Letter To The Minotaur

Letter to the Minotaur

I know you are there patiently waiting,
while I'm building my life in motion.
My absorbed construction seems to put
more space between you and I.
Each turn I take leads to a new avenue ' expanding my realm,
my territory, and my scope, which seems to stretch time,
and put off the inevitable....
I try not to think of you -- putting you out of my mind.
Laughing, loving, living, enriching these avenues, my boulevards
with ideas, with feelings.
Going in this and that direction, down broad streets and passages, small narrow ways, and cul-de-sacs which force me to retrace my steps.
I am building this ever spreading intricate labyrinth,
but with every step of retreat from you I create you -- my beast,
my Minotaur at the centre.
I create you, and at the same time I'm eluding the very idea of you.
But I can sense you without thinking of you -- feel you in the body like a bone.
and when I do consider you, I suppress you, and then consider you further....
while always conscious of moving ever closer to you.
And you, are simply waiting in that centre -- you lurk! growing bigger and darker and ever more frightening -- you are simply.... there.
But, if we do not meet today or tomorrow, I know, in the end, you will come to find me....
And wherever we meet will be the centre of my labyrinth.
If I made you, I know I can not unmake you -- you exist. as real as I
Ironically, and unwittingly I have given you life.
I have created your mystery, your dread, your power over me.
I must find the courage to encounter you in the centre of the labyrinth.
The labyrinth I claim as my own, but which your presence,
like a lord at my centre, dispossess me ' reduces me to your tenant -- your victim.
If I cannot slay you -- and I know I cannot -- then I must try to disarm you
Thus, I must try to understand you.
The first thing I must understand is that you are not a beast of nature, but a beast of my nature.
You are not made of flesh and blood, but was made in the image of my fear.
And my fear is of loss and nothingness.
And you are the symbol of all it has come to mean.
And I must somehow accept you and prepare to meet you,
not in fear, but as an equal.

Chris Whitley
Berlin 2006

chrisnwhitley@yahoo.co.uk

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