Issue #5 · Labyrinths · March 31, 2003

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Copyright 2003 by Octopus Army. All Rights Reserved.

Text EditorAgnieszka Krajewska

Layout & Graphics EditorMaggie Krzywicka

Octopus Army logoGary Kwan

Image Editing Guru Samantha Bong

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We accept short original unpublished or previously published pieces for which you retainthe copyright. No politics or pop culture references are allowed. We do not distinguishbetween fiction and non-fiction articles.

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Indulge Me, O Reader!

When one enters a maze, one can never know which turn will lead towards thecenter and which will merely end in a dead end. Working on this issue was kind of like that.I kept going down different paths, hoping that each one would end up at Octopus Army,but at each turn it seemed I went somewhere else. Finally, after much back tracking andstalling and waiting, and much twiddling of thumbs disguised as contemplative silence,here we are.

This is, as you can no doubt discern from the cover, the fifth issue Octopus Army.I assume that you, dear reader, probably know already that we do not distinguish betweenfact and fiction when it comes to our articles, so I won't mention it again.

Yours Sincerely & with Violets,Agnieszka Krajewska

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Table of Contents:

front Random MazeFound Art

4 How To Construct A Classical Seven-Circuit Labyrinthby Maggie Krzywicka

6 Stones and Thistlesby Agnieszka Krajewska

8 Octokittyby Johnson Hal

10 The Spirit of the Mazeby Ken Franco

13 Homemaker’s Corner

14 A-maze-ing Adviceby Maggie Krzywicka

15 Minotaurby Maggie Krzywicka

back Octomazeby Kari Love

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How To Construct A ClassicalSeven-Circuit Labyrinth

by Maggie Krzywicka

Labyrinths, unlike mazes, are unipathconstructions traversed usually for medi-tation, contemplation, or while rollerblad-ing in Union Square.

Below, I offer you instructions how toconstruct your own labyrinth, one made ofseven circuits. You can draw it in chalk onyour driveway, in paint in a parking lot, orlay out the path with pretty stones of sorts.For the lack of outside space, you can drawyour labyrinth on paper or construct itusing your favorite photo editing program.

STEP 1Start with a “seed pattern”. This will bethe middle of your labyrinth, the pointyou will try to reach while entering thelabyrinth. Hint: it is easiest to draw aclassical labyrinth if you use a grid.

STEP 2Now, connect the dots. Start with themiddle-top point and go clockwise to thenext available point. Repeat until thelabyrinth is complete.

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STEP 3Now you have a complete labyrinth.Enjoy!

Stones and Thistles

by Agnieszka Krajewska

Once a stranger came to our house in theafternoon. He was not someone we knew.He heard that the house had been restoredand he came to see it. He had lived in thehouse a long time ago, and told us about it.

Mom and Dad invited him inside, but hesaid he didn't want to see the inside.Instead he walked around the perimeter ofthe house, looking at the chestnuts, the lin-den, and the ash trees.

He had lived in the house as a child,right after World War I. They used horsesto get around then. He remembered thefirst car he ever saw. I tried to imagine aworld without cars and couldn't. The lin-dens had already been there. They werethree hundred years old, and had beenplanted in the same year as the house hadfirst been built. The church also, was thesame.

When he was a child the park wasalready neglected, and beautiful flowershad grown wild all over it. Hyssop, blood-root, melissa, lily of the valley, snow drop,cowslip, violet, all were escapees, hismother and grandmother told him, from agarden that grew on the edges of the forest.

In the place where all the thistles grew,as though in a miniature field, had been alabyrinth made of fieldstones. The lord ofthe house, when it was a manor house,heard about the gardens of Versailles, andthen saw a drawing of the labyrinth ofChartres. He had a labyrinth made out ofstones that the peasants who tilled his landdug out of the soil each spring. It is inter-esting, the stranger pointed out, the waythat stones grow in the earth. One year youplow the field and you pick out a few dozenlarge stones. It seems you have pickedthem all out. Then when you plow the fieldagain there are more stones. It seems thatthe stones grow in the earth.

