Love and loss when you're a Minotaur
Slayer of all beasts, the Minotaur meets the new girl in her corner at the computer, apparently lost in distraction with the screen, and in the Labyrinth the fear is both mutual and hidden between a mix of old and new social excuses. Stephen O'Connor's fiction piece in this week's New Yorker builds simply, the incorporated telling of one myth fueling exposure of another, one obvious but important. In the middle:
The Minotaur was a novice of arc and swell and dip, a new-minted connoisseur of smooth and tender and sway. That little snippet of bird-peep that entered the new girl’s voice whenever she got excited, or when she thought something she had done was stupid—he wanted to put that in a box, tie it up with a leather thong, and keep it around his neck. That way she had of elbowing him in the ribs, rolling her eyes, slapping herself on the top of her head and saying, "Only joking!"—why did his cobblestone feet always do a shuffling dance when she did that? Why did his shoulders squinch together and his floppy lips twist up at the corners? To his embarrassment was added shame, and the Minotaur found that he could bear his message of ultimate truth only on the sly, when the new girl was asleep, or when she was looking the other way. He took to wearing a kerchief and giving his lips a hasty wipe after every meal. Then, one day, the new girl was gone, and the Minotaur worried that, in a moment of thoughtlessness, he had gobbled her up. When he didn’t see her for several weeks, he could think of no other explanation. A year passed, and then a century, and new-girllessness became a fact—as simple and discrete as other facts. In a way, life became easier for the Minotaur, as easy as it had been before the new girl’s arrival. But only in a way. In another way, the Minotaur began to wonder if he was getting too old for his job. His vocabulary increased. To "embarrassment" and "shame" he added "joyless." He added "regret." He added "lost."
In a different issue — my beach catch-up is well underway (halfway catch-up, at least, only feeling comfortable bringing so many issues) — there's Dean Young's poem "Delphiniums in a Window Box." Insta-sad opening line's internal rhyme, "Every sunrise, even strangers' eyes."
