BOXED IN

BOXED IN

We’ve all got boxes in our lives. How many do you have?

I’ve got one for my professional life, and one for my passions. I’ve got boxes of different sizes: big ones for hockey, little ones for housekeeping. I have boxes for music and for foods and for fears and for hopes. We all divide our lives into many boxes, to be opened or closed as we see fit.


Some people have boxes for death, divorce, and destruction. Some people have boxes for unimaginable joy and discovery. Some of us just have them for junk food.


But however many boxes we have, it’s important to unpack them all sometimes. It’s important to see how many boxes you’ve accumulated over the years, and whether you might not have too many.


Because boxes are great, but require a lot of walls.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

                                                     SHAPING UP

Down with the same old shapes!


Down with rectangles, circles, and squares! Down with triangles, convenient though they may be in certain poking and slicing applications. Down with octagons, the nay-sayers of the road.


Be gone with pentagons, hexagons,and nonagons! Your abundant vertices and your myriad facets won’t save you now. I’m advocating for the overthrow of all standardized shapes.

Where are the non-conformist shapes, the love-children of square pegs and round holes? Where are the shapes that weren’t interested in fitting so neatly inside the lines?


Go, express yourself fully in all three dimensions! Ooze confidently in the direction of your dreams!

                             STRANGE, NOT STRANGER

There’s value in oddity. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t.

If you could see the portion of your daily life spent on autopilot, measure the number of things you see without seeing and touch without being touched by, you might not cheer so loudly for the victory of normal over bizarre.


I welcome oddity into my life like a distant relative, an ember from the same fire of my soul, ejected out into the night and found its way back, winking at me knowingly. Be it brass, bone, or Basque, I rejoice in the odd.


After all, it’s better than just breaking even.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

                                     A DAY IN THE LIFE

A DAY IN THE LIFE

I asked him if he liked noisettes, the roasted hazelnuts sold by vendors on nearly every street corner. I had some in my bag, and if he liked them, I would go buy him his own bag.


He sat, feet dangling childlike over the edge of the lagoon, watching the waves coming in and out, crescendoing and fading, over and over.


“Bien sûr, tout le monde en mange,” he confided in the surf. Of course, everybody eats them.

I handed him my remaining bag and stood. He quickly ate several. I turned and located a vendor, and walked over to his grill, an overturned barrel.


When I handed him my money and looked over my shoulder, my friend was gone.

I told the vendor to keep them for another day.

         OF FELINES AND SHORELINES

People are always talking about lost things. Lost time, lost socks, lost chances. It seems like if we don't stop every now and then to take stock of the things we've lost, we'd have to add our own minds to the list.


But cats don't have this problem.


Cats lustily chase, catch, and lose a thousand things a minute, and race right on to the next one with undiminished gusto, ready to try anything and everything once again, ready to give the grand pursuit another shot. Losing everything but the whole point.


Cats and beaches have a lot in common: They’re both filled with mystery and delight.


The place where the land meets the sea is a lost place, a place of blurred frontiers and far off horizons, things to be chased. Where the waves ceaselessly pursue the shore, anything can be found.


I've been so busy getting lost, I'm just now finding this.