Let’s think of a fantasy world unlike this one. A world of magic and age. O, and the people sit, free from the shackles of modern awareness and yet plagued by the threat of very real physical pain, of a sort that I have never had cause to experience. The pain of incurable illness, of sudden accidental death to a million thorns, or else a violent end at the hand of some dragon or beast indescribable.

This world is an escape from reality, a beautiful escape. Made beautiful because it is an escape, because it is an Other to the things that we know. Some, like me, need to escape. For some times. Others, do not; although I cannot comprehend what enjoyment they find in their own minds, for my own mind is a whirlwind of turmoil and emotion with a sort of constant humming background noise mixed all at once.

Maybe one day we’ll find an escape like that in the real world. Maybe that’s possible. Maybe we’ve already found it and are addicted to it, that torrent of information we call the internet. Maybe physical space can never satisfy the minds of some of us.
Imagine a physical space that could satisfy my craving for novelty. Lonelier than the middle of a desert; densely packed with novel physical shapes, holes in walls and slanted floors and bars and beams criss-crossing every which way. Designed by an architect who would make Dr. Seuss look sane and boring an practical. Being inside this space would be like sitting at the top of a tree and being in the maintenance tunnel that runs along side the HVAC pipe underneath the chemistry building, at the same time. Not a liminal space, but a novel space. A space unlike a space experienced before. Without walls or floors, as we know them. An escape, a piece of art.