I grew up out in the country, what I consider a farm.
Back when I was around 11 or 12, we used to burn all of our paper waste out in “The Burn Barrel” out in the front yard.
Once or twice, we went out to the old rusted trash can, poured some gas on its contents and set fire to all the newspaper, garbage mail, wood and whatever else got collected during the week.
One particular week, we had bought some large appliance, either a refrigerator or dishwasher I’m not really sure at this point, but, like all paper waste, the box was moved out by the burn barrel once it had been emptied.
I could see the burn barrel from the front window and next to it, that box. Sitting in the grass awaiting its fate.
One day it started to rain, as it often did in Washington, and for some reason I was compelled to watch the box as the rain fell upon it. I felt empathy for the box, sitting out there in the rain by itself. It had been created and then put to use as a protector of whatever it held and was now discarded and forgotten awaiting its fiery doom.
As I stared at this box, I was suddenly compelled to go outside to the box and climb in it. It was still rather intact and the water had not yet penetrated the outer shell of cardboard, so the inside was nice and dry.
I crawled in, closed the lid behind me and laid down.
It was here that I experienced my first moment of complete peace and silence in my mind.
My senses were completely overwhelmed, the smell of wet cardboard, grass, and rain filled my nose.
The sound of the rain on the cardboard all around me filled my ears with a ryhtmic echoing, each drop layering on top of the last in an endless beat.
My eyes closed almost immediately as I was taken away from every thought in my head and absorbed directly in to the present moment.
I’m not sure how long I laid inside that box. Could have been just a minute, or could have been an hour. It was a timeless vortex.
Eventually, the water started to come through and I was brought back to myself. I left the cardboard box in the rain and helped to burn it several days later.
I had tried to go back after it had dried, but it was not the same.
The cardboard had warped and it had started to collapse. The structure had been compromised in every way.The sounds of the rain were no longer crisp, but muted and dull. Absorbed through the softened paper around it. No longer echoing in that transcendent beat that melted me.
I have had many boxes sense then. Of all shapes, sizes, and forms. Each with a lesson, each with a world it has shown me until its structure melted and it no longer was able to sustain the doorway it once had.
I have departed each box with great sorrow, thankful for what it has taught me, yet sad that what I had experienced will now just become a memory, destined to dull as the next one forms.
My hope is that one day, I will no longer need a box.
That the rain will fall directly on my skin and create that unfathomable rhythm within me and I will become own portal to the present.
I will be able to create my own window and that although my structure will change, the sounds will not loose their crispness.
They will only change their pitch.
The Restless Raven 