August 25: Slamming the Door, Really Angry, Wendell Berry, "The Silence," Adventures of Stickman

He [Ives] thought about the last time she [Annie, his wife] had come home with one of her pep talks in mind, clutching a New York Times page.  A sleek jetliner was pictured flying over the skyline of London, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace prominent, the advertisement declaring:  "It's Never Been Easier.  Or Cheaper!"  And he looked it over and handed it back to her.

"Well, what about it?" he'd asked.

"Don't you think it would be nice for us to go?"

"Yes, yes . . ."

Then, slapping a book down on the table, a chronic weariness of mind and body hit him.

"Yes, we'll go.  I'll pay for it, and then you tell me who'll pay the bills a year from now if something should happen to me."

"But Ed, we're not badly off."

"That's not the point.  You don't understand, do you?" and he went down the hall into the bathroom, slamming the door.  Then he stood before the mirror, pouring cold water over his face, already regretting his outburst.  Later, when he came out, he found a note.  She had gone off to the movies with a friend.

Ives rarely gets pissed off in the book.  As a matter of fact, as I looked for a passage that showed him angry, I found just this one in over two hundred pages of writing.  Ives simply doesn't get mad.  He's gentle and sad and despairing.  It isn't until a couple of decades after his son's death that he expresses anger, and it's not even directed at Danny Gomez, his son's killer.  It's directed at his loving wife.

I have to admit that I have been really angry for most of the day.  It's not a focused anger.  I'm just irritated by everything and everybody.  I'm angry that I have to create a lesson plan for tomorrow.  I was angry that I had to eat dinner tonight.  That it feels like late October outside.  That my wife is defending my daughter's decision to wear a tee shirt for lymphoma awareness to my sister's funeral.  That I had to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. today because of my teaching schedule.  I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Even typing this post is an act of anger.  I'm literally stabbing the keyboard with my fingers just to feel the pleasure of striking something hard.  Nothing particular has provoked this rage.  It has simply festered all day long, getting darker and hotter.

For the past two days, I have had to get up at 4 a.m. for work and school.  I'm pretty damn tired.  That certainly doesn't help my mood.  I have to put together a couple photo books for my sister's funeral.  I have to write a poem and a eulogy.  I want to really honor my sister's life, not to turn it into an event for lymphoma awareness.  My sister was so much more than the illness that killed her.  She deserves better than that.

So, there you have it.  I'm pissed.  Angry.  Furious.  Outraged.  Seeing red.  One step away from slamming some doors or throwing my laptop across the room.

Maybe Saint Marty needs to take an Ativan.  It may help him write the poem.

The Silence

by:  Wendell Berry

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

'It is golden,' while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

Adventures of STICKMAN