Box

O

Stage 1: From the unquestioning, proto-conscious milieu of qualia and relations, a rupture occurs resulting in the creation of the symbolic object known as “Subject,” which also instantaneously and retroactively creates the system of meaning from which it sprang forth. The anxiety of this apparently recursive, supervenient, self ordering system will be projected onto something “outside” the “subject.”

O put the signal in his teeth, the line of thought vibrated up his brain stem. He came to their house to sojourn in the sun he knew would be at their window, and only theirs, like how the sky was always bigger in his grandma’s driveway. Now it was a sunless/skyless box where THE GAME was in his eyes upside down like a camera obscura, or he was upside down on the couch, hanging his head at the Broncos.
Maryland was blowing smoke into the unsweetened night from the crisp stub of a J. April was washing the weeks off the dishes. The TV got excited. Maryland said “God, these announcers are such idiots, let’s put on a record,” and muted the TV.
April called over the faucet, “I can’t hear the play-by-play!”
“It’s okay I’ll do it- Bronco’s line up, shotgun formation, Jason takes the snap, falls back in the pocket, defense closes in, Jason launches it deep, boom, caught by Wilkinson who’s wide open, runs to the endzone, but no he’s going the wrong way, he’s headed for the locker room, he’s taking the ball home with him, he’s driving away in his Bronco- oh how fitting!”
April watched him narrating over images of pizza being pulled apart by the sheer force of savings. She glared, “just turn it back on. And where is Cheyenne?”
Cheyenne came through just before halftime with the six pack. She sat on the floor in front of the couch where O was now sitting upright despite paying attention to none of this. O was listening to a song, not the Portishead record Maryland was still turning on during commercials, but a song he’d never heard before, except maybe as a very young child.
And the song was saying: Hey.
And he was thinking: Hey, who are you?
The song smiled and said: What a beautiful night.
O thought: Yeah it really is man. I think I love you.
The song was chill: I love you too man.
O thought: I mean, I’m really crazy about you. I’m being honest and I don’t say it often, maybe I’ve never said it.
The song said: Wow, that’s amazing. Look at how the streetlamps are pouring down on everything.
O thought: Yeah those are great streetlamps, I never thought about them really. Hey, do you think we should meet?
The song said: Yeah that’s cool with me.
O thought: Awesome, man, I’m so excited. I’m nervous, but excited. Where can I find you?
And the song said: I’m everywhere, obviously, but to show you it’s easier if you go up the hill.
O thought: Yeah that works.
When O stood up, the floor was suddenly a mirror, and it was as if his legs were the size of trees. He remembered being up in that old spruce/leg when he and Maryland were kids, and the crack of his foothold, and being impaled on the way down. Maryland was so calm then, even with all that blood, he just picked him right up.
On the street he felt lifted, maximally groovy, and was singing a new song, an even better one, half his own design and half a reprise.
The street rose up steeply, from little neighborhoods to secluded houses. From here you could see the shape of the valley, draped in black pines, barren only where the hole in the Earth sat. O thought: Where are you? I love you. I want to feel you near me.
And the song replied: I am always near you, you just forget sometimes.
And O thought: That’s funny. You’re cute.
And the song declared: O, it’s time for me to give you something special. Do not speak. Do not be scared. You can always come to me again if you get lost. I believe in you, and I love you.
O said nothing, saw nothing, felt only the touch of wind through his sweater.
The song said: This is you.

I opened my eyes. I saw a familiar town in a strange light. Beside me was a box. I embraced its perfect surface. It was about the size of a fridge, but weighed almost nothing. I felt like a broken fever. I laid there on the cold sidewalk. I thought there’d be awful clouds, parting, the smell of recent rain, but ultimately sun- gloriously, sun.
But I felt alone. I felt like an idiot. I imagined the family across the street, seeing me, as a creep, or a bum, or a junkie. I shouldn’t say junkie, Cheyenne says it’s demeaning, but April says it all the time.
I didn’t know where my lover was. I didn’t feel him near me. Maybe he shut himself in the box. But the box was me?
Someone was coming up the hill. I cried and closed my eyes. I wanted to crawl in the box but some hidden eye of the world stopped me.
I love you, where are you?

