A man wakes up in a box. He soon finds himself moving from that box into another box. And from that other box he moves to yet one more box. The boxes begin to intensify in numbers, but no unreasonably so. Eventually, it strikes the man that his life is simply the translation of his bodily mass from one box to a second box, to a third box, and back to the first box. In fact, upon further inspection, the lives of all those he sees amount to nothing more than the shuffling of populations between boxes. A kaleidoscope of box traveling: millions shambling to and from boxes of variable size.
Certain boxes are adorned more lavishly than others. These boxes put into focus an easily observable divide: that between the box-rich and the box-poor. It appears that those who carry and are carried by boxes of great opalescence attract increasing quantities of boxes flush with beauty. Once a threshold has been met, it becomes unfathomable for a box accumulator to sink below their holy measurement. The boxes themselves are seemingly indifferent to those who own them. Although the boxes are pulled by an unknowable force, they themselves possess no strong appetite of their own. The boxless remain so by no fault of the boxes.
The man often hears that a person lacking many boxes still has the original box given to him by the endowments of Nature: his Body. The Body is a box in much the same way a house is a box, but here a box of profound importance takes residence. The inner box of the Body is what some call the Soul. Some say the Soul itself consists of many boxes, much like how the box of the skin encases the box of the vessels which in turn enshrine the boxes of the cells. Many claim that the Soul is distinct from the Body—the former heavenly, the latter fecal. The man wonders if the Body and Soul are much like that of the Home and its Occupant. If the Occupant is removed from his Home it ceases to be his Home and the Occupant loses his position as Occupant. If the Occupant is unable to find another box to inhabit (and who can ever go Home once it is lost?) then the Occupant no longer exists in his hitherto experienced formal role. A Soul without a Body is equally as inconceivable as a world without boxes.
Strong, confident men speak of man’s boxes behind boxes half their height. Inside of ornate boxes stamped with translucent boxes stained with primary colors, these men discuss the origins of boxes and the Meaning they contain. They tell tales of a box constructed of pure Substance; a Substance beholden to no predicate. This Substance exhibits infinite Extension, of which all other boxes are mere Attributes. One could place these commentators into three boxes of their own: the Priests, the Scholars, and the Practitioners. The Priests believe the ultimate box to be eternal, consisting of unbridled creativity. The Priests take issue only with those who think unlike themselves. The Scholars posit the almighty box inscribed upon a box of great merit Laws that only a fool would ignore. The men who break the Law are unworthy of the Scholars. The Practitioners hold true that the cosmic box is but a fleeting idea knowable to no man. To be a Practitioner one must see themselves as a box of limited scope and modest potential. The man absorbs these perspectives and finds none of them capable of describing his own intimate experience of being a box among boxes.
The man is troubled that even his own experiences seem incapable of giving shape to his box-obsessed reality. When he interacts with a box, is it not merely the appearance of interacting with a box? Is there really a split between a box and a box-in-itself? Or is that the pollution kicked up from the engine of mental box-work? Perhaps the box of experience is merely that: an experienced box-event. Can all of these experiences be placed inside of a box labeled Truth? Or can an experience be False? For a box to be moved isn’t it True that someone shipped it first? But what of the first box? How could the first box be shipped without a box to initiate the shipping? Maybe the presence of boxes substantiates the existence of a persistent Unfolding. A box is never a box but the movement of Becoming a box. The man strains to align a single Fact into a perfectly tidy well-packaged box.
He knows that when a man is born he slips from a box most peculiar, glistening in his own primordial ooze. And yet this organic sludge is not of his own, but of another. Boxes beget boxes. Not only do boxes move beside each other, but they create each other. Boxes grow and shape themselves into coordinates both of unexpected beauty and unimaginable cruelty. A box may be folded up in the mind or down in the loins, it makes little difference where. Once assembled a box has only so much time until it is disassembled.
The man has seen an unbelievable amount of boxes in his life. He’s watched them illuminated on electric boxes. He’s looked at them trapped within paper boxes capable of housing boxes of innumerable sizes. He’s even touched some of those boxes; each touch reminding him that only their sides ever come in contact with one another. He barely comprehends that each box holds within it a universe of boxes. And those boxes too are Home to infinite boxes.
A box holds. What a box holds does not matter. A box provides the contours of life. The lines bend when full and sag when empty. A box shapes a life. In turn, that life shapes many boxes. As a man leaves a box when he is created so too does he crawl into one as he is rocked to sleep. A box undoes itself and, in that undoing, lays the groundwork for further boxes to Unfold through time.