Outside the Box is a Healthier Place to Be

Recently, I wrote to a butterfly in Kentucky that I have a horrible time trying to conform my way of knowing, believing, living, writing and thinking, inside the boxes that institutions use to assess knowledge. I said that if I could capture an image of what this looks like, it'd be of "me emerging outside a box, like a chicken from its egg. It is a dorky image, but it's the only way I see myself conforming to their ways...I don't fit into their categories or boxes and I hate them for thinking I should." It's been my goal to do a performance piece of me emerging from a box I don't fit in, but I haven't found a box I like yet (but trust me, the day will come when it will appear).

In the meantime, the butterfly in Kentucky drew me a picture of a frog outside a box (with a poetry banner at its side), on a pond of lily pads(if you click on the picture, a better image of comes forth). Her drawing arrived in the mail today, and this is exactly what I'm talking about. Tests and Papers are silly creations. What if educators expected their students to make a piece of art from what they're learning and to mail it to someone they're thinking about? Now, that's the kind of pond where I wish to sing my croaking lullaby's. Her interpretation makes me happy.