For some reason, once upon a time, someone left a little pile of extremely strong magnets in my media center. They’ve been sitting on my desk for over a year now, and the other day I had a scathingly brilliant idea.

You may recall that I’ve been puzzling over the eastpoint of the labyrinth, the element of which is Air. The problem is that the other elements admit of lowkey stations: a pile of rocks, a candle, a basin of water. But Air seems to need something that floats at least a little, and therefore must be far enough above the ground to catch the wind.

I keep thinking “flags,” but the idea of tracking fabric filmy enough to float and then leaving it to the mercy of the elements, getting stained and dirty and generally icky, was distasteful. I have a set of Tibetan prayer flags made of art tissue that arrived as a “free gift” from some alternative store I trafficked with, and I thought about those.

But then I was cleaning off my desk at school and came across these magnets. It occurred suddenly to me that I could combine all these concepts and solve the problem: get tissue paper (which floats and is expendable), cut it into flags, and attach it to the rebar now standing next to the eastpoint entrance with the magnets. Presto! Easy to do, easy to undo, and attractive to the eye.

Videlicet:

Now I can play with the concept: cutting different shapes, using rice glue to create longer pennons, different colors for different moods. The sky’s the limit, pun intended.

In other news, this morning I was looking out the den window onto the labyrinth and decided I would pave over (paving stones) the firepit area in a large circle. It would be practical in terms of fire safety, and the circle would be quite beautiful next to the labyrinth.