Happy Hallowe'en

Rejoice, those of you who like your mazes in plant form as well as in book form - it's corn maze season! Here I am hot on the scent of the next checkpoint, having elbowed my son out of the way. You can read all about it here.

The door to Room 1024

How Maze-y is this door!

Come on. The hand-painted sign, the style of the digits, the monochromatic colour scheme.... There are even some mysterious patterns on the window to puzzle over, a note posted on the door, and a Mansonesque spatter of light and shadow.

I watch for this door whenever I pass its location in an industrial building on Dupont Street. It is a little piece of Maze that jumps out at me every time.

The best thing about the door is that you can imagine walking through it into some version of Maze that has AT LEAST 1024 ROOMS! (Actually, if the triangular number theory is correct, this mega-Maze would have to have at least 1035 rooms.)

That would keep us busy for a while.



Bonus marks: if you can find this location using Google maps (street view), you'll see the door is OPEN, revealing only darkness inside.

Postscript: Manson has actually conceptualized a sequel to Maze that would have 100 rooms! It's unclear whether he will ever get around to completing this project, but we can hope...

Which half is the Maze?

Hi there.

My name's Sara, and I have a Maze problem. If you're reading this, it's very likely that you have the same problem. But rather than fight my addiction to Christopher Manson's strange, gorgeous, absorbing, frustrating, brilliant book, I have decided to just give in to it completely. I recommend this approach to you as well. You can start by watching the thousands of hours of enthralling Mazecast videos available here, if you haven't already.

A consummate enabler, Alex/sp has been kind enough to grant me this space to further fuel my obsession by blathering about Maze-y things. It's called Aria's Blog because that's the name I use over on the Abyss. In the unlikely event that you don't know what the Abyss is, check it out immediately and come back. I'll wait.

For solutions to Maze, the Abyss and the Mazecasts have pretty well got it covered, so I'm not going to go into those much here, except as springboards for other ideas and topics. Instead I want to use this space to explore how an object of obsession such as Maze can transform the way you look at everything. I find myself noticing Maze connections everywhere - in architectural details, in a song, in a piece of text. It has made stealthy inroads into nearly every part of my life and even appears in my dreams.

To that end, in addition to random Maze-y musings, I'll be posting photos, a complete room/drink pairing (a project I started late in the Mazecasts), a mix-tape list with a song for each room, and any other meta-Maze stuff I think you might find interesting or fun.

Is Maze fanfic possible? I don't know. Maybe I'll give it a try. Let's see what happens.

Thanks for reading!