Everyone knows though that stones donot grow. For a long time I could not thinkof an explanation that reconciled theknowledge that stones do not grow and theknowledge that when you plow the samefield, each year more stones appear.

The labyrinth walkway was made offieldstones, said the stranger (said hismother), and between and around thefieldstone paths grew many beautiful flow-ers. These are the flowers that laterescaped into the forest. You could walkalong the labyrinth and look at the flowersclosely without stepping on them. Henever saw this, but his mother told himabout it. When he lived in the house, thefield against the forest was, as it was now,a field of thistle.

After the stranger came, I often put onjeans and a denim jacket, and venturedinto the thistle, looking for remains of thelabyrinth. I found many fieldstones, butmaybe they grew there. Thistle and stoneswill grow in a field without anyone's help.

When I visited the village after ten years,I saw the house from far away. I had hadmany dreams and nightmares about thehouse. I had dreamt that I returned andfound it in various changed states, or gotlost inside, as though in a maze. Therewere rooms and corridors I did notremember. There were stairways that leddown, but not out. The house became onehundred stories tall, and I rode up anddown in elevators that went too fast andnever stopped at the correct floor. Theelevators took me down to the Nazi tun-nels, and the floor was covered with toxicslime that destroyed the polish on myboots and set off my Geiger counter.

Now I expected at any moment to awakeor realize that I was dreaming. I did not.The house appeared smaller. The onlything that had not changed were the trees.The trees seemed the same size as Iremembered them.

The people who lived now in the part ofthe house where we had lived were notkind people. Chris, Mrs. Nightingale's son,told me that the doctor who replaced mymother in the clinic liked to buy large,fierce dogs. He did not train these dogswell, and was cruel in them to keep themfierce. When he was angry at the dogs forsome reason, which sometimes wasbecause the dogs misbehaved, and some-times because he was angry at other thingsand the dogs where there, vessels for hisanger, he killed the dogs. He lured them

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with some scraps of meat. In his hands heheld a shovel. When the dog came for themeat, he raised the shovel, and brought itdown hard against the dog's nose.Sometimes that killed the dog right off,and sometimes it just stunned it. If thedog was just stunned, he then smashed itsskull with the blunt side of the shovel.

Chris had never seen this happen, but heheard the noise once. People passing bythe chain link dog pen where my sandboxhad been sometimes saw these things, andchildren who liked to hide and watchthings they were not supposed to see sawthese things and told people about it.Sometimes the cruel doctor talked to peo-ple about his problems with the dogs, andhe kept buying new dogs all the time.People figured things out and they talkedabout them to Mrs. Nightingale, whoworked as a shopkeeper now. She knew allthe gossip.

Even if the new doctor and his wife kindwere people, and even if they had allowedme to go inside to look at the house, Iwould not have wanted to. I understoodthen why the stranger had not wanted togo inside the house.

I could not stand to go inside the houseand see someone else's shoes lined up inthe hallway. Someone else's furniturewould be in all the rooms, and maybe theywould have even repainted the walls.Worst of all, there would be someone else'scooking smells in the kitchen.

I think everyone has had the experienceof visiting a house where people have beencooking unfamiliar versions of familiarfoods. It smells almost like the scrambledeggs you have cooked in your own house,but yet, there is something not quite right.It is not the same.

Imagine how much stranger it might beto go into a place that used to be yourhouse and find it smells like someoneelse's pork chops recipe. Imagine that thehouse is the place where you rememberdrinking hot milk in the morning, and thesmell of the hot milk, and the way youliked the skin that formed on the milkwhen it was boiled. Imagine this is thehouse where your mother and grandmoth-er made large batches of plum and apple

compote which had to be simmered slowlyfor hours, and filled the whole house withthe smell of boiling plums and apples.

