"The Cage": Page 478

This Infinite Jest Moment brought to you from a suburban second floor bathroom where I'm having a late afternoon bowel movement. I wondered why I didn't have my usual bm in the am but now that I'm in the midst of some relaxing toilet-seated handblogging, I know: I was saving my sh*it for the suburbs. I'm sure Freud would have understood.

Anyways, enough about that sh*it. On page 478 I have noticed another reference to "the cage". It is Gately talking about how he has embraced the Surrender and Denial of AA Living and reflecting on "what it used to be like Out There in the cage."

So the Out There is The World of Drink I suppose. Hmm. And that is where the cage is? Drink is a cage? Isn't it supposed to be an escape?

I guess of course unless you become a "slave" to drink.

And here I sit/sh*it trying to escape the cage of this suburban birthday party.

I guess "cages" are relative to what we all want to escape.

But I still can't figure out why I was initially inspired to put those cages into a page- all those handblogposts ago. I mean pages into a cage. Maybe it was just for effect. I still like the photo of those cute, early, little pages smiling behind the metal mesh, snuggled up to those orange basketballs...