the diegesis refers here to the imaginary space and time in which fictions exists. Xanadu is Ulmer's example, made up of 4 different places:
The original Xanadu of legend, which is home of Kubla Khan's stately pleasure dome
A place of holy ice caves in the Himalayas
Mt Abora, about which the Abyssian maid sang in the poem
Gainesville, Florida, which Coleridge had read about in a travel guide published in his time, telling of sinkholes, underground rivers, and a semitropical climate.
Chora-
A Platonic invention, it refers to a sacred nature of specific places. It was associated with the four elements by the Greeks, which is most directly related to the music of the spheres. In modern terms, it could possibly be refering to the "mood" of a thing or place, letting us know that we are safe, or in danger, or to be happy, tired, or what have you.
Finding the chora or sacred space in oneself is key to the mystory. To do this, one must look back to childhood, where "it was easier to understand the sacred at a personal level.(102)" In childhood, one feels a more intimate connection to places and things, which fades with age and exposure. The only such feeling that I can easily recall, with great vividness, is the universal dream-terror - the absolute and assured knowledge that whatever is about to happen to you is so inconcievably dangerous that is the hallmark of nightmares.
The cosmogram is a map of these places - the distance involved, being derived from childhood, is usually small - the size of a city, perhaps.
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