Imagine that you go into this house,knowing exactly how it should smell, andnow it smells like dogs, cigarettes, andcheap woman's perfume.

That is why I did not even want to goinside. Instead, I went into the thistle field,and looked for the labyrinth. I have drawnthe Chartres labyrinth in notebooks and ondriveways and on beaches. It is a shape Iknow so well that I can see it in my mind.

A labyrinth is not a puzzle. There is onlyone way in and only one way out. You cir-cle the center many times until at last youget to the heart of things. It may seem thatyou are not going to get there. It may seemthat you are repeating yourself. But thelabyrinth is not a puzzle and eventuallyyou will get to the heart of things.

When you reach the center, that is onlyhalf way. Then you must walk again, out-ward, away from the center. There is onlyone way in and there is only one way out. Itmay seem that you are walking in circles. Itmay seem that you are repeating yourselfand that you will circle and never find theway out. But the labyrinth is not a puzzleand eventually you will find the way out.

That is why walking the labyrinth fillsme with hope.

When I went to the thistle field, I couldsee the labyrinth with my mind, eventhough I could not see it with my eyes, andI walked the path through the thistles. Onthe way in, I had to rely entirely on thelabyrinth in my mind, but on the way out,I had the path of crushed thistles that I hadmade.

Kari Love thinks you should readKotatsu to Tomodachi in Japanese byYoshitaka Amano. This children'sbook introduces Kotatsu the neuroticdragon, and his friends Kokomodo-otokage, Kokomori and Gloria.Always overshadowed by his friends,Kotatsu is both super-cute and a littlepathetic. This catalogue of mildfriendly abuse is a must-read for thosebarely literate in the language.

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The Spirit of the Maze

by Ken Franco

Rob Proctor shifted on the large flat rockthat sat a hundred yards or so up a littlehill from his masterpiece and rubbed histailbone. Uncomfortable or no, it was agood vantage point from which to smile.Dennis Stephens and Denis Aaronsenflanked him sitting on the damp browngrass slightly behind him, a chessboardbetween them. Aaaronsen was studyingthe board, trying to work out a strategy tobeat Stephens without losing any pieces,while Stephens was staring into RobProctor's labyrinth, trying to trace a pathfrom the exit back into the center, but hav-ing to start over every time he blinked.He'd been doing this every day since they'dfinished the maze but never seemed togrow bored of it.

The four of them had gone to highschool together; Aaronsen, Stephens, andRob and Jimmy Proctor. At the beginningof their freshman year, Jimmy, being four-teen minutes older, rose to a small degreeof local fame as an escapist. He would puton shows every month or so at the highschool auditorium at first, then later atlarger local venues like the César JuntoMemorial Playhouse on Main Street inKixton or the Knights of Columbus. Hisspecialty was the extremely tight enclo-sure. Before the ugliness he and his broth-er would spend hours after their parentshad gone to sleep designing and construct-ing steel boxes as small as Jimmy couldpossibly fit into. Rob's designs were soconsistently innovative that first-timeaudience members would think that thewhole trick was that Jimmy was able tosqueeze into the box, and they'd start toapplaud, before returning red-faced totheir chairs. No one ever talked about orremembered their amazement at this partof the show by the time they'd seen Jimmyburst out onto the floor, though. It seemedhe could escape anything and the peoplewere delighted to see him do it.

In December of their senior year theProctors had planned a sealed-tank-filled-

with-water-inside-a-coffin-inside-a-sealed-tank-filled-with-water stunt for thehigh school's Holiday Extravaganza.Dennis Stephens and Denis Aaronsencame to the auditorium after doing bonghits in lieu of history class just in time towitness everyone in the audience applaud-ing the twins appearance on the stage.When Jimmy pushed himself into thesmaller tank, Aaronsen turned and said,"Dude, how'd he get into that thing?"Then, just as Jimmy was getting out of thelarge tank, dripping with water, Aaronsenelbowed Stephens and said, "Watch this."He stood up. "Fake! Fake! They pulledthe old identical twin switcheroo! There'sa secret escape hatch or something at thebottom, and the other one pretended toclimb out! Fake! Switcheroo!" A teachergrabbed him by the arm and pulled himout of the auditorium while Stephens andmany others laughed. Jimmy wiped hiseyes and came down from the tank. Hisbrother held him from running out afterAaronsen.

