The Prisoner’s Cage
The sun is hot and strong for an end of September day. The leaves are just beginning to dress in a multitude of glorious colours. After nearly five years my “window view” is partially blocked and I am not happy about that. I am still in front of my large office window with the double paned glass and the one way view. I am looking out at my world, looking out at you but now to the right, drills are drilling, saws are eating metal, power supplies are humming and dusty dirt covered men are swarming in and around a large 25 x 35 foot wired pen that is sitting in the middle of my parking lot. The noise is obscene. The birds have flown the coop. Inside our spirits droop as this monstrosity comes together. It is a holding tank for the “Prisoner Carrying Paddy Wagons,” bringing their cargo to the Courts upstairs.
This construction will be permanently blocking more than half my view of the tiny meadow with its swamp grasses swaying in harmony with the breeze. It is playing havoc with the beautiful edging of trees which surround the hilltop cemetery. Things will never be quite the same. There is ever and constantly change and I do not roll with it as sweetly as once I did. Now there will be no you … for me to talk to or at least very few. You can no longer stroll casually past my window. Now you will be walking out and around this absurd contraption that confines bodies and limits minds …destroying by its mere presence … Dreams. I may as well retire my pen … for who then is there left to communicate with?
Shovels scrape against the pavement picking up smashed bits of concrete, sawdust chips, cut metal. Scaffolding sits directly in my line of vision … pressed tight against my window. Welding tools shoot sprays of firelight into the air as heat hits metal and melts.
This building is without Beauty. There are no sweeping lines or sun catching windows. There are no windows and the large double swing doors are locked tight against the possibility of flight. A motor just started up again. The time is 2:45 pm. The gloves are going on and the face masks slip into place. Amidst a tangle of extension cords … safety booted feet move to the last line of unfinished wire mesh and sparks start to fly. The rat a tat tat of the gun makes its own rhythm of music and blue and white light mixes with golden sparks. The light is beautiful but the smoke from burnt metal quickly disperses that beauty. An extension ladder falls heavily on the inside wall and clangs into its needed height. Noise and confusion continue.
It appears that for now my quiet times for reflection are gone. Surely time will reveal some good and as yet not understood value to this bizarre cage growing inch by inch, more ugly before my eyes. I was not ready for this change nor is it wanted. I was not consulted and why should I be. I am but one soul searching for Heaven in a World that is racing to hell … or sometimes it seems that way.
I actually enjoy our daily visitors … the Prisoners, with their different faces and cocky attitudes. Their fashion parade of bright orange, standard issue, statement making uniforms fitting differently on each one. I shall miss the cigarette butt chasing, the leg shackle shuffle and the step up and hop door entry. Engaging grins and mischievous eyes mix with cold looks and hard rough faces. Ever changing are the faces and the personalities … the sizes and shapes and the colours of our guests. The questions that went unanswered in our minds as to what they had done, why they were there and where were they going … literally, figuratively, hopefully, all this will be lost to me now and therefore I too will lose.
The tap tap of the funky hammer echoes sharply in the now still air. The work trucks have all gone save only one. The day melts into the late afternoon sun as I sit … wilting in depression.
I look up to see the cold metal doors swing open to admit its first Paddy Wagon. It comes lumbering in through the wide double doors to wait in this man- made tomb to pick up the remains of humanity from their day in Court. In single file they come chained together one by one, their feet hobbled, their gaze riveted upon the wires of yet another cage. I see them now only with blurred vision as the diamond mesh fence imprints shadows upon their features. When the final walls go up and darkness falls upon this man-made cave … I will see them no more. Now men restrained by the laws that contain them are walking in shadow, hidden, perhaps more safe. They are ghosts without faces, without form, without voice.
At the end of this long day I begin to see of what use the wire cage is to me. Once my window view was free of all boundaries. I was surrounded only with nature’s miracles, limitless vistas and endless sky. The ugliness of the box on my perimeter is a constant reminder of limitations, those of society but more important those that we as mere humans inflict upon ourselves. There is no cage built by man that can contain the human Soul. No army so strong that the mind it can destroy. No walls so high that a Heart cannot Soar … except those that we ourselves build or invent. Freedom remains here, safe within, if we allow it to be so. We either make or destroy this “Gift of Life.” The choices are ours.