Gottlieb Annie - The Cube; Keep the Secret

We dont know why, but we know its true: Describe the cube seems to be an ancient key for unlocking the soul.

You didnt wonder what your cube looked like you knew. In your cube you have created a self-portrait of amazing precision and subtlety. Its size, its place in earth and sky, and what its made of, all reflect, as in a soul mirror, how you see and feel and place yourself. Look at your cube again. Youll probably feel a shock of recognition and revelation, of simultaneous familiarity and surprise. Your cube can tell you things about yourself you didnt know you knew.

Your cube reflects your absolute individuality. No two cubes are alike! To prove it, try the game with three good friends. You will be amazed by the variety and the accuracy. Here is just a small sampling of the cubes weve seen in over three years of playing the game:

• black aluminum, 6 feet on a side
• sponge, 1 inch on a side
• scratchproof, shatterproof glass, 20 by 20 by 20
• an ice cube
• a city-block-sized cube with four different sides and a dark interior
• a fist-sized diamond radiating light
• a cube of cheese, bigger than the moon
• a plump, puffy cube of quilted cotton
• a blue supercomputer
• dark blue ocean water, 2 inches on a side
• a glass house, rocks and waterfalls inside
• a Lucite cube balanced on one point
• solid steel, big as half a house, floating
• dice, in every size (including fuzzy)
• Rubiks cube, in every size
• frozen pink lemonade, 2 by 2 by 2
• aluminum siding, windows, people living inside
• a desert tent of gauzy, billowing curtains
• a paper cube
• a cube overgrown with grass
• a cube of cloud
• a cube of light

You dont need a psychologist to explain your cube to you. In fact like your dreams only you can truly understand it. It is a message from you to yourself, one that unfolds and unfolds, revealing more each time you look at it.

Months from now, it will suddenly show you something new. Here are some hints and questions to guide you deeper into the mysteries of your cube and of yourself.

Though we know a six-foot man whose cube is 6 by 6 by 6, your cubes size may have nothing to do with your physical size. A huge, powerful ex-boxer has a surprisingly small cube but its made of super-tough titanium, and towed by a Blackbird, an incredibly fast, sleek spy plane. (Before he was twenty, this man survived and escaped a Soviet prison camp.) It would be easy to say that the size of your cube measures your sense of your own importance. But that, too, would be far too simple.

Your cube could be tiny, yet be made of gold or diamond or contain the secret of life. A Canadian housewife and mother of three saw her cube as a modest little die sitting on the sand but on top was the number one! (Dice also suggest risk-taking and luck.) Size can sometimes be a brilliant disguise or a bluff. A short, cocky, but warm-hearted cop saw a cube so big it filled the whole horizon, but it was made of nothing more than the ripples of a heat mirage quite literally, hot air! An artist from the former Yugoslavia burst out laughing, because her cube small, sand-colored, half-buried in the sand so accurately portrayed her style of keeping a low profile to live her life undisturbed. You could say that the smaller a child, the bigger its cube. As a baby, your self filled the world. Growing up was a long, often painful process of discovering theres a big world out there and negotiating your place in it.

The size of your cube tells a complex truth about the outcome of those negotiations. There is no right size, only an infinite variety of proportions and perspectives. A large cube may signal a substantial ego or a multiplicity of interests: You include a lot of the world. Or it may signify introspection: a strong interest in yourself as an object of study or a realm to explore. A very small cube could mean a focus on what is close to you, or an extroverted interest in the world out there; you may feel small and lost in it or that you are its best-kept secret! A medium-sized cube might declare an acceptance of being average or simply a comfort with your place in the world a feeling that size is not an issue and that more important is what youre made of.

The material of your cube is the most evocative, sensuous, and revealing part of your self-portrait.

Its surface is your souls skin, inviting the world in or keeping it out.

• Is your cube transparently clear,
  translucent (light glows softly through),
  or opaque?
• Is it hard or soft?
  shiny or matte?
  fragile or tough?
  porous or airtight?
• Does its surface reflect?
  (What does it reflect?)