“And, I’m sorry, how did we get here?” I asked again.
Cheyenne said, “I followed you out.”
“Right.” I turned the page of the menu though I hadn’t read any of the words. “I’m sorry to keep asking-”
“It’s okay.”
“Um, so what’s my name?”
The waitress came over, I must have looked panicked because she asked if we needed a few more minutes, which we did, in fact we needed a lot of em.
Cheyenne said, “Dave.”
“Dave, not bad, kinda works I think.”
Cheyenne looked like she was going to cry but said “It suits you.”
“I feel like I’ve done this before.” and I really meant that.
“You have.”
April walked in dragging Maryland behind. She actually laughed when she saw the box to my left, and I thought for a second she wasn’t going to be mad. Then her face spoiled and she sat across from me. Maryland, on my right, was rubbing each eye with every finger of his hand, probably seeing spots.
April said “Dave, what the fuck.” Not a question, a statement, like, this situation possess the quality of what the fuck.
I said “I know I know, I’ll get you some pancakes, I can buy us all pancakes.”
“I’m really not hungry.” April only ever looked tired to hide the crouching tiger, didn’t she.
“I’m getting pancakes, Cheyenne do you want any?”
Maryland interrupted her, “Woah what’s in the box?”
I said, “Did you just notice?”
Maryland was looking directly down at the table and shaking his head slowly.
April said “I just really don’t need you to be fucking around, getting yourself in trouble right now, I’ve already got a lot to deal with.”
“Wait,” I said, “Do you- I’m not on drugs. Did you guys think I was on drugs?”
April said, “Oh whatever.”
Cheyenne looked away, Maryland was never looking, and now the waitress was back, and I just took a coffee, no one was hungry.
Maryland was miles away but still persisted, “But what’s in it though.”
“It’s me.” I said.
“It’s- but, dude are you messing with me on purpose right now?” he managed to say.
“No, I just, really don’t wanna talk about it, and April it’s fine, okay, I’m, it’s fine alright?”
April said a lot more words while I watched Cheyenne’s reflection in the window. All I had to show was a wooden shell (or a wooden me and a person shell), and another pinched Perkin’s mug.

Ø

Stage 2: The absurdity of existence will cause the subject, now fully enmeshed with their belief in their selfhood, to struggle to reduce the totality of its phenomenology into meaning. This failure, causing agitation, sweating, and discomfort, will become an obsession as the subject reaches ever harder for an answer that does not exist, to a question that is ontologically vapid.

In the attempt to sidestep the tired noises of block by bloc pavements and the grounded sort of people who make up reviews about movies and have sudden and inexplicable urges like telling the time and hanging shiny bodies/torsos on metal hooks with the resignation of knights and a mean duality so common that in a double stroke of hedonism a bus could go flinging by the blind woman as she fights a weak determinism and a man in a tweed jacket as he frisks her skeleton and discards the excess, excess and fake humility, hunting you down every dreary corridor under Mount Rainier- I made for the desert.
I borrowed the car in the sunlessness and drove into the nighlessness. I made it to this cute, like high desert town, watching for the overpass Jesus. We all know a guy who shows up under the overpass when you need him most and tells you things like, “Have you lost your collective mind?” But it was all flat here.
I was under Olympus when I met him the first time. We were looking into the rain-lashed water at a seagull.
“Yea- there’s a special bird, I’m sure youse can see dat.” He just walked right up to me.
“That’s your bird?”
“Nope- nobody’s bird. Belongs ta da trash heap.” It was sitting on a trash heap.
“Hey do you know where I can get a haircut?” I asked. But he went right along.
“That- That bird.” He pointed with his whole body, “Hatched- from its own egg! It laid an egg, so big like, climbed inside, forty-nine days later, it hatched!” He stepped back and threw up his arms.
“That doesn’t usually happen.”
Well I watched the bird for a while, and I’ve seen a lot of them, but this one sure was sitting on a trash heap. I wished that wasn’t all I could see.

