Trying To Hold On [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

1. Alone

When you try to hold on – what exactly are you holding onto?

In the labyrinth, Ariadne left a thread for Theseus to help him find his way out after killing the Minotaur.

Just imagine – you are in the darkness, in complete darkness, and all you have is a thread left by a girl you barely know.
Can you trust it?
What choice do you have?
The thread is there to remind you that you are not alone.

But you are alone. Alone in a labyrinth where you need:

1)    to find the Minotaur,

2)    to kill him,

3)    to find your way out.

And all you have to hold on to is this flimsy thread.

 

2. Easy To Forget

It is not so difficult to find the Minotaur.

You are new to the labyrinth, and not accustomed to its smell. The smell of the labyrinth is foul. If you think the Minotaur leaves the labyrinth whenever he has to use the toilet – think again.

The Minotaur, like everyone else, is long lost in the labyrinth. Perhaps he once had discovered the exit but was so accustomed to the maze he felt frightened to step outside. His world was the labyrinth, and the labyrinth was all he knew – he did not wish for another world. The Minotaur was so used to the smell of the labyrinth – the stench didn’t bother him at all. He, the Minotaur, was the labyrinth’s beating heart, and the labyrinth was him. There was nothing outside, nothing at all.

Theseus was new to the labyrinth – the stench was shocking to him. He could find where the Minotaur slept (or, at least, Theseus hoped that the Minotaur was asleep) without a thread, but it was comforting to hold on to something in this darkness; something, that reminded him that there was a world outside of this place, outside of this nothingness, loneliness, and despair. When you are lost in the darkness – it is easy to forget that light exists.

 

3. Wrong Parts

Theseus had nothing against the Minotaur. It was his job to kill him, nothing personal. If anything, he felt sorry for the Minotaur. The Minotaur is a creature made of the wrong parts, the unfortunate relative of the Centaur.

Centaurs are wondrous. They combine the best features of humans (head with brains, torso, and hands) with the best features of horses (four strong legs that allow you to move faster than the wind with hooves which could be deadly in personal combat.) If Theseus had a choice, he would be born a Centaur – free from humans, free from gods, intelligent, and wild.

But what is a Minotaur? It’s a Centaur with all the wrong parts – the vulnerable body of a human with the head and brains of a beast. What could be worse? Only a she-Minotaur, although Theseus was not certain if a female Minotaur existed, he had never met one. Perhaps, they are killed at birth, so they don’t have to suffer through their miserable lives.

 

4. Holding On

Theseus is thinking about the unfortunate Minotaur while slowly walking toward the stench. He has seen plenty of female centaurs – beautiful creatures, just as dangerous as their male counterparts. 

Sometimes life is like that: you are walking through a dark labyrinth towards the beast you will need to kill (or it will kill you.) You have no desire to fight the fight, but the alternative is to remain in the labyrinth forever. You walk for such a long time that you start to wonder if you got it all wrong – and you are the Minotaur, and it’s your labyrinth that you must protect from intruders because the whole world is the labyrinth, and it is blasphemy to think there could be anything else, that there is such thing as “outside.” This thought is strangely comforting – it means that you don’t need to find and fight some unimaginable monster because the monster is you, and you are where you need to be – in the heart of your despair. 

Then you remember the flimsy thread you have been holding. You no longer remember why the thread is in your hand; all you remember is that the thread is there for a reason. It would be so easy to break it; you want to break it, you want to be wild, and mad, and frightening, but you stop yourself because this thread is important. You don’t remember why it is important, but it is; you know it, and you remember to keep the thread safe.

 

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

Always a stimulating pleasure to read a poem by Lera Auerbach.