KEEP PLANNING time / space / about #009 Alison Croggon Happy

The thing about living in a cage is that you get used to it. You think that’s how things are, and how they are supposed to be, and that is how things are going to be forever. It’s natural, the way of the world, god’s purpose, all those things. Maybe sometimes you think, well, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to go out and walk around like other people, sometimes you daydream about what it might be like outside the cage, being able to go to shops and buy things or talk to people you have never met, but you know all that is for people who are not you. You are the person who lives in a cage, and being in the cage is who you are. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived in a cage. Born in a cage, grew up in a cage, lived your whole life in a cage. People say, what’s wrong with you? People say, why didn’t you try to get out, why did you believe that was okay? You saw other people who didn’t live in a cage, why didn’t you think that could be you? Why did you never try to escape? Weren’t you unhappy there? And honestly, I don’t know the answer to those things. What was wrong with me was that I lived in a cage my whole life. Of course I was unhappy but I thought that being unhappy was the way things were supposed to be. In any case, it’s not quite true that I was unhappy. Sometimes I was happy, I think I was. You find compensations everywhere. Like, one day breakfast is an egg and toast. Usually breakfast was some nameless cereal that I had to eat dry, I had a bottle of water to wet my mouth so I could chew it but I never enjoyed it much, I’d just eat it because I was hungry. But on random days, maybe because the boss was in a good mood or maybe there were spare eggs or something, I got an egg on toast. That little sunny egg, all yellow and feisty, in the middle of the pale brown toast. I’d just look at it a while because the colour was so joyous, and then I’d poke the yolk and watch it spill out over the toast and soak in, and I’d eat it very slowly savouring the taste. Or maybe there’d be a beam of sunlight coming in through the high horizontal window at the other end of the room my cage was in, and it would fall on the floor just so, and I’d see the minute shadows in the texture of the concrete. I could study those through the bars for hours. I don’t know why, but that made me happy. Or maybe the boss would say, hey, how about a game of cards, and he’d bring in a stool and little folding table, and we’d sit and play canasta or twenty one, flipping the cards down on the table, him breathing through his nose in that way that annoyed me so much but I never said. But I liked those games. It didn’t happen often, but I guess he got bored every now and then. Things like that, I could look forward to them, every morning I would wake up and think, maybe today there will be eggs. That keeps a body going. I got meals three times a day which were pretty much the same, mash and some kind of meat for dinner, sandwich for lunch. My bed wasn’t too bad, sheets changed every week, those flannel striped sheets that are too hot in the summer, a blanket, a toilet in the corner and a sink for if I wanted to clean myself, which I didn’t bother about that much to be honest, and laundry done for me. I mean, I was cared for, I got the things I needed to keep body and soul together. It didn’t really occur to me to complain. Why should I? The cage was what I knew. I watched what I could see of the sky through the window, three panes of glass maybe a foot high and three wide, and sometimes it was blue out there and sometimes the rain ran down the glass like twisting veins and sometimes there was thunder and lightning, that was always a good day, I liked thunder and lightning. There was the smell of me, that varied depending on what day of the week it was or how much I had washed, sometimes the boss made me have a wash because he said I stank and it was time. I liked my smell, it was familiar and close and reassuring. I liked being inside, I felt safe. The boss made me feel safe. I knew what was going to happen every day. Maybe there would be eggs. Maybe there would be a card game. But that was just the little bit of anticipation that was like a sparkle over the day that I knew was going to happen, it didn’t have to happen, it just had to be a maybe. And that was enough to keep me going. It’s not like you need a lot, really. I just needed the day to happen and be pretty much the same as the last one. Feels weird now, nobody really understands. But it was fine.

*** Alison Croggon is a poet, novelist, editor and critic who lives in Naarm, Australia. Her most recent book, a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, was shortlisted for the Translation Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary’s Awards. 6 June 2025