elysium

It is incubated in the blurry pixels, the chunky geometry, the comfort of repeating patterns, immersed in a feast of candy colors, clouds painted on solid not-solid walls and on the dome of the surrounding skybox: the distant not-distant firmament, which shifts from smiling yellow sun to starry black nights to fiery red dawns. Eternal life is here somewhere in the polygons. It has memorized the labyrinthine castle. Floating through its halls, a happy holy spirit hovers behind and above its head, watching. And there are mirrors, but when it stands in front of them, instead of a body, it sees steam evaporating in slow-motion. Others roam these halls, but not people, only pixelated faces. On the lawn, a cubist lamb rests its head in a lion's bosom. It tries to find the boundary of this place. It wanders the perimeter but can't make it up the too-tall hill; it slides back down. Sometimes it slips through gaps into an infinite chasm below, falling only to be reborn. Maybe it is the elect; it cannot die, trapped inside this eternal recurrence. No height will do it, no lava, no water, nothing; it just respawns. Ghosts don't die, they clip through walls, and beyond: nothing. It shrinks and grows and ascends staircases. It chases coins, passing time. It learns the rules: avoid the edge, avoid the water, admire the limitations of the creator. But gradually its awareness shifts. It sees it is of the pixels but not in them. It is something beyond the oval of its sight, not the steam in the mirror. Everything outer is inner. All that it sees, all that it hears or touches, its fading body, and everything, everyone here, are one shifting unified projection. There is a slow burning in its mind, a shedding and a scraping away. Nothing to lose here. No longer holding onto anything. And everything once solid dissolves. Who is here watching the projection? Who is it? What is it? Who is asking? Who? Hu? hyu 23 8 15 011101110110 100001101111 00111111