No one really took Aaronsen seriously,mainly because his accusation made nosense, but Jimmy found it impossible toignore. He told Rob that the integrity ofthe act had been destroyed, and in order toget it back he would have to use a differentassistant. Rob pleaded with him not to beso stupid, but Jimmy wouldn't listen. Forthe rest of that school year, Jimmy did hisshows using for an assistant his currentgirlfriend Constance in a two piece redwhite and blue bathing suit. Rob declinedJimmy's offer to remain a part of the act asthe box engineer.

On graduation day Rob tackled Jimmyas he went up to get his diploma and pum-meled his face until Mr. De Perma pulledhim off by his throat. He stalked off thestage, then drove away in his El Caminoand never came back to Illinois.

Jimmy Proctor moved to Hollywood andhired an agent. He started with stageshows and moved on to his own televisionspecials. He even did a movie where heplayed a detective who was constantly

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being captured and locked up only toescape and foil whatever evil plot wasafoot, but predictably it bombed at the boxoffice. Nevertheless, he was the mostfamous escapist the world had ever known.

Rob watched his progress for awhilebefore deciding to act. They were twenty-four when he looked up Dennis and Denisto offer them the job. It took almost a yearand a half for the three of them to build thelabyrinth on Rob's seventy-acre propertyin northern Wyoming. The Maze was socomplex that Aaronsen and Stephens hadto carry a twelve-foot ladder with themwhenever they were inside for the lastyear, then use it to climb onto the wall andtry to get out that way. When Robdesigned it on graph paper, it took uptwelve sheets. To get from the center tothe exit there was only one correct path,with thirty-five forks, fourteen three-wayintersections, three four-ways, and onespot where you could go seven differentways, plus the one from which you had justcome. For all intents, it was unnavigable.Once it was finished, he walked a dog intothe center and left it. He sat on the wallsand watched it for a few days. It startedrunning headfirst into the sides in thehours before it died of starvation and mad-ness.

Six days ago, he had called his brothercrying. He apologized for his childishbehavior, and said that he needed to seehim again to begin mending fences.Jimmy, crying also, agreed to come seehim the next day. They hugged long andtight, and at dinner Jimmy's face droppedonto his plate of drugged chicken just likeit had in "Harry Whodunit and the Case ofthe South African Grave Robbers." Roblaughed long at that, but Aaronsen andStephens, who hadn't seen the movie, justlooked at each other and shrugged.

And now, at nine in the morning of thefifth day, Rob Proctor sat watching, wait-ing for his brother to die, and maybe,hopefully, to go mad and start shitting hispants or something good like that.

"Hey, you mind if we go and get somehoagies? We're kind of hungry here."

Rob looked away from the maze. "Youwant to get hoagies for breakfast?"

Stephens shrugged. "Well, something."

"Yeah, fine, whatever."

"You wanna come?"

Rob turned his attention back to themaze and waved dismissively over hisshoulder. Something was about to hap-pen, he could feel it. Then it did.

"I hereby call upon the spirit of the mazeto help me in this, my hour of greatestneed!"

Stephens at Rob's left began to chuckle.Surely this was the end, these mad pathet-ic ravings. They sat back down on thegrass and prepared to watch it happen.Rob, however, was not taking it so lightly.He leaned forward on his rock and glaredinto the maze.

Then Jimmy Proctor's voice escapedagain, a powerful tenor singing voice:

"I clubbed the King of Hearts, I love the Queen of France,I'll make my lower partsDo the Labyrinth Dance."

