Western canon , there is Theseus and his ball of string . A woman ’ s tool , a limp lead , that guides the hero from the ravening jaws of the minotaur . That is appropriate to the labyrinth : no place for brutishness here , no place for force . The maze rouses fury , frustration , desire to smash a way out , but what succeeds is a transcendence of that urge . Wickedly , transcendence is in the smallest things . A ball of string . A weapon that is a mindset . The string is funny , and very serious . That too is a tendency of the labyrinth .
One morning I am in my white bed with white sheets in the white walls of the apartment and the light is hazy behind the blinds . I receive some news . It is a shock , and breath comes too fast for many days .
I possess grief like an energy . It crackles in the veins . I am at my desk in the office not eating haven ’ t slept and read a line from James Salter . “ The bottles of wine were finished . The colour of their emptiness was the colour in cathedral naves .” That evening I leave work and walk to Grace .
The upward climb to Grace is not the struggle in the sun that is my memory of California . Instead it is December and by now cool enough for a coat . When I leave the office the light is leaving with a nebula explosion – that immense sky-shattering sunset , so frequent here that I have come to expect it , to take for granted the moment of stepping into the street and the heart will rise like a right hook swinging from chest to throat , bruising , every night . I walk downhill as the sky freaks above . But by the time my ascent begins , it is a pure black evening .
The Grace Cathedral labyrinth adheres to timeless spiritual features – the classics of the religious maze . Most important of these is that there is only one route , and you must follow it to the centre . There are no trick paths . It is far more overwhelming to find you are astray simply by turning , circling , moving ever inward . You are tracing the snail helix , the sunflower ’ s concentric rings , the shell , and the grain of sand . And you are a little lost .
This is despite the fact that Grace ’ s labyrinth is just a golden line on the floor . There are no raised walls to obscure progress . You will not open out with a gasp into the centre . It is there all along , just a few feet to your side , in the corner of your vision , and there is no sudden relief at its knowledge .
When I arrive at the cathedral in the dark , prayers have just begun , a melodic murmuring to the right of the altar . I avoid the pooling light and move toward to the cathedral ’ s massive inner shade . Slip into a chair and raise my face upward . My grief is in the walls . The vaulted ceiling becomes the crown of my skull . My head is seamed together where the lancet arches meet .
I try to remember this when I realise that the labyrinth will not happen today . It has been covered over by chairs for a Christmas concert . It will not be uncovered until January . The golden lines sit quiet beneath plastic legs , which puncture its paths .