Boxed in

I revisited an old piece I wrote called "On the merits of graph paper."

I remember my first graph paper -- though I'm sure you don't. I was a little boy of about five years old, and my mother (who thought it best that I avoid the pratfalls of the playground) got me a ream of quad-ruled graph paper and a new carton of black crayons. I was thrilled: black was my favourite colour, followed closely by white. (Even at a young age, my conservative values were evident.)

Now, I was happy to skip the out-of-doors and draw all afternoon. But this paper before me was curious. I spent a few minutes cross-legged on the hardwood floor inspecting it. I had only ever experienced construction paper and wallpaper as media before and the possibilities contained in this new, line-y paper excited me. I didn’t understand the purpose of those little blue squares, but they were pretty neat.I lay prone in our living room armed with my new stack and the carton of untouched crayons. I was excited: for an indoor cat like me new crayons are second only to new socks. I pried open the carton with a level of care not typically befitting a five-year-old. Not that I was precocious or anything; I also remember testing a few fresh crayons with a bite.

The waxy-good taste notwithstanding, I set to work. My first drawings were clearly oblivious to the perpendicularity beneath. Just fat black circles. A few triangles too, but mostly wildly drawn loops, big ones, redoubled and thick. The minority of triangles were thin and erratic and resembled little huts.

And then I noticed the blue lines.I put down my dulled crayon, its wrapper peeling, and touched my fingers to the page, as if I expected the gridlines to be warm or have some texture or something. But there was nothing. The lines were just there. My young mind couldn’t see a point to the grid. After all, I had not yet learned how to write and plotting graphs was an activity I would wait much longer to enjoy. I unleashed a crayon and started to experiment.I began by tracing a single blue line. I pushed the crayon along as though guiding a soldier to safety. I was careful, steady, and exact. After a few centimetres of travel I looked at my handiwork, satisfied. For probably the first time in my short life I had drawn a straight line. I tried again, this time at right angles from the line just drawn. To the graph paper Gods (possibly) watching, my intention must have been clear: I was drawing a box.

I was soon a box works. With almost maniacal fervour, I was smothering each leaf with dozens of four-sided figures. Some were rectangles to be sure, but most were cute squares. For the rest of the afternoon that's all I would draw. It was deeply satisfying ending a line, turning sharply and beginning again. And nothing could beat the thrill of meeting a perpendicular line head on at the corner. I drew squares in every way I could, each one perched gingerly on that textureless grid of blue. Eventually, I think I had gone through thirty pages.

And as I immersed myself in the craft of box-making, I lowered my head close to the page, my eyes chaperoning each line drawn (at what my mother would no doubt consider too close a distance). So close to the grid, I imagined myself standing in its midst, watching giant crayons float by like ominous zeppelins. And my legs would shake, along with the whole expanse of my paper world, as the colossal crayons converged with the land and dragged along the gridlines like gliding black elephants. Of course, I was safe; standing far from the edge of any blue lines. But it wouldn’t be long before a short wall of flaky black wax would materialize beside me. Then I would run. I always managed to rush out of each box just before it could close around me; before it could trap me in forever. But nowhere on the page was safe. They followed me everywhere. The massive crayons were unstoppable.

Nor could I stop. I considered drawing triangles again, or anything else, but it was too easy and pleasing to follow those lines. I drew more and more squares. And though I tried, there were no other shapes in my head. Orphaned ideas sat crumpled by my side and the suns and tepees that had littered my floor were covered by a blanket of perfect black squares.

* * *

Twenty years later I get a package in the mail from a faraway friend: a pad of quad-ruled graph paper wrapped in twine. (Clearly, she knows me well.) The gift is meant to inspire, but it can't. I try to write a story, a poem, and even try to draw a simple picture, but it doesn't come.

Not barely a ream, and the pad sits before me, blank, save for the orange glow of the setting sun outside; and I am stuck inside. I follow the lines with my pen absently. Once again I'm boxed in. And though I've outgrown the gridlines on the page, I can vaguely feel the presence of the black monsters looming overhead.I'm blocked.

Every attempt at creativity brings to mind the image of a whirling circle, or stabbed-out triangle obscured by pages of black squares. Like a dense snowfall has enveloped my house: and I am trapped inside.I look at my pad on my desk, and at the unravelled twine, and at the last remaining glint of the setting sun through my bedroom window, and sigh. The crayons are looming and I cannot evade them. I barely manage to scurry before another descends to trap me in. I put down my gift, my pad of graph paper, and retire. I am boxed in.