So you're standing outside of this box, ok? Just imagine it for a second. It's not too big nor too small. Probably the size of a microwave. And it's glass. Hand-blown glass, like the expensive Italian kind, and it's painted with marble-like swirls of intrinsic color, exquisite ocean blues and greens, autumnal mauves and sun-burnt oranges, faerie delicate rose and that creamy color that mimics the inside of a seashell. The colors are moving, swirling and glittering, almost like gases but thicker, more solid, like oil, maybe. You're watching it curiously, longingly.
The longer you look, the bigger it gets. Higher it towers over you, wider it stretches aside you, until you realize that you're not standing in front of it but on top of it, on the very edge, and its flat top is unfolding before you like a crystalline galaxy of numerous shades. Tiny stars wink beneath your bare feet as you slide effortlessly, yet cautiously, towards your unknown destination. You realize that this surface is broken up into tiles. Together, they make an endless picture of the universe. Suns and moons, comets and astroids revolve and whisk away as beams of gold explode far, far away. You look down at the tile you're standing on and jump a little as the scrambled colors morph to make a scene from someone's life.
A little girl is sitting on a park bench with her mom. She's holding a doll close to her chest, and she's watching an old man sitting beneath a nearby bridge, feeding the pigeons.
"Why is he always here when we come?" she asks.
"He probably doesn't have anywhere else to go."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. He's poor."
You move away from the tile. The scene dissolves instantly. A few feet more and you stop and look down again.
He's sitting by himself in his bedroom. On the night stand next to his bed, his cell phone is buzzing. He let's the machine pick up it.
"Two more hours and it's dawn," he tells himself. "The last two hours."
He scribbles a quick note, signs it, and places it delicately on his pillow.
You step off the tile before watching the rest. Tile by tile, and the lives flash past. Some are happy, and some are sad. Some make you angry, and some make you laugh. Suddenly, you hear something. Up to this point, there was no sound. But now there is a faint, dim tinkling. You strain your ears. Symphonies of violin cascade and meld with a flute in a melody unlike any other. Flowers bloom in fields of emerald, water rushes in rivulets into waterfalls that create immense rainbows, flecks of rain like so many pieces of diamond crashes, all coming out of this warm, intense, brilliant music. You're eyes grow large and suddenly you feel a great warmth melting down your face. You realize that you're crying. You don't understand. You'll never understand. You're so full that you feel like overflowing. Your throat is choked and this beautiful, haunting melody envelopes you, the surface of the glass box builds walls of blazing color around you, and you let yourself go into the tiles of many, many memories.
The memory box. And the little ballerina at the center endlessly twirls.
