Tuesday 19 May 2009

The Cube Game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_(game)

I must admit, I was a little prepared, not having participated in this exact game per se, but having participated in others like it, and did so with a decided agenda of creating an interesting picture, but which nonetheless led to an interesting introspective interpretation given the games parameters.


Here's the picture:

It's a desert. It's a dry, barren landscape, cracked from years without sufficient moisture, just the occasional deluge of the too-short rainy season, leaving naught but the hardest lives left to endure.

In the middle of this desert is a giant block of ice. It's shaped like a cube, but is melting in the midday sun. Leaning against the southern face of the directionally aligned cube of ice is a ladder, leading to its summit, a mere 12 feet (cubed).

There is a horse, a Palomino, drinking from the melting rivulets pouring down the eastern face.

When the storm comes, a savage sandstorm tearing in from the west, the horse is already mostly sheltered, only needing to take a few cautionary steps back, towards the north, for the cube of ice suffers the brunt of the stinging sands, marring its surface with pits and scars from the windblown erosion.

However, the storm must have blown in a seed from afar, for shortly thereafter, in the filthy hollowed pool formed by the wind and sun in the top of the cube, a seed sprouts a rose. The rose grows by sending it's roots down through the ice, causing great cracks and fissures throughout the matter that sustains it.

In the end the cube doesn't quite resemble the majesty and awe of a pure block of steaming ice in the middle of a desert as it did with the initial image; it is cracked, breaking, shrinking, and falling away, but the rose grows, and the horse drinks.

- Foster

4 comments:

  1. I like this so much, I have nothing to say. :) And I'm only on my second cup of coffee and having blog issues, so all that and now this. My brain is somewhat - wowed. lol

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  2. Thanks... I think.

    I'm glad to see you got the blog issues somewhat sorted... enough to post.

    Whatever else the day brings, I hope you salvage the "wow".

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  3. Let me see if I can decipher this from what I gathered on the link to the game. The desert is you, the Cube of ice is an emotion of cold, perhaps even contempt, pain, or even a feeling of displace. Time (the storm, the heat of the desert) slowly melts the hardness and it becomes compassionate staving the thirst of the horse and giving sustenance to the rose to bloom. In the end you find your spirit nourished and thriving with beauty.

    I may be wrong but it was truly a beautiful and insightful piece of writing. (Hugs)Indigo

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  4. I think the interpretation is always the part of these games that I want to rebel against, or manipulate to some degree, for better or worse, as it's always subjective. I just love the images that come from them. There was some other Freudian one I did a few years ago that inspired a little piece of writing too. At any rate, I appreciate your thoughts, Indigo. It would be nice to share in your own.

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