CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
If you've heard of rodent mazes but didn't know how they were arranged, here's one that features four blind alleys to its one exit. From The Dancing Mouse by Robert Yerkes, 1907.
Here's a yew at the center of a labyrinth (Cassell's, 1896), but recall that "You [like the yew] are at the center of the maze" (Howard A. Sherman, The First Mile, 2005).
If you were looking for the castle ... From Alberuni's India by Muhammad ibn Ahmad Biruni, 1910. See our book of imaginary Kafka parables, Franzlations.
"Gurdjieff maintained that people live their lives asleep, unaware of themselves and that we are made up of a series of little 'I's, each one called upon in turn to deal with the changing contexts and circumstances of our lives and each one unaware of the other." —Inside Contexts, 2012