Vastly enjoying Rebecca Solnit's "The Faraway Nearby" and her descriptions of a maze and a labyrinth. She writes, "...a maze, which has not one convoluted way but many ways and often no center, so that wandering has no cease or at least no definitive conclusion." With a labyrinth, however, "You may wander, may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive - having gone the great journey without having gone far on the ground."

Likewise, the author could have in full, rather than partially, described the human ear; the maze we see as the outer ear and the labyrinth, so named anatomically, that is the inner ear. Could this ingeniously invested apparatus used for hearing and learning be a lesson for living in a post-modern maze of a world?

Convoluted and wayward, seeking but not finding definitive answers, let alone contentment, the sound and fury is an assault to the ear, even as it amazes. Round and round go the arguments for pressing forward, getting ahead, making it; yet never penetrating the surface or breaching the superficial membrane of meaning.

Sadly, we hear too much to be able to listen intently. We wonder why we wander aimlessly. We experiment with all sorts of ways, but lack the means of the lab, so to speak. For the inner life, as the inner ear, is a path for getting lost/disorientated, spinning about, going one way to reach the opposite, being overwhelmed(not exhausted or disillusioned) at being absorbed, simply a great journey to nowhere else.

Let those who have ears to hear and learn, be amazed at the lab of depth perspective.