Inside The Camera: Part 1

At the earliest onset of adolescence, my vision of heaven is cardboard boxes. Endless cardboard boxes of all sizes, mine for the taking. I want more cardboard boxes than I can count, to forge into the quintessence of urban summers: forts.

I yearn for those days when someone on the street buys a new refrigerator and casts aside its cardboard casing so that I might sweep down and dart home with the exact piece I need for my second story loft-library over our green plastic picnic table. My monolithic forts span our urban backyard from June until August--a testament to juvenile ingenuity and architecture that draws crowds of neighborhood kids so vast I give guided tours and rent out whole wings. I work in cardboard, patio furniture, and sheets the way Frank Lloyd Wright worked in steel and concrete. And then, when I get bored with my latest architectural masterpiece, I trash the whole thing and start over, Meliora, ever better.

After the Sears truck leaves I skittle down to the curb in front of the proud new owners of a 'Frigidair,' pop the box over my head and walk it home with no other visual guidance but the sidewalk running below my feet. It's a walking refrigerator box with pink Chucks that knows it's home when it reaches the stretch of sidewalk where "Kelly & Tristan" is etched into the concrete. The lifespan of these boxes is ever waning as soon as they come home. They inevitably succumb to rips, folds, punctures, pile drives, and the most heart-wrenching, rain. I'm lucky to pull in 1 or 2 boxes of grandeur per summer and squeeze maybe 1 week or 5 unique forts out of them before they enter into their rapid decline. It's not every day someone buys a new dishwasher or has all their belongs shipped over from Europe. But this summer, my parents decided to renovate our kitchen and in the restless heat of my transitionary time from elementary to middle school that means one thing and one thing only: boxes. There are dozens of boxes of all sizes. Cabinet boxes good for corridors and entryways, large appliance boxes for rooms (the pinnacle of which, a refrigerator box, will become my first ever ballroom), long flat window boxes for walls and roofs, and flooring boxes for, well, flooring. It was a gift from god so profound it seemed unimaginable, at the time, that my middle school social experiences would later make me question his existence.

I drag the scores of boxes into the center of our backyard, assemble all our lawn and patio furniture, inflate our rarely-used kiddie pool, collect all the sheets that my mom has deemed "fort sheets," and stand back. Visions of blue prints flurry my consciousness as I sink my chin into my hand in a most thoughtful pose. Where to begin? There was no summer I could recall for any frame of reference where I'd had so much to work with. I furrow my brow, examine all my piece while lapping the yard, think of everything I could ever imagine in the fort of my dreams. Then, I've got it.