'Rising of the Ghelyrns'

When you make your way to Seashore Park, contiguous with the charming Taitung Forest Park you will find the Taitung Centennial International Landmark, a pavilion marking the many paths of the Austronesian disapora in our linear world. If you go up to the main level, looking towards Green Island (conveniently marked in the concrete), you’ll see, partway to the beach, a green serpentine stone near some trees.

It is a marker from Kcymaerxthaere, an art project created by Eames Demetrios. A series of plaques and other markers around the world honor events that have taken place in a parallel universe that, according to Demetrios, “co-exists to some degree with ours.” Most of these installations are bronze or stone plaques inscribed with stories but some are larger, even entire buildings. As of 2021, there are more than 140 sites spread across six continents and 30 countries.

The marker tells the story of a truly spectacular display that would have unfolded above your head in that universe. For the stone marks a place, more or less (it was actually a bit higher in those times), where one could lay back on the ground and watch the rising of the ghelyrns–huge dirigible-like vessels filled completely with water which nonetheless floated overhead.  

The passengers on the ghelyrns were the rabansg, playful dolphin-like creatures who got tired of swimming around the continents and instead invented the ghelyrn to float overland as a shortcut.  In Kcymaerxthaereal times, crowds of people would stay here for hours and watch the massive translucent shapes float overhead, their shadows like clouds on the ground.