Cosmogram

Xanadu: referring to the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; his dream/poem/recollection that was interrupted-- and lost forever-- the everlasting land of the ends of our lost trails of thought-- the ideal place for all information to reside-- the epitome of the creative process.

Mapping the Diegesis

diegesis: "the imaginary space and time of the world created in the poem"/film/medium

Xanadu: a "hybrid place" composed of elements from "exotic sites of otherness"--use of "exotic as the emblem of curiosity and imagination"

Four exotic sites: Zanadu/Mongolia; holy caves of ice/Kashmir/India; Mount Abora/Ethiopia; underwater caves/fountains/Gainesville, Florida.

A fact certainly only the closest followers of Coleridge's poem and residents/fans of Gainesville, Florida would know. Ulmer is locating the "uncanny moments" when he experienced a sense of destiny or a life path/direction.

Chora (Sacred Space)

Three kinds of space or place, according to the Greeks:

Topos: the abstract quality of place as a container

Chora: the scared nature of specific places

Kenon: the "nothing" (why is there something rather than nothing?)

Ulmer: choragraphy: a "hyper-rhetoric_ that chora is used, rather than topos, as a metaphor for the places of invention. As in, our thoughts now exist in the web and the electric pieces of the world, in our minds, our feelings in memories. These are not held within any object or a container, but within the emotions and sensations associated with the event.