on
8/11/2001
Examine, if you will, metaphors.
I see a storm in the distance, and sit on top of my car to watch it. Lightning illuminates the inside of the clouds. At home, I sit on the eave of the roof atop my garage, and watch the same storm. The lightning flashes across the entire Northern quadrant of the sky. The storm has gotten closer. I can't hear the thunder. The night wears on, but no rain comes, and no thunder is heard. The storm misses me.
Here is a longer one:
I am in the middle of an extremely good novel about a magician. It's as engaging and well crafted as any good magic show. It's a pre-published copy; thus it's rare, and I can't keep it forever. In spite of all of its good qualities, I haven't opened it for almost a month. Why? I don't know. I'm reading another book, a book about maps. It's good, but a bit too chatty and overwrought. So why am I focusing all my reading time on this second book, instead of on the magician novel? It's possible that I'm daunted by the first book. There's still an awful lot more of it to be read, and it's been so wonderful, up to this point. Is it possible for even as extraordinary a book as this to remain extraordinary until the last page?
This is no idle question.
Perhaps I just suffer from the romance of the new. This is no idle thought, either. Indeed, it requires an apology, even though it's about me. Everything on this page has a double meaning.
It's such a strange, ambiguous place I'm in right now.
Yesterday, I hiked all over the mammoth ledges and thick spruce forests of Friendship Long Island. Three miles of glacial debris, attacked for 10,000 years by the ocean and blowdown winds. During the day, it was a tough hike with a friendly hound I feared abandoned, in search of water for him and, perhaps, his owners. That night, my mission accomplished, my closed eyes couldn't stop showing me the sharp, shredding impressions of the places I'd traversed. I couldn't sleep.
I know what it is, but I don't know how to feel about it. When my mind is practical, it's one place. When my mind is tired and reactionary, it's a different one. It's like when one was a kid, and the room was a different place with the lights off than it was with the lights on. (As an odd side note, I found my night-light on this morning. I vaguely remember turning it on late last night. I must have fallen asleep soon after.)
We all need metaphors to understand life. Examined, they give us glimpses [metaphor] of the stuff [metaphor] that holds [metaphor] ideas together in our minds. I need metaphors, and I hate them. I want to just speak openly.
But I promised I wouldn't if I wasn't okay.
And it's not so bad.
Touch the Toast