"Shit!" Rob spat on the ground byAaronsen's shoes and jumped to his feet. Aaronsen kicked dirt over the loogie andlooked over at Stephens, who was also con-fused. "Um," Aaronsen cleared his throat,"what's going on?"

"Yeah," Stephens added.

"Don't you two idiots know anythingabout labyrinths?"

Aaronsen said, "We know how to buildone…"

"Shut up. Every labyrinth, once built,becomes its own entity. It has a spirit. It

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knows the one true path in and out, andexists on the same spiritual plane as theperson who designed it. If he closes hiseyes, and invokes the spirit, the maze willlead him to the exit. I never thought--. Itmust think he and I are the same person."While Rob was muttering to himself,Aaronsen edged away from him slightly.Then he jerked upright when Rob shookhis head and looked angrily at him andStephens once again. "You dopes don'tknow about the Spirit of the Maze? Howdo you think I managed to get out everytime I went in there?"

"Well, you had a map," Stephens ven-tured.

"What the fuck good would a map doonce I was inside! Moron!" He grabbed arock the size of his fist off the ground andwhipped it at Stephens' head. Stephensfell back onto the ground and his bloodimmediately started to make a pool on thegrass beneath him. Aaronsen sat com-pletely motionless and waited until Robturned his attention back to the maze.Then he bolted back toward the house,tripping and almost falling over Stephensas he ran, but not bothering to look down.Rob did not notice his leaving.

Inside the maze, he saw that Jimmy wasonly three turns away from the exit path,walking slowly but steadily. Rob sprintedtoward the maze. He reached the openingjust as Jimmy was making the last turn.Just like he'd done seven years before, RobProctor tackled his brother and began topound on him with his fists. After thirtyseconds of this, he rolled off and sat withhis back to the nearest wall. "All rightmaze," he shouted, and then sang, panti-ng:

"The sky you see is blue,The sea you sail is teal,O Maze I speak to youAnd call your walls to seal."

Still out of breath, he pushed himselfaway from the wall and stood up. Just as

he did, he heard a tremendous creaking asthe maze began to close itself off. Afterwalking a few steps he thought to lookback over his shoulder, and saw Jimmyreach his feet.

Sneering and laughing, he walked backto his brother with the intention of beatinghim some more. Jimmy acted quicklythough, and sucker-punched Rob in histesticles. He shoved Rob to the grass andbegan to hobble to the narrowing spacebetween the walls. Rob recovered andgrabbed the back of his shirt just as he wasabout to reach freedom, and the two tus-sled weakly as the walls closed in on them.The pressure soon became so great thatneither could make any move against theother, or make any progress toward theexit. They were stacked like two very thickslices of meat between two very stalepieces of rye. Both Proctors began to thinkof the time when they were ten that theytried to see what would happen if theystuck two chess queens in their father'svice. At first, each was squeezed evenlyagainst the metal and against the otherone. Then, the black queen shot a few feetinto the air and then fell safely to theground while the white stayed behind to becrushed. Jimmy was the black queen.Some miracle of physics, some combina-tion of the force of the wall and of Robcaused him to be squeezed, sweaty andbloody, onto the grass. He rolled onto hisback just in time to be splashed in the eyesby his brother's blood. But he was free, hehad escaped.

Kari Love also recommends Wheredid Grandma And Grandpa Go? byBarbara Wilson. Unlike conventionalchildren's literature, this text prepareschildren for the harsh realities ofaging. With honest and touchingchapters explaining the truth aboutsenility, incontinence, nursing homesand hell, even adults will be crying formore.

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Homemaker’s Corner

Rat Cookies

A Fun Game

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Ratus norvegicus, the beloved Norway rat, has long been used by scientists in experimentswith mazes. Likewise, are we not all familiar with the image of a children's periodicalwhere the reader must solve the path of a maze with his pencil: at the entrance a cartoonmouse and in the center a piece of cheese? In honor of these brave maze-running rodents,I present you with a delicious cookie recipe for your pet or laboratory rodents.

