I do not remember the first time I stopped in front of an image of a cage.
I try to remember.
And that is exactly what worries me.
Because I cannot find the beginning.
I only find returns.
I look at it.
I close it.
I move on to something else.
And yet, a few minutes later, I am already coming back.
As if I had forgotten to check something.
In the literature of the Marquis de Sade, the cage rarely functions merely as a space of confinement. Its true function seems stranger. It turns the boundary itself into an object of constant observation. The subject stops asking what is inside. The subject begins asking where the edge actually is.
And that question does not remain inside the cage.
It shifts.
To the body.
To attention.
To the habit of returning.
What is unsettling is not the closed door.
It is checking again and again that it remains closed.
As if every verification were confirming something beyond the material fact itself.
Something that never becomes entirely clear.
Sometimes I think the cage does not capture the one inside.
It captures the path of the gaze.
It forces it to return to the same place.
To inspect the same bars.
To measure the same distance.
To repeat the same question.
And every repetition seems identical.
Until it is not.
A different reflection.
A detail I do not remember.
Dust gathering in a corner.
A shadow that seems to be where it was not before.
Nothing important.
Nothing that explains anything.
But enough to make me return.
And then another doubt appears.
Not whether the cage is closed.
But when I started using it to verify something about myself.
The image is still open.
Or I think it is.
I am not going to check.
At least that is what I tell myself.
But my hand is already near the mouse.
And the strangest thing is not that.
The strangest thing is that it feels as if I had already returned before thinking about it.
It wasn’t the cage.
At least that’s what I thought at first.
I thought it was the object.
The metal.
The transparent plastic.
The mechanisms.
The engineering.
Just something unusual.
Something that appeared on a screen for a few minutes and disappeared when I closed the tab.
But it didn’t disappear.
That was the uncomfortable part.
The tab closed.
The image didn’t.
It returned while I was making coffee.
It returned while I was working.
It returned whenever I tried to focus on something else.
I couldn’t understand why.
And that was exactly why I kept reading.
The cup sat on the desk.
Cold.
I couldn’t remember when I had stopped drinking it.
Several articles were open.
Some talked about control.
Others talked about trust.
Others seemed written by people describing something far deeper and much harder to explain.
I read one.
Then another.
Then another.
As if eventually I would find the exact sentence that explained why I kept coming back.
It never appeared.
And yet I kept searching.
It wasn’t arousal.
At least that’s what I told myself.
It was curiosity.
I wanted to understand.
Nothing more.
But curiosity had a strange habit.
Every time I tried to satisfy it, it grew.
Every video led to another.
Every article opened three new questions.
Every answer expanded the territory instead of reducing it.
Then I noticed something unsettling.
The feeling appeared before I opened the page.
As if part of me already knew I was coming back.
Was it really curiosity?
I wasn’t sure.
Curiosity usually disappears when it finds answers.
Mine seemed to feed on them.
I checked the time.
More than two hours had passed.
I hadn’t noticed.
The room was quiet.
The same light.
The same desk.
The same forgotten coffee.
And yet something had changed.
Not outside.
Inside.
First I thought I was interested in the object.
Then I thought I was interested in the idea.
Then I thought I was interested in the reaction it created.
Now I wasn’t sure about any of those things.
What felt strange was the persistence.
The repetition.
The need to come back one more time.
Just one more video.
Just one more article.
Just five more minutes.
Always five more minutes.
I should move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
The thought appears.
The movement doesn’t.
I realize I’ve been sitting exactly the same way for several minutes.
Watching.
Reading.
Returning.
I’m starting to suspect that the question was never what that object means.
The question is why I keep returning to it.
And that possibility feels more unsettling than any answer.
Because maybe I’m not trying to understand something.
Maybe I’m trying to understand myself.
And maybe that’s why I’m still here.
The screen lighting the room.
The coffee already cold.
A curiosity that should be fading away.
And yet seems to be taking up more and more space.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
