jonah

Not particularly pleased with life, but I cleaned out the garage today, and there was this tomato cage - chicken wire wrapped in clear plastic. It belonged in a different building, so I took it there. Funny how things strike you sometimes. The quonset is dirty and full of all manner of mismatched junk. Beautiful? I don't think so. But when I got to the open doorway I stopped, because it was. There was something strangely massive and ethereal about it, like a dream, or a painting of a dream. The quiet silver light of an overcast sky filtered in through the hole-ridden roof, gentle on the old wood, beaten as it was by weather and worn by time, burdened with memories it could not share. Two long wooden ladders leaning against the back wall swept up with startling age and grace, and a pile of wire and plastic cages - like the one forgotten in my hands - lay at their feet, out of place, almost other-worldly. Like a nest of queer transparent eggs, like insects of colorless iridescence caught sleeping, like something I ought not to have disturbed. What is this world we inhabit? The ribs of the building arched up to a point, rib after rib after rib, like the inside of a whale. Like Jonah's whale, or fish, if it was a fish. I thought of Jonah. Was I like him? Was I angry about the fruit of my reluctant obedience? Or where it grew? Or how slowly? Would I dare? I might . . . oh, foolish girl.