I waited until the first cafe opened, 5:30 AM.
The Darling came for my order. She didn’t comment on my box sitting across, how can you at 5:30? I said I wanted a coffee but only if she could give it to me in my Perkin’s mug. We laughed and she took the mug.
I think I had I lost my collective mind. I just wanted her to be in love with me.
Darling came back with a waffle, and yes, my mug, cream and sugar, “The works” I joked, but it wasn’t really a joke so she didn’t laugh.
I wished so hard that I was back at that Perkins, just Cheyenne and me, the originals. And how it felt then, like the first snowfall, when the world is new again, and the love of the song was with me. I missed the song so much I burned my tongue on the coffee. That love was as unimaginable to me then as Winter is in Summer, as fear is in joy. I felt I could cry when I saw the Darling wait on those old ladies.
But what I really missed was being back at home, with everybody, and pizza politics, and Cheyenne, and the Broncos losing to the concept of Lambough Field (the ball bounced right off the upright), and the song was there, and everything was okay.
Where was I now? Some ditch called the Pacific Northwest?

I laid in the dirt, beside my box.
Someone said “Is he dead?”
I said “No.”
I saw no reason to open my eyes. They left/were leaving. A helicopter fluttered above the, I dunno, arroyos. The automatic pump stopped and I got up beside my car. I thought maybe the sand would have turned to glass, but I was only charged $33.47. The gasoline reminded me of the way spiders turn flies into liquid before they drink them, so I got a pop and kept on. I know, I know, but I threw the box in back and kept on.
What I really wanted was a little fort, like a kid, hidden in the desert, under a big piece of old wood, and a friend to ask me relevant questions about my life. Well I walked for a long time, in the arroyos, the box roped to my back. I shot out like a whip into the hills and all that, but no friend/fort.
By the time I realized it, there was already a black mat in the sky, dripping. Of course, how could I have realized it before I realized it, something exists when it exists in our attention. Like I didn’t see that guy on the mesa top, well, until I did, just barely, like a bug. I thought, “high waters, higher ground.”
The hillside crumbled like cookie dough. A shriveled button cactus was having the time of its life. This was one of the times of its life- how often does it rain here? Once a year? It must be his birthday.
It got pretty vertical, up inside the cloud. My face was painted with red dirt and blood under the skin, under my nails. Water condensed in my throat. The exercise felt good, like breaking a fever. And at once I was on top of the mesa, above the sky.
I threw my box down and collapsed beside it. The man on the mesa was sweeping when he noticed me, or maybe he saw me coming and was getting the place ready. I panted. He made his way over.
“Hola.” He said.
“Hola.” I breathed.
“Welcome to la Mesa.”
“Thanks.” I sat up, “sweeping?”
“Yah.”
I wasn’t about to comment on futility.
“Who are you?” He asked me.
I said, “I dunno, I haven’t looked inside yet.”
“Inside the box? The box is you?”
“I think so.”
“…Why don’t you look? that seems like a good thing to know.” He moved his stool over to where I was sitting.
“Mm. Yeah.”
“Why not?”
I felt a little ill talking about it so I think I just said, “Hey man, do you know where I can get a haircut?”
He smiled like a summer sausage, got up and said, “I know what I must do.”
I let him help me up and sit me down and put the bib on me and I said, “No mirror?”
“No.”
“Maybe the sand will turn to glass.”
The little downspout was done now and the patient grass twisted in a washed out landscape with probably a million bugs and little critters who have been waiting like Methuselah for the mountains to crumble to the sea. The color was so deep it was almost purple, almost painted on. And he started snipping, rhythmically, slowly. I thought I owed him an answer now, I said, “The deal is- it’s like this: If I look in the box and there’s nothing- I’m dead. If I look and there’s something then maybe I’m okay, maybe better or worse I don’t know. And If I never look then I can just try to imagine what’s in there.”
He was almost whispering to me, “How come you think you’re stuck with it?”
“Mm. I did try to get rid of it once… I made a plan to haul it to the ocean and let it drift away. I drove to the bottom of Olympus actually. But the thought of losing it was just aching in my mind. If I lose it, then I’ll really never know, and that’s as good as being dead.”
“But you don’t know right now.”
“But I could.”
“Hmmm. There’s no easy way to say this my friend, you are thinning.”
“Oh, you scared me- ha, I’m thinning. Well without a mirror how can I know?”
“Believe me friend.”
“That gives me an idea-” I spun to face him, “will you look in the box for me?”
He pulled back a little, “I feel very much that this is a box you should look into.”
“So you do think I should look into it?”
“Uhh- sì.”
I must have sighed. He said it was really no big deal, that it was just in my head. But to me, my head is all I really got that’s real. And I was feeling a little low that I might have to just open it or leap off the edge of the table. He went back to sweeping my hair while I hung my feet off the edge and tried to convince myself to do something.

