Toronto+Vancouver City of Labyrinths Project

Saturday Afternoon spent chalking three Labyrinths in and around the Central Playground of Brampton’s Chinguacousy Park.

I was so focused on making the Labyrinths,

I only took a few photographs.

And altogether forgot to take any photographs of my third Labyrinth, a pass-through baltic design closer to the spray pad area.

It was that time of day,

Before the photographer’s Golden Hour when natural lighting is at its best for image captures,

When long shadows make it challenging to properly photograph the Labyrinths I draw in chalk on the ground.

So I only took two more less than satisfactory photographs to simply remember and remind myself of the day.

People walking the Labyrinths came in waves, when one would walk, many then followed.

Perhaps as many teens and grown-ups walked them as the total number of children who kept returning to re-walk them.

I lost track of time and was mostly in the moment.

Making Labyrinths has become my Mindfulness practice as much as walking Labyrinths.

Around the largest of the afternoon’s three Labyrinths,

I chalked the word for Labyrinths in a number of Brampton’s most spoken Languages.

Somehow the late afternoon rays of sunlight peeking through the trees and landing upon my multi-colour chalk Labyrinth,

Looks very much like the colours of sunlight passing through the stained glass windows of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, as it illuminated the Labyrinth inside the Church.

Image I took of the Labyrinth inside Grace Cathedral in SF back in 2013.

More Photos

“Walking the spiral path of twists and turns is an ancient spiritual exercise.

“Often the words labyrinth and maze are used interchangeably, but they are not the same. A maze is a network of paths and dead-ends, and one has to puzzle her way out. In contrast, a labyrinth has only one way in and only one way out. The walker simply follows the path.

“Twenty years ago in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral, I walked a labyrinth on its marble floor, a replica of the famous design found at Chartres Cathedral in France. It was an exercise that gave me profound calm and unexpected answers, all from just putting one foot in front of the other.

“I discovered there is a scientific reason for why this happens. The left side of the brain, which governs rational, logical and linear actions, is often overworked. Walking a labyrinth allows that side to rest, while the right side of the brain, which is associated with non-verbal, non-rational and the intuitive, is exercised, according to “The Healing Labyrinth,” an article in Barron’s by Helen Rafael Sands in 2001. After walking a labyrinth, the two hemispheres of the brain become balanced.”

— Suzette Martinez Standring, MyZeeland

I spent a couple of days earlier this week in The City, San Francisco.

Initially it was to honour the sixth anniversary of the Boxing Day Tsunami.

I built a giant outline of a candle in luminaria, then as I did exactly five months ago on the one month anniversary of the Tsunami, I waited for the Sun to set on the west coast of North America…

In due course, the same Sun would rise in East Asia.

This Giant Candle is my way of sending hope from here to there; of saying without words, that you all have not been forgotten.

I decided to stay overnight at Ocean Beach after building a fire with driftwood, sharing warmth with strangers, falling asleep to echoing rhythms of The Pacific as waves crashed womblike upon the shore.

The morning brought breakfast beside The Cliff House above the ruins of the Sutro Baths, then ultimately, exploring the Land’s End trail near Mile Rock Beach.

Without expectation, following a winding trail, a discovery.

But who and when and why and how…

The what however, is known: Lands End Labyrinth.

Second in a trilogy of Bay Area labyrinths by Eduardo Aguilera.

It’s about a year old, though I had no knowledge of that at the time of discovery.

As it happened, I was still carrying a printout of a seven circuit Chartes labyrinth design.

I struck up a conversation with Roger, one of the early morning labyrinth walkers who you see wearing a Farley’s hoodie.

Roger had no clue as to the origins, but turns out, he himself had just built a labyrinth in his backyard.

Roger also owns Farley’s Coffee in Potrero Hill.

…Amazing who you can meet when you walk newly discovered labyrinths…

A number of co-incidences have happened in and around discovery of Lands End Labyrinth.

This labyrinth is off the beaten path and built by one person, Eduardo Aguilera, in hopes that people would discover them on their own. …sounds familiar.

He had built another labyrinth in the Marin Headlands, at an exact spot that I would discover later the same day. When I stumbled upon the spot, immediately I was inspired to gather stones and begin a labyrinth outline in the earth… yet I was out of gas. Exhausted. Spent. Yet still inspired to return and do it properly.

San Francisco and Toronto, both share well known public labyrinths attached to churches in central locations initiated by formal networks of people: Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and Trinity Church in Toronto

Find myself realizing that I may be Toronto’s Eduardo Aguilera.

But now left with a question I cannot answer from here, where does the Land End in Toronto?