The Boxby Chris Harris |
Table of Contents Part 1 appears in this issue. |
| Part 2 of 3 |
Our hearts so full, our voices shrill in the games we played, for the day so gay. Upon the cake a name I knew. “Matilda”, it said, “Four years today”. How I cried, and how we all cried then, for my sister Matilda had died at age two.
Back now, in the magic room. Through the window the world span on in a dizzy, endless blur of futile endeavours. Its occupants seemed unaware of the pointlessness of such toil against the backdrop of their own mortality. Did they imagine that by creating and keeping deadlines, that the ultimate appointments with death and sadness could be evaded? Perhaps they thought such orderly lives might cope more with, and plan for their eventual slaughter at the hands of time and inadequate science.
Such was the philosophy of the box. Within its lessons its pupils grew, as those without its guidance ran naked through the streets beyond. There on the chest by the window, in its refusal to move, lay the very stark contrasts of wisdom against folly.
Who could have created such a device? I’d long been a student of Paganism, the Occult, and a variety of other much-maligned subjects. I knew their secrets held more than the primitive fertility rituals attributed to them, and understood the motivations of the Christians, whose propaganda had destroyed their legacy.
In its long history, our world alone had spawned many civilisations. The number of such races within the universe as a whole could only be staggering. Whoever was responsible for the box, be they of this world, within it, or from somewhere else, were in my estimation, a truly enlightened species.
As evening approached, birdsong replaced the noises of the day. Long shadows grew darker still and seemed to stretch like fingers of a hand clasping the last rays of sunlight across the carpet. I was not alone. I don’t believe anybody could ever feel alone in this room.
In the corner, though rarely played, stood an old piano. My father had played well but refused to use the instrument. For reasons unbeknown to even the most experienced and professional tuner; the notes it produced were always flat.
I remember one such attempt by an eccentric and rather disheveled looking gentleman; it was responsible he claimed, for a nervous breakdown that he’d encountered soon after.
On the first visit all was well, but upon calling for payment the following day, and discovering the piano to be sounding flat, he withdrew his invoice. A second and third attempt also failed. Refusing defeat, the now even more disheveled individual began to employ all sorts of tricks and sciences to solve the riddle.
Every fixing screw and damper was checked. All humidity and vibration factors were skillfully examined and eliminated. At length he resorted to underhandedness, and decided to tune each string sharp to the same degree, by which it had previously fallen flat.
I can see his smile now, as on the next days visit, it was evident, if not essential, that success would be his. How dismayed he then became. Mother insisted he take some payment for his trouble, but he would not. He would not, we soon learnt, ever attempt to tune another piano, either.
Another property of this special room, outside of its ability to unbalance piano tuners, was to propagate plants. As an extremely keen gardener, I’d discovered very early in my planting career, that any failed cutting, no matter how withered or dead-looking, would immediately spring back to life if placed in this room.
Such was the mystery and charm of this place, that one wondered if the longevity of my family was in some way connected to the serenity of this room. Perhaps time itself stood still here; I never once saw anybody wind the old clock.
The household chores of dusting and vacuuming always seemed a waste of time somehow, and in all my years it had never seemed necessary to redecorate this particular room. I once spent an afternoon in search of old photographs, curious to see the sitting room with other furnishings and décor. Finding only two such pictures, I was greatly disappointed to find them both so underexposed as to render any detail indiscernible.
Living here for the years I had, accustomed one to the oddness of the room. I knew the clock to be ancient yet knew that maintenance would never be required. I knew that dusting the mantelpiece would not soil the duster but took my turn with the rest of the family. I also knew the piano to be unserviceable but said nothing, and that afternoon, spent in pursuit of the photographs, was a foregone conclusion.
In any other place, the darkness at the onset of night would have unnerved me. Here, however, I’d spent many hours without the slightest urge to switch a light on. From the street outside, an ugly industrial amber light filled the room, as the tortured sodium gas burned within the lamps. All the colours and depth of the room were now solely in the charge of my memory — at least until dawn.
Slowly as the darkness and warmth embraced me, I slept. I dreamt that in a dream the box had opened and that I alone had discovered it. Approaching the opened lid, felt not unlike stumbling into an occupied, though unlocked bathroom.
Just three steps away now and my throat drew tight and my limbs heavy. “Come on,” I said to my reluctant right leg, urging it to respond and take the necessary step forward. God, how slow it felt to move. Every inch of progress required a mass of willpower.
Gradually I began to adjust. The altered skills required to walk here it seemed, were simply a state of mind. I found that the urgency of my curiosity was itself guilty in hindering my advance. In fact, each step was, with practice, executed with the same ease as was normal for me.
With the weight from my limbs now lifted, I began to run. Shivers of anticipation charged my spine with joy as I flew like a child through a summer’s meadow. I felt the rush of wind in my hair and the pounding of my legs on the ground, yet still I grew no closer.
Was I running or was I standing still? It was no longer clear to me. At first it seemed sensible to assume that both were true, but then it didn’t seem important any longer.
