Gilded Cage Wisdom

Every couple of years I make it a point to read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

I shouldn't say read. I should say dissect. Of all the books in my library, there are really just three worthy of tearing them apart to see how they work: Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, William Styron's Sophie's Choice and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. I'm sure a shrink would have a field day with that list. All three, of course, have a thread. and in Nabokov's case a Maginot Line of deviant sex running through them. But what really draws me to them is the way the author's use the English language as a tool to accomplish their task. It is so easy to be lazy with language, but read any of these three books and you'll come away exhausted. Exhausted for the author because I can't fathom how much time and energy went into stocking that reservoir of life experience they call from to illustrate a point with words. To write like Nabokov, Styron or Angelou, you really do have to acquire a certain patina weathered and tarnished by life. In a few years I should be ready to write because I'm certainly tarnishing a bit more each day.

In fact, I'm still pissed off today because I had a knock-down-drag-out fight with my father YESTERDAY over a.....tree branch. Well it was more than a branch, but less than a tree. It is just easier to call it a tree branch. A tree branch at the vacant house where he once lived. A tree branch that had been knocked down in a storm. A tree branch that he insisted on dragging up to the patio and sawing into pieces. He insisted on doing-so last night after I'd been running around all day trying to get MY errands done. Whenever I have errands to do, I have to wait for the St. Louis Cardinals to come on TV before I can set out for three uninterrupted hours. Yesterday my big task on this Memorial Day weekend was dropping off my car at Firestone for a wheel alignment. Of course, that took all afternoon. I had to drive the car to the Firestone in Creve Coeur and take a bus home. With Volvos and St. Louis mass transit, nothing is ever done quickly or without travail.

The LAST thing I felt like doing at 7:00 on a Saturday night was to go over to the house and dispose of an enormous tree branch. The ONLY thing my father wanted to do at 7:00 on a Saturday night was to go over to the house and dispose of an enormous tree branch. I gave in because it was easier to give in than to put up with his tantrums. I swear, if he pounds those fists into the padded arms of that Barcalounger one more time, I'm going to lose it. You'll be seeing me on the news shielding my face, hands-cuffed, being led into the courthouse for my araignment in Clayton.

Of course, the mere fact I let myself give in only made my anger inside percolate. I was more mad at myself than I was at him. He can't help it. His only interests are Cardinal baseball and doing physical labor around the house. In this case, a house in which he doesn't even live! And so the nimbus clouds had gathered to erupt in a perfect storm of vitriol coming from deep inside: "Dad..we BOTH have condos for a reason. I HATE doing house projects. Do I look like Bob Fucking Vila?"



Later I would laugh at the reference because first of all, it just sounds funny to insert the word "fucking" as someone's middle name when you are in full fury. Secondly, even without dementia I seriously doubt my father would know Bob Vila if, as dad used to say, he came up and bit him in the ass. And, of course I used to add...yeah but I'd sure make it a point to find out about ANYONE who bit me in the ass! Lastly, the reference is dated. I don't think Bob Vila has been on TV in two decades. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find too many people who WOULD know him, regardless of any ass mastication.

So we got the tree branch dismembered in fairly short order. I had so much anger, I used my bare hands to bust up most of it. Think Joan Crawford's rosebush melt-down on steroids. This was a pretty big branch and I'm feeling it today. My hands are raw. My legs are cut. My body sore and I'm just mentally spent from my outburst. Was it REALLY worth all that? Ram Dass..where are you in the heat of the moment? I can internalize a higher plane of thinking on the calm tarmac of my own home, but let me get airborne into the real world and all that wisdom seems to get overpowered by turbulence...be it wisdom from Ram Dass or Rahm Emmanuel.

Never let a good crisis go to waste! I definitely have more work to do.

So I will soon head over and tune in the Cardinal game for Dad. I have more errands to run today and those three hours are, to plaigarize Rod Blagojevich..GOLDEN, just fucking GOLDEN. But before I go, I did come across something equally golden in my annual dissection of Maya Angelou's masterful writing. It comes early in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and it is a prayer her grandmother used to say upon rising every morning at four o'clock:

Our Father, thank you for letting me see this new day.
Thank you that you didn't allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet.
Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me put a bridle on my tongue.
Bless this house, and everybody in it.
Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.

HELP ME PUT A BRIDLE ON MY TONGUE!

Put that one up on the refrigerator door...or, if we are being chronologically correct, given the source of this wisdom....the ice box.