My
spacious cell is open-plan, on one level with two huge triple-glazed
windows that daylight streams through from which I can watch the sun
rise and set and the skies change. I stand before these panes without
bars wrapped in a blanket or duvet with only my pink striped pyjama
legs showing, gazing out on the abandoned pub garden and car park
below.
At
certain times all is quiet. There's no hum of engines, no shrieking
car alarms, and no raised chortles and droning voices. You can
actually hear the feeble chirp of town-dwelling birds and the swoosh
of aeroplanes as they disappear to sunnier or wintry climes. In the
distance, the eye can see one or two of these descending, preparing
to land at Heathrow; I imagine the passengers buckling up and the
crew doing last-minute checks, whilst the pilot and co-pilot, in
communication with air traffic control, safely guide the plane
downwards so that it touches the runway at a decent speed with barely
a perceptible jolt. Unless you really look, you forget how far the
eye can see, what it's able to discern if you focus fully; stop for a
moment and appreciate seeing the world from an above ground level
height. A height that birds think nothing of for to them it's low,
merely a stage to the dizzying ascents they accomplish with the
flapping of wings, and as if to prove this, overhead, visiting
seagulls wheel and glide, preferring an expanse of sky where there's
less obstacles.
That is
my position. There you'll find me if you dare to look up, studying
the outside from behind three sheets of glass, oblivious to your
regard. If for an instant my gaze drops and by chance you catch my
attention, I won't engage or reciprocate. I do not care for obtrusive
curiosity nor do I willingly meets its demands: strike a pose or
suchlike. My standing here is not for your amusement, to be openly
gawked at, though you at some point might be mine, but then I have
the advantage. I can conceal my interest and my searching gaze, as I
conceal myself from the world at large. We are coequal only in that
we are bystanders going about our business. There, the similarity
ends as we are divided forever by our differing perspectives: I
choose to look out, mostly to the horizon, whilst you prefer to look
in at apartment life as if we were doll-like figures in an
open-fronted doll's house. Open for all to see. Your attentiveness
legitimised, blatant though it might be, and which causes us to pull
our curtains across during daylight hours.
Who is
the gaoler in this situation? You, on ground level, or me, some fifty
feet above?
Do you
confine, even define, my movements or do I? And which out of us is
the more voyeuristic?
The
argument of the seemingly caged is that curiosity in the world around
them is natural when their interactions are limited, whereas those
enjoying the freedoms outside would declare that self-inflicted
imprisonment is most unwise as we're social beings. Essentially, what
it boils down to is that people cannot help but stare at other beings
much like themselves who are contained in what from the outside looks
like a box on its side with a see-through lid. One can never hope to
understand the other, particularly if there's no domineering force:
no overbearing mother, no autocratic father, no dictatorial husband,
no related or unrelated other fulfilling that role. Therefore, the
person submitting is both prisoner and keeper. One and the same, and
they know it.
We all
fabricate our own gaols, some are more creative than others, some
don't have visible walls, others need structure, a concreteness to
them or at least the appearance of. Those really in confinement, so
sentenced due to wrongful conducts, often like the routine because
modern living is hard. It makes too many demands which some of us
just aren't made to cope with, and so instead of bearing it,
soldiering on, we devise an escape route. We dig a tunnel to an inner
safe haven where the world can be kept at a more comfortable, more
manageable distance and only ventured into when the mood takes.
Self
-imprisonment is a holding back but freedoms such as others enjoy
brings risks that are greater: they don't instruct, they destroy.
Picture Credit: Winter - Study of Flying Drapery, Edward Burne-Jones