4:30 am

on thinking inside the box. . .

*Ding!*

Standing under the cancerous glow of corner store fluorescence, the apathetic glare of the late night store clerk lets me know they are begging for the end of their shit to come. That or they are highly annoyed that I interrupted their essential phone time. Regardless I try to put some positivity behind my voice.

I request a “Pack of Camels please.” as my attention shifts to the various bits and bobs around the register.

My vision is awash in a menagerie of bright colors and marketing wank about flaming hot, intensely sour energy for whiter teeth with extra flavor. It all looks very poisonous. A lot of it seems like they want to punch me in the mouth. However, I didn’t see any logs of sweaty meat on a Sisyphean roll under heat lamps this time. It is probably a bit too early for such things.

Paying my fine I can’t help but contemplate the nature of advertising and how easy it is to entice the herd. With enough effort and focus group testing you could probably sell blobs of cat shit so long as it came in the right packaging.

Just ask Dan Akroyd.

I am certainly not above it. There have been plenty of times I have chosen one product over another because it felt better, or I had some idea about a brand having a reputation. I probably tried to use logic, but for certain things there is no decent information upon which to make a rational decision. Reality gets obscured in favor of buzzwords and paid product reviews.

Most competing products are being spit out by the same Chinese factory and are essentially identical save the aesthetic. Plus I think 99% of the companies selling this crap are owned by like 3 dudes flexing their space penises at this point so why even care?

*Ding!*

Exiting the brightly lit shopping box I meander toward my jeep, which itself is quite boxy, and I wonder why humans are so fascinated with right angles. Is it merely a matter of convenience? It is likely easier to build a box than some sort of Euclidean polyhedral, but is it in our nature or did we start building boxes and let that nurture us?

Hard to say.

When babies are born parents put them in a box to sleep alone and wonder why they cry. When they get bigger they are put in a playpen which is basically another box. All of this takes place in a box we call a room inside another box we call a house. Then we give these children blocks out of a toy box so they can expand their imagination by building boxes.

Think about how fun it was as a kid when you got to play with a giant cardboard box.

Way better than that lame ass Jack-in-the-box.

Eventually you go to school and sit in a box all day. Collect box tops for your school and try to not be the dullest crayon in the box. If you’re lucky you get to play some sports, but even then you are boxed in with the goal to make it onto the box score. Perhaps your parents can watch you from their box seats as you box out or take your turn in the batters box.

Just stay out of the penalty box or your coach might box your ears.

Eventually you will rent a box truck and buy some stuff from the big box store and move all the stuff you put into boxes into your own little box. Have some sleep on your box spring, maybe listen to a box set on your boom box, or watch the idiot box.

Maybe you learn to beatbox, tune your voice box, play the squeezebox, or do the box step. Gain enough skill to earn some box office and have residual checks come to your mailbox for the rest of your life. Just don’t spend too much time hotboxing or you might just open Pandoras box and end up in a boxcar drinking box wine and shadowboxing your demons.

Most people end up in a tiny box called a cubicle starting at a computer box all day trying to tick all the right boxes. Mostly they just have to endure endless meetings where people with fancier titles talk about thinking outside the box before they strut themselves back to their office which is just a bigger box with windows.

Maybe you get lucky and have a kid and start the process all over again.

It’s like our whole culture is comforted by the containment of rigid rectangular packaging. I mean I get it. Boxes stack nicely, but me? I a more of a tub guy.

Shit.

Sunrise is still about an hour out and the coffee shop doesn’t open until 5. Maybe I will just drive and see where the night takes me. It’s been a while since I wandered these streets trying to cool my mind. If I head west I can probably find a decent vantage point for the days break.

Driving down desolate streets I can’t help but wonder what it must be like for other people. My thoughts seem normal to me and I am sure other folks feel normal too even though their thought process is far different. I mean I have been in conversations with people who have dug in to some seriously weird and offputting beliefs who are absolutely dead set on knowing they are right.

Meanwhile all I see them as is wrong, and it seems like the bulk of the discourse happening these days is that. People dead set on thinking a certain way and putting all their energy into finding ways to be justify their position. Only unlike me it seems like there is a lot of hate building.

I don’t hate someone who I think are wrong. Hell, I had long term sexual relationships with people I knew for a fact had bad ideas. It only becomes an issue for me when it fucks up my plans, and even then it has to severely disrupt my money or the safety of the people I care about. Otherwise, do whatever it is you are going to do, think whatever you are going to think, and say whatever you are going to say.

I don’t give a fuck.

Why should I?

Does my agreement with your political attitude get us closer to some utopian paradise? Do you really think my validation is the least bit valuable? Fine. Assume I agree with everything you have ever or will ever say, and that I believe exactly what you believe. Reframe everything you know about me and replace it with some vision of me championing your paradigm.

We good now?

I am going to guess no, because the people who really want to put you in a box are not doing it because they care about you. It is for them. They need to whittle you down to the stereotypes most comfortable in their mind. They need to put the labels on you so they know how to handle the situation. They don’t need you to conform to their worldview but they need you to conform to something.

At a glance I know people see a man.

A white man.

An old white man.

Fill me in from there according to what you need me to be. Maybe some of the things you think are true. Most are probably not. Still, I can be that caricature you need to dump your trauma on. They guy who broke your heart, the father who was never there, the abuser, the scoundrel, the symbol of some systematic race issue and the reason you can’t afford to buy a house.

Simplify the shit out of me. It makes it that much more fun when I get to surprise you. It also weeds out the narrowminded folks who are absolutely exhausting to be around. Hate me please. It makes my life so much simpler and easier to navigate when I know what you assume about me from the jump.

Hell, I make my judgements too. Call it situational awareness. I size up everyone I encounter. I do tend to let them spill their beans a while before I start making decisions, but I am a pretty good judge of character. Most of the time I want to like you. I want to have good interactions. I want shit to be chill.

Then people go and get comfortable and fuck it all up.

Most of the time it’s some weird political shit I don’t want to hear about. I know. It sucks. Can we talk about cool shit now? Can we laugh? Can we celebrate the awesome and find some ways to agree so life can feel less like a rapey sludge monster getting all gropey?

Please?

I don’t know. I have been on this planet a while and I have met few who can not be exhausting. At the same time my social life feels like these quiet roads at 4:44 am on a weekday. Maybe over the next 50 years I will meet someone who can enjoy me for who I am and lets me enjoy them for who they are, but I am not confident.

After all, I am the man in the box.