You're Projecting!

 Boxes of Intrigue

Sometimes a box is just a box.  This we know. And yet, when is a box not a box?  I'm so glad you asked.  The dance studio where I flash the jazz hands on a regular basis had four inexplicable boxes stacked to the ceiling on Sunday.  The SJG just couldn't stop wondering about the boxes.  Why all the boxes? The boxes weren't there the other day.  Why now?  Well, no one knew, not our dance teacher Doug, not anyone.  In fact, the boxes didn't bother my fellow dancers.  They took a very Zen-like approach.  As in:  "Boxes are boxes.  Enough about the boxes. We're going to shove you in a box if you don't stop talking about the boxes." Humph!  That's a little harsh, ladies, not to mention, dismissive. But you know me, I wouldn't let it go.  I needed answers, mister.  I wanted to... forgive me... you knew it was coming... think outside the box. I wanted to make a game of it.

"Please, shut up about the boxes."  "Make me!"

"Hey, gang.  Let's go around the room and everyone say what they think the boxes are for."  "Let's not," I heard someone say. "I'll go first.  I think the boxes are for some kind of modern dance. Like, maybe the boxes represent something symbolic of something else. Like, maybe the dancers dance around the boxes and leap over them.   And the message is screw conformity!  Don't get boxed in! Be free! Free! Freeeeee!" After I demonstrated my Modern Box Step, and waited for some much-needed applause, applause that remained elusive, one of the dancer gals, a therapist, no less, got all Freudian on me.  "Carol, I think you're projecting your feelings onto the boxes."  "Spoken like a true therapist," I said, projecting, "How dare you!" in her general direction.

And yet, it's always nice to have a shrink on call, don't you think? She was onto something.  So was another dancer gal who took pity on me. This gal, with the type of flowing, lustrous hair the SJG will never have, not in this lifetime, pointed to the floor.  "Look, Carol, look at the stickers on the floor."  What say you about stickers? Sure 'nuff, there were bright stickers on the floor in various places, and all of them said Freelusion.  First clue.  Nice work, girlfriend. The rest was up to me, mainly because no one else gave a baby possum's patootie about the stupid boxes.  Thanks to a little compulsive Googling in the privacy of my home, I discovered that the boxes really are all about projection, just not the psychological kind.  A dance troupe called, what else, Freelusion, projects images onto the boxes during performances.  Said troupe must have been rehearsing in the studio earlier, marking their territory with green stickers here... and pink ones there... and red ones over there... and left the boxes behind, probably just to eff with the shaky mental status of the SJG.  Ha!  Nice try, Freelusion. What else you got?

A dance to non-conformity!

Projecting happy thoughts

Pretty pretty boxes