Life in a Box

22 August, 2024

Life in Champaign unspooled as a series of jarring revelations. Shortly after my arrival in Champaign, a Professor Pigou, in a gesture of kindness, invited me to a sushi bar. When we had finished, he pointed to the remaining rolls on my plate and instructed me to pack them in a plastic box to take home. I experienced a moment of profound ontological vertigo, but I held my tongue. This, I would learn, was standard procedure — a charming local custom known as “saving money.” I later pieced together that he likely saw me as a charity case, a refugee from a collapsed empire, and this was his clumsy, well-meaning attempt at humanitarian aid.

To be fair, his logic was impeccable. In America, one must save. Because if your wallet is empty, your plate will be as well. There is no sprawling community to catch you, no grandfather on the roadside flagging down a bus for you. That little plastic box of leftover sushi is not merely lunch for the following day; it is a stay of execution. Yet in the chilling calculus of it all, one cannot help but feel a certain freedom. The freedom of being a lonely potato.