Talking about boxes

Sad when the past is reduced to the contents of a box. The fact that the memories are in the objects and the objects are forgoten in a box. Why is it sad? Memories in your mind are stored in box-like neurons, and when you randomly remember them it's such a good feeling, but then, in the present you realize that that moment will happen no more.

My mother is outside sorting through heaps of boxes (plastic boxes, futuristic plastic rubbermaid boxes) and I can see her through the window, and suddenly a song begins to play. It's one of those songs that you put to newborn babys (or any baby) so they can play with the hanging objects that move on top of their craddle. And I look over, and my mother is holding a doll. It is a white clown, big black eyes with long eyelashes, red nose, red lips, white face, white hair, white dress and hat with colored hearts. I have no memory of the clown. But the clown has a small card hanging from the neck. My mother said: "It's your sister's, it was a gift for her 10th birthday". While the song played she held it in her hand, and the head of the clown moves side to side. And she looks at it. In her mind there must be eight thousand thoughts, maybe the same thoughts that run through mine. Why is this precious, little things forgotten away in this box? And then she wound the key in the back of the doll so the music would start again. And then she set it on top of the washing machine, apart from everything else.

Then she took out a black gorilla. I remembered that one. And she goes: remember this one? And in my head I remember how funny the stupid gorilla sounded. While it grunted, like a gorilla, his hands would flip him, and he'd do a somersault and land on his feet and then laugh!

Then she took a small bunny. "What about this one?" The bunny was my sister's too. And she loved it when she was little. She would laugh a lot, because when you pull the string it would vibrate and walk and if you had in in your hand it would tickle.

Why do we humans keep this things to torture ourselves in the future? Why do we put so much into things: toys, pictures, cards, mementos? Why do we put so much into other humans? Joel, because that's the way of the human. Our greatness and our punishment is in being able to put value on things and people, to put care and love, and to suffer because of them, and to be beautiful and better because of them.