Yeah, it’s Friday, not Thursday, but aren’t you used to these Thursday blog entries arriving a day late by now? I mean, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you. Heh. So about those #ThursdayThoughts…
Since I can remember learning the definition of a metaphor back in middle school, I have become an observer of the world through metaphorical binoculars wherever I roamed. Much the same way my love for classic cinema influenced my lens of the world to see it like a movie and the way music videos in the 80s shaped the way I began visualizing the music I heard in the 80s as a tween and teen, somewhere a knack for finding metaphor in whatever I was experiencing crept into my way of thinking.
We all have our talents. Some people pick up on miscalculations within a second’s time, others can’t help noticing glaring typos. (I’m one of those annoying people, although unfortunately, not always within my own blogs!) I have met people who constantly think by way of puns, and I will admit I have a slight affliction of this, but thankfully nothing too serious. Possessing another sense, a special sense, to see another layer of meaning that lies beneath the surface can be useful at times. I don’t know why I possess that particular skill. It would be much more useful if I could sew a button back onto a shirt but much like being able to calculate tips quickly without a calculator, this is one skill that Mother Nature has chosen to give me.
This week for example, I couldn’t help noticing that much the same way my own body and energy has been draining from the last few stressful months and ultimately leading me to get sick (which I am thankfully starting to recover from), my car caught up with me and perhaps with empathy decided to show it too believed I’d done driving back and forth for a while. The car battery died yesterday. Yep, much like my own internal battery it simply ran out of gusto. I’m not surprised really. It’s been running ragged as much as me. It had to happen sometime, I suppose. Anyway, the similarity to my own current health status didn’t go unnoticed.
Sometimes it’s just metaphor and other times it’s a blend of metaphor and irony that creep into my observance. For example, I’ve run into situations where friends who complained about their children lacking focus or being reckless with money, time or their hearts have emulated the behavior of their own kids completely unable to recognize it themselves. Other times it may be observing someone in high power or celebrity who doesn’t recognize their own out-of-control spiral in progress actually face a literal tumble – I mean, outright taking a spill physically or in financial status or reputation, and still completely oblivious in recognizing any humility whatsoever.
All throughout high school, we were given lists of required reading and I would often find myself gravitating toward writers, both novelists and playwrights, who knew how to use metaphor well within their work. Writers like William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, for example, though Faulkner’s tendency to create loooooooong sentences that could fill up a page or two before a period could get a little tiresome. Writers like these had a knack for setting the stage for one scenario and yet completely telling another story through the dialogue and descriptions captured. I so appreciated that talent.
The beauty of metaphor is recognizing that whatever you may be looking at, experiencing or listening to, there is always more — more than meets the eye, more than meets the ear, more than what lies in the pictures or words before you. Metaphor is seeing everything, the meaning and lesson behind it all, and it means keeping the senses open to it all.
Alrighty, so I’ve confessed some of my weird quirky talents here. What are yours? ‘fess up. Are you obsessed with dirty jokes, limericks or rhyme? Card tricks? Grocery shopping races to see if you can beat your last excursion time? Let me hear those talents. Go on… And as always, thanks for reading. ~ Chris K
(Visual Metaphor Illustration by Sebastian Thibault)
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