Lucid Waking

Archive for June 9th, 2009

A Silver Cage

        "What was it, exactly, you were hoping to see?" the man at the ticket booth asked us once we had left, disappointed, from the blue striped tent behind him. The rather large sign leading us to this destination had us rather excited for a mystical bird with large shimmering feathers in all sorts of peacock and macaw colors, but what we saw made us think we had wasted five dollars. The billboard had promised something new, unusual, and unique, but we felt like a glance outside the window would give us something more.
        "Anything but a gold finch," my friend said. He had asked for our money back and seemed overly intent on fighting for it.
        "That’s because you didn’t stay for the show," the ticket-seller said. "It’s a magical bird, you know."
        "What does it do? Dance, back flips, cook?"
        The ticket man smiled. "You’ll have to watch and see for yourself."
        At least he was kind enough to let us back in without paying a second time, though we were both so deflated anything that happened next, we had thought, was likely to make us feel worse. The tent filled up, but the mood did not improve. Perplexed whispers filled the arena as the golden bird did nothing but flutter about its cage. Domed and wide, the cage stood about six feet tall and had a human-sized door among the narrow silver bars. The bird was utterfly dwarfed in its surroundings and very nervous. We sat near the front as if that would change our deflated predisposed notions of the spectacle we paid ten dollars to see.
        My friend had almost grabbed my wrist to leave again when we were shushed by a rattle of the cage bars. The flapping of feathers stopped and so did the occational twittering. We turned to face a tall woman slipping into a gown we hadn’t noticed lying on the bottom of the cage. She reached between the bars and opened the barred door, stepping into the arena and gaging her audience. Her eyes were a soft blue and her hair the color of butter. Before she had mesmerized the crowed with her glance, music crept from off stage urging her into a dance.
        I don’t remember much else about that night. We left shortly after she finished dancing, though many of the other spectators waited for an encore. We returned many times after that ,but the girl in the cage always did the same thing. One time, I stayed later, but she didn’t have any room in her cage to do much else but stand up and cry. I know she didn’t realize I was at the top of the stairs because whenever we stayed later other times, she would watch us curiously until we left. At the end of August, the carnival left on the next rain out of town. But carnivals after that, I still waited for the bird man and his finch. Something about her performance and after show tears made an impact–I realized only later it was because I was in a similar situation: trapped to perform at society’s whim. I relaized this on an airplane to interview for a new job and when I did, I cried.