I reached inside, briefly entertaining the mental image of the lid slamming down on my hand in cartoonish comedy, causing me to wail in hilarity as I tried to free my mangled apendage. A mental shudder erupted as I imagined my hand trapped in the box, fingers wiggling, for another 20 some-odd years while I again gathered the courage to force open the jaws of memory.
The lid did not shut, the box merely sat there, lid agape like some benevolent child waiting for the dentist to remove his hands and tools from the strained jaws.
And I sat there, bemused of my own temporal inadequacies, my mind frozen in time, my hand frozen inside an unassuming wooden box.
The papers inside were of little consequence. Moment-long memories from middle school and before of friends and conversations passed between desks in the hushed attempt to evade instructor detection. A series of notes written between an old friend and myself in Greek, one of which the teacher had even captured as a Prisoner of Conversation, and almost discarded because of the inherent and intentional language barriers to preclude the reading of said message before the entire room of guffawing peers.
Why was this so difficult? Who else would see me?
I looked around the room for a moment, like a child, elbow-deep in the cookie jar, assuring his safety in the lie. I was in utter terror of being seen by… who? Who else lived here, but myself and my cat, who I was pretty convinced could not read English, let alone Greek.
I pulled the papers out, flipping through a few, drawing strength on a few old warm memories, and cowering away from the horror of the darkest ones. A few ripples of memory erupted, foreshadowing the upcoming flood.
And, casting aside the thimblefuls of reminiscient rapture and revulsion, in a moment of pure, sweat-soaked trepidation, I unearthed the find I expected: An unassuming green felt covered book, still in good condition, soft and warm and inviting to the touch.
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[…] pass, nothing even emanates from our eyes, and meanwhile, deep inside, we’re waiting for the dam to break. Posted in Philosophy on Saturday, November 10th, […]