Minotauromachy

I woke up this morning at 3:17 because a fire alarm was chirping, and my dog Hobbes mentioned while I was fixing it that he’d been thinking about going out on a walk so I took him. I wouldn’t describe my street as a comfortable place to be alone in the dark but it isn’t unfriendly. On the one side is a line of houses which look like they were flown in from West LA, and on the other side are some converted industrial husks that almost certainly are not zoned for half the things that happen there. If you’ve ever dreamed of partying after hours in a hair salon then I live five hundred feet from your ecstasy.

Halfway down my block I came across a house whose lights were blaring in every room, which struck me as odd in a Stanley Kubrick sort of way, probably because the ceiling fans were all running too. You’re not exactly sure why you’re unsettled, but you remember all the layers of data being subconsciously chomped by your animal brain and turn around and walk home. Or at least I did, and picked up the pace a bit when I heard the home’s back gate slam. Being awake at that hour leaves you in a dreamlike state, and everything is true in a strange, incandescent way. For instance, an hour later I had to get up again when the alarm restarted its chirping. This time, I unplugged it from the ceiling and took the battery out, and it laid on the table still screeching until I put it in the garage. It was surreal and enraging, like watching the top half of a zombie still reaching for you and chewing after being cut in half and shot in the chest.

Which got me asking myself what else there is to do when you’ve exhausted every option trying to get rid of something that’s driving you insane. Theseus walked into the dark to kill the minotaur, but there was a way out afterwards and lately most of the issues I’ve been up against feel like their only reward is an escape that leads into another maze. Like trying to sort something out with someone who talks in loops for years while they wait for you to wear out and see things their way. Which in turn got me thinking about Picasso’s Minotauromachy, an abstraction of the Theseus story by the artist which serves as a testament of the ways in which we personalize myths. In this one the minotaur represents our primal desires, in that one Theseus is our higher self wanting to be free, etc etc etc until every ancient story extends away from us in an endless expository malaise. But what about the practical, unobstructable beeping in the ceiling of our homes. And what about the uncontainable strain.