5/17/12

Metaphors to Live With, Chap 3

METAPHORS TO LIVE WITH







CHAPTER 3:  MY FRIEND F.


            Great, as I call him, because so he called himself. 
            Other adjectives he used were (but were not limited to):  superior, distinguished, grand, and immaculate.
            Immaculate being the adjective there that was the most woefully misused.  There meaning in the list of other adjectives the man used to describe himself, the list that is herewith truncated for the sake of time.
            I will come back to the small room with the table and the chair.  There is also a bedroll, but it almost hardly worth mentioning.
            Well, by come back to I mean that I am sure that I will further mention the small room with the table and the chair at some later point in my scribbling.
            For the sake, however, of mentioning, I will mention that the small room also contains a bedroll.
            The Great Man used his adjectives to describe specifically, he said, the things that he was and that I would never be, he said.  Which is why immaculate is funny: 
            I am. 
            Immaculate, I mean.  He could never be.  And with that type of glaringly obvious vocabulary mistake, could he, in all honestly, be said to be superior?
            Superior is one of those words, like new and like late, that depend upon something else, much as new depends upon old or used, to actually obtain its full understood meaning. 
            I do not approve, by the way, of the use of rhetorical questions as a furtherance of the communication herewith offered.
            Understood, by the way, does not actually mean that one (see previous note) stands under something.  Under, in this case, actually meaning between
            So its full understood meaning is actually something’s full betweenstood meaning.  Which is also not as clear as one (see previous) might hope or imagine.  It to be, I mean.
            The bedroll, if one (see previous) must know, is currently in its place in the Northwest corner, forty-three and a half inches away from the corner of the table that is closest to the Northwest corner.  One (again, see previous) would not be incorrect in presuming that if one corner of the table is closest to the Northwest corner of the room then the opposite corner of the table is closest to the Southeast corner of the room.  One (ibid) could leap to the presumption that the small room has four corners, each one of them facing one of the traditional wind mid-points on the compass.
            Ibid for all the one’s to come, by the way.  Well, not all, as some of the one’s will most likely actually stand for the numeral, as in one, two, three.  Even if some will obviously stand in place of the third person singular pronoun used in the present simple tense.  Conditionally, I mean.  Used conditionally, I mean.  The use of the gender neutral one as a third person singular pronoun in the present simple tense will be conditional, I mean.
            Well, for conditional, read occasional.
            One’s presumptive leap would be a safe one.  Leap, that is. 
            A safe leap.
            If one chose to make such a presumptive leap, that is, regarding the four corners of the small room.
            The Northwest corner is the Bora corner, for instance. 
            Or would be if my small room were a compass, or a wind-measuring station.
            Of which it is assuredly not either.  A compass, or a wind-measuring station, I mean.
            The Great Man