Resigning myself to whatever magic or science or both that kept me from the box, I looked on in awe. For one moment it appeared that the room was full of light with the box as a dark silhouette. Next, the room would appear as dark as space with the box becoming a supernova, albeit rectangular, within the void.
In the air, a most haunting melody began. It both was and wasn’t music, being in some way too pure and too perfect. The structure of its composition felt predictable to the point that I felt it to be the mirror of my every thought. Not a single note or chord could I hear, but the sound of my soul played on.
An intimate darkness added to the encounter. The tune became the very essence of understanding and closer to my hopes, motivations and fears than I’d ever been before. Now, in the darkness so complete as to be blinding, I wept.
Waves of joy as never before, crashed on a shore so barren and so full of sadness. Like two sides of a coin, flipped into space and spinning sadness and joy, sadness and joy. Over and over from black to white and to the twilight zone in between I tumbled.
Once again the box appeared. This time however it didn’t glow. Nor did the room show any light, but I could see. From within the opened lid, now shone the others. I knew them all but couldn’t remember their names, nor could I recall our ever meeting.
Sounds of their presence filled my heart as new music played. Through the touch of the colours they were, and the sounds of their souls we joined. All-learning we learnt, all-giving we gave. On and on we swam in an ocean of light and sound and knowledge.
Towards the opened lid we fell, faster and faster. All of us tangled and spinning together, rushing headlong to the depths within. The opened box grew in size as we approached. Its sides and interior felt as the sides and interior of a football stadium must feel to an approaching mosquito; it was vast.
Closer still now, and as the sides of the box withdrew to the horizon, still we sought entry. Behind us as we sped, the room lay motionless. An amber glow of the street lights had returned and we’d left the sitting room for another place.
The identity of my companions remained a mystery. To attach a name to any of them or indeed a memory would have shattered an unspoken trust and bond between us. I’d spent an eternity with these people, and the entering of the box, even though this was the first time, was an experience we’d all enjoyed many times before.
The tingling sensation that filled my entire being, was like regaining one’s memory after a period of amnesia. It was similar to coming home after years in exile or isolation; it was rebirth.
We had now entered the box. All sensations of speed and falling remained, but alongside lay the reciprocal impressions of slowing, rising and stopping. To be motionless is only to have zero speed, and to rise is simply a display of negative falling.
All paradoxical issues related to momentum are connected to the point in space from where the measurements are taken. By engendering that monitoring point with the truths of dual, multi- or omni-presence, all states of motion can then exist simultaneously.
Our hearts swam as our memories were born again and again. Although featureless, in the same way that motion is or is not, this void was ablaze with colours and scents, and was way beyond the capacity of the single eye or the single mind to appreciate.
Here, I had no secrets. My friends also could not hide the follies of their worlds; all were exposed to each others’ weaknesses laid bare. Motives behind our darker and hitherto concealed activities, seemed so barbaric now, with greed, pride and vanity all having no value here.
How we all laughed at ourselves and at each other. How could anyone, let alone all of us, ever have been so fixated with such trivia? Such ludicrous pursuits and drives, forcing us through monumental efforts in search of nothing at all.
So much for the innocence of youth. For before us also lay the images of each of our activities in more tender years. Here the qualities of jealousy, hatred and revenge, made the infringements of our more mature selves appear positively tame.
How could we have been so evil? I’d always thought of myself as mild-tempered and compromising, yet it was obvious, as it was to all of the others, that each of us had developed a blind eye to hide our faults whenever they were employed.
Was it the world deciding the steps we took against the backdrop of mortality that led to our altered behavior? Or was it our natural behavior that dictated the production of a world in self-denial that consumed its occupants and so prevented immortality? The box, like the Garden of Eden, provided the evidence, while we were both the jury and the accused in our own trials.
Deeper we fell, as onwards with the spell we rode or onwards with the spell we wove, we fell. Beyond all guilt now, and beyond all crimes, we came to a new place. Here the skies, the air and the earth below, all were blue; this was the place of dreams.
That a dream is a thought, is enough to make it so. Then to wake is but to dream another dream. For each thought or dream, a room to reside, and from each room a door or doors that are both open and closed or both. And from each space the ripples run, as ever widening they touch.
To believe is to become, as to doubt is to fail. Yet belief itself cannot exist without that from which it came, for it is by its very definition, simply the mastering of doubt. The total universal sum of either doubt or belief is fixed. They cannot be destroyed, altered or damaged; only redistributed.
As doubt is to belief, so love is to hate, and pain is to joy. But are doubt, pain and hate one and the same animal? Are belief, love and joy also equal? Could it be that all words and all understanding are but misconceptions of the woken mind’s eye? Could it be that there is simply just one emotion either in the negative or the positive, from which, in the same way as from the basic binary logic of yes or no, can be constructed infinitely more complex arguments?
Within and without us all, are the answers to all individuality and to all oneness. The solutions lie clouded however, in a mist of such great diversity, as to defy comprehension. The box as our guide, knew we could never understand the answers, but also knew that without the assistance it offered, we could never have realized there to be any questions demanding of those answers.
Copyright © 2006 by Chris Harris
