#13 of 100: How to Fold In On Yourself Until You Can Fit Into A Shoebox

In ten easy steps!

Photo by Prateek Gautam on Unsplash

Another odd, lazy one as I didn’t really feel in a writing mood.

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How to Fold in On Yourself Until You Can Fit Into A Shoebox

1. Consume nothing for three days. No food, no water, no TV, no books, no pleasant conversations with friends. 

2. Gather the following: A shoebox, a large mirror, eight candles and a dimflutter box.

3. Select a location for the transformation. Not somewhere in nature, or anywhere too colourful. It should be somewhere eerily quiet, where the rare sounds you do hear seem to have no source. Ideally, it should be a room with no windows, so you do not remember what it is to be a part of the world. Remove all the furniture and belongings from your transformation room. You do not want to glance around and accidentally remember the moment a lover kissed you on a sofa, or the VHS of a terrible film you and your friend keep re-gifting to each other, or the charity shop where you bought a side table and then cried at the till because of a problem at work and the stranger behind the counter gave you some tissues and words of encouragement. None of that.

4. Stretch. Stand on your tip toes and stretch up your arms as if the ceiling has all your hopes and dreams stuck to it and you need to scratch them off. Do reverse lunges and imagine your limbs coming apart at the joints. Put one hand up and behind your back and the other hand down and below your back, with your hands touching. Then let go, like a connection with someone you are letting slip away.

5. Prepare the space. Wear only plain underwear, plus boots. The candles go in a circle around you, evenly spaced. The large mirror on your left, the dimflutter box on your right. The shoebox should be outside the circle: it is only to remind yourself of the nothing you can become.

6. Invoke Echo. She is from the Between Places. She has no personality of her own, she is a mere reflection of everyone else’s desires. When she learnt that she was not loved she shrivelled up and let herself become even less than she already was. Open up the dimflutter box and wait until the clockwork butterfly turns orange. Then call out Echo’s name until you can hear her echoing her name back to you.

7. When you hear her voice, look in the mirror. Flatten your expression, say your name, and then smash the mirror to the ground. Grind the largest fragments under your boot. Echo will start chanting something monstrous and unvocalisable with human vocal chords. Repeat her words anyway. If you have done everything else right, the correct sounds will come out of you.

8. Imagine a light so powerful it can disintegrate any part of you that you no longer need. Stare at the shoebox as you do so. What are you when you really get down to it? What of you is necessary? Decide at that moment what part of you is worth fitting in a shoebox. You may find your defining qualities can even fit into a matchbox.

9. Collapse. If this is what you truly desire, it will happen naturally. Your form will become paper thin and fold in on itself over and over.

10. Remember: This is what you wanted. Remember nothing else.

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