1 cup flour1 cup of any combination of the following: raisins, nuts, corn, dried cranberries,

baker's chocolate, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, anise seeds, pumpkin seeds (you get the idea)

water as needed

In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Slowly add water little by little. The object is to have avery firm dough, just wet enough so the fillings and the flour hold together. Grease a cook-ie sheet. Take a teaspoonful of the dough at a time and shape it into balls or oblongs andplace on the cookie sheet. Bake at 200 F for about 2 hours. Then leave the cookies in theoven to harden further, ideally overnight. You should end up with rock-hard cookies thatare perfect for rodents to gnaw on. They will enjoy chewing through the dough to get to thetreats you have hidden within each cookie.

When lost in a strange town, one not built in a sensible numbered grid like New York City,has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that it is rather like being in a maze? This prop-erty of strange cities can be exploited for hours of delight. The game I am about to describecan be played either walking or driving. When walking, make sure to have cab fare home.When driving, a full tank of gas is advised. In either case you need a six-sided die.

Every time you come to a place where the road splits off, roll the die to detirmine whichway to go. If it is a fork offering only two choices, even numbers indicate go right and oddnumbers, go left. If there is a choice between, right, left, and straight ahead, 1-2 indicatesleft, 2-4 indicates straight ahead, 5-6 indicates right. If there are more choices, assign eachchoice a number on the die, before rolling, and then roll the die. If the number of choicesexceeds 6 the die can be rolled more than once for numbers 2-12, or another die (for exam-ple, 20 sided) may be employed.

The game is played until all players decide to stop.

A-maze-ing Advice

by Maggie Krzywicka

In the event you become a powerful mage,Dear Reader, you surely will need a way tojealously guard your secrets and magicalitems. In addition to traps and spells, it isadvisable that you create a sort of a mazewhereupon you could capture the evil-doers attempting to steal and cause havoc.

Unfortunately, the problem with compli-cated mazes is such that by design it con-fuses. Those who enter can easily get lost,including you, Dear Reader, especially ifyou are not yet as powerful as you'd like tobe. I suggest you create a simple mazewhere the only choices for movement arenorth, south, east and west. When suchmaze is constructed, also construct arobot, which shall use the below algorithmto discover the optimal path for transvers-ing the maze. Note that path and store it,for it might become useful if all magic failsand you are alone and lost in the darknessof the labyrinth you yourself built.

For your reference, the algorithm belowrelies heavily on the priciple of recursion

as the robot you construct will encountermany intersections and enter paths offeredby such intersections while rememberingthe intersections themselves. Upon find-ing the incorrect path, the robot will backup to the last correct intersection and con-tinue doing so until the correct paththroughout the entire labyrinth is found.Such movement can be described as thedepth-first search on a tree where the max-imum number of possible branches foreach non-leaf node is the number of direc-tions. The number in our case is 4, one foreach north, south, east, and west.Additionally, you will have to be able torepresent your robot's ability to continue.When the robot is free to go, you can treatthat situation as "free", but when the robotreaches a wall, designate such predica-ment with "wall".

The below code is written in C and is usedwith permission from one Dr. Basem A.Nayfeh, who has come up with this cleveridea worthy of both Ariadne and Theseus.Hopefully, having reached the level ofintelligence appropriate in becoming amage, the below "code" will be no puzzle toyou. Please enjoy your magical endeavorscarefully.

#define FALSE 0#define TRUE 1#define FREE 0#define WALL 1

do {steadystate = TRUE;for (x=1;x<Xsize-1;x++) {

for (y=1;y<Ysize-1;y++) {if (cell[x][y] == FREE) {

if ((cell[x+1][y] + cell[x-1][y] + cell[x][y+1] + cell[x][y-1]) >= 3) {

cell[x][y] = WALL;steadystate = FALSE;

}}

}}

} while(!steadystate);14

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