The Labyrinth of the Past

The Veiled Oasis is my second experiment in writing a "paper" in a nonlinear hypertext format.

My first such experiment was The Hyperlexicon, which I created in 2006 as part of my undergraduate work in the Interdisciplinary Studies program at California Institute of Integral Studies.

Like The Veiled Oasis, The Hyperlexicon is online and publicly accessible. It's attracted a lot of readers in the time it's been online, and it continues to bring me friendly and interesting email from total strangers.

There are obvious similiarities between The Hyperlexicon and The Veiled Oasis, because they're created in the same medium (pieces of my writing, and quotes from other sources, presented on a number of web pages interconnected by hyperlinks), and both of them use that medium to convey a (simplified) impression of the way my mind forms associations among multiple ideas, concepts, stories, and themes.

In other ways, the two projects are quite different from one another.

The Hyperlexicon takes associations sparked by a collection of specific words and phrases, and interconnects them in such a way that they form a labyrinth. Like any labyrinth, The Hyperlexicon has a center, which provides the reader with an objective: one can make a game of reading The Hyperlexicon, in which the goal is to reach the center.

The Veiled Oasis is not a labyrinth.

At the center of The Hyperlexicon, there is a link to the title page of The Veiled Oasis. My recommendation for the most interesting way to experience The Hyperlexicon and The Veiled Oasis is to start at the entry page of The Hyperlexicon, work your way through The Hyperlexicon to its center, and then follow the link from the center of The Hyperlexicon to the title page of The Veiled Oasis, and begin your exploration of The Veiled Oasis from there. (If you've already made it to the center of The Hyperlexicon before reading this, congratulations!)

Click here to go to the beginning of The Hyperlexicon (note that this is the only link in the entireity of The Veiled Oasis that leads to a page outside of The Veiled Oasis).