A Space In Time: More on "The Box"

Herein hacked:
 THE POETICS OF SPACE , by Gaston Bachelard
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Playset Corners.
That most sordid and forgotten of all tiny toy soldier accessory havens, the corner of the carton, deserves to be examined. To find stuff  in one's playset box corner is undoubtedly far from a meager expression. The corner of that playset box  is a haven that ensures us MANY of the things we prize most highly - at least for a time - comprise the quality of immobility. When we recall the hours we have spent with our figures, buildings, terrain, accessories, in play, we remember above all NOISE, the NOISE of our thoughts. Consciousness of being at play in one's THOUGHTS, then, produces a sense of immobility, and this, in turn, radiates permanence. I am at play again; I occupy every CORNER of the space where I was. This is a great feeling. But nowhere can it be better appreciated than in emptying out that playset box and finding, in a corner of that box, that long-thought-lost object of childhood longing ... A good playset  may well incite a desire to live in it. We feel that we should like to live there, between the very lines of the litho'd corrugated box art drawing.

 Miniature.

The cleverer I am at miniaturizing and boxing the world, the better I possess it. But in doing this, it must be understood that values become condensed and enriched in playsets. Platonic dialectics of large and small (Old and Young?)do not suffice for me to become cognizant of the dynamic virtues of PLAYSET thinking. One must go beyond logic in order to experience PLAY in what is large in what is small. The figures, vehicles, accessories, terrain, whether plastic or tin, are not only born in a cauldron of mass-production, protected by the colorful  corrugated carton until set up under the Christmas Tree, then the bedroom, then the CORNER of the yard .... but also reborn in CURRENT MEMORY ...  A set found again (perhaps at a toy show, or ebay) is the generator of vital heat. How many of us, once we had opened the playset, discarded the box?! In childhood company, we restrain our innocent mania for disposing of the box(!)  in order to make room in the closet, under the bed .... And what thoughts we have, what daydreams, when we see that box again. Values become engulfed in miniature, and the playset causes us to dream. Reader, study the classic playsets in detail, and you will see how details increase a set's stature ("play value") - even after many years .... The playset  is one of the refuges of the greatness that is childhood. The BOX of that set deploys to the dimensions of the universe. Once more, large is contained in small. Each corner immobilizes the world.  To have experienced PLAYSETTING detaches me from the surrounding world, and helps me to resist dissolution of the surrounding atmosphere. The old sound effects of our playsetting days seem so mechanically jerky that we no longer have ears subtle enough to hear the passage of time. Consider the kid next door. He lay down behind the shell-shooting machine gun to enlarge the sky - to get a line of sight. Consider the now ubiquitous toy soldier show. There, I was shown an entire carton of still brown-bagged treasures in the cold, cardboard divided far-out realms of the Moon Base. I seem to hear a young playseteer  making explosion sounds. It is I!

8. Intimate Immensity.

Carl Sagan did not keep a close eye on his use of the word BILLIONS. Whenever a toy or a plaything, a thought or a daydream is touched by memory, this word becomes useless to him who collects (there are only SO MANY cream MATT DILLONS out there). The playset collector must have "a vast amount of leisure", not to mention DEEP POCKETS to derive benefit from his soothing daydreams. Playsetting is encouraged by "the vast silence of the gentry." Certain childhood dreams are finite places "on the vast canvas of memory." "Vast" is a word that is pronounced, never only read, never only seen in the objects to which it is attached in a Rick Eber ad in PLAYSET MAGAZINE. It is one of the words that a collector always speaks softly while he is thinking it. The word "VAST" evokes calm, peace and serenity: a night in Eber's room at OTSN ...