The end of everything in its totality. Not much. A bunch of crossed emotions. So it had to happen. The surface of the box was earthly now. I wanted no light to escape. I wanted to cover my face, like a kid in a mirror. I thought maybe I could cry. But I didn’t really hurt at all. In fact, nobody was there. There was no box. No mesa. No man. Something crawled up in a closed throat. Slid off the face of everything. Got mixed up in an array of repetitions. Variations of a substance. A substance of impersonal cathartic physics. And even the word would be gone soon. No peace to be made. An answer to a prayer. A body without organs. A line of flight. Swept away…

+

Stage 3: As the system of meaning orders itself, trying to explain itself, the substance/process rapidly oscillates between everything and nothing until the two are indistinguishable. Subjecthood is rejected as the plane of constancy becomes imminent to imminence. The re-becoming-subject now straddles the fissure of their own self-separation.

Maryland is on the steps in a sad looking daze. I sit beside him. I take out a blunt I had procured for this occasion and hand it to him. “I’m sorry for stealing your wife’s car.” I say.
He takes off his aviators and I can see nightmares in his eyes. “Hey thanks man, it’s no biggie.” he says.
I realize that I was hoping he’d apologize for something too. I accept the desire and let it fall to the ground like ash.
“When we got married,” He says, “We thought people who got married were stupid.”
“Is that right?” I say.
“Yeah we wanted to be stupid, that’s why we did it, at eighteen.”
“Well I hate to say it but I think you succeded.”
“Yep, pretty much. You know, I’ve been cutting my pot with Witch Hazel, I heard it’s good for asthma.” He says.
“You’re smoking to cure asthma? Man, you don’t have asthma, you have lung damage.”
Cheyenne steps out. Cheyenne and I go walking in the summer afternoons. It’s delirious out there, tree-lined streets, you can’t make this stuff up.
One day she says, “So what really happened in the desert?”
“With the box?” I ask, “I just knew it was empty. I knew the whole time really, I was just denying it. But when I finally looked in and it really was empty… I dunno, the nothing became everything, all at once.”
“How do you mean?” See? That’s nice, the others would have teased me, but Cheyenne is the real enlightened one.
“You know, you’re the real enlightened one. You know what’s really important.” I say
“Where did that come from?” Blue jays chase woodpeckers between the black pines.
“I just love you.”
“I love you too.” She says.
“…What was I saying? I guess I felt like I didn’t need to search anymore. There’s nothing besides this perfect, indivisible, infinite and unrepeatable moment! And what else could I want?”
“You really wanted to hit April with the shovel earlier.”
“Yeah,” I say “I know. It’s easy to forget.”
We stand at the fence and watch the excavators digging their way to the center of the Earth. One of the largest gold mines in the world will soon cease its searching too. Well like we said it’s hot/delirious, and we just find that to be the funniest thing. We’re cracking up on the grass. We cry, “There’s no gold! Oh Gosh!”
And in a vector of emotion a cloud rises above us. And the center drifts out of focus. And everything else is suddenly in sharp relief. And it’s like looking backwards through the camera and seeing that underneath every pinhole eye is the same solitary lighthouse candle. And it’s like looking at a window, and then looking through it. And behind the window is an ocean. And each wave rises and falls in an arc of drama all its own. And the plane of experience expands to cover every wave across the surface of the sea simultaneously. And the lighthouse crumbles into the water. And a thousand waves crash every second. And superfine, complex and beautiful droplets run down the stone and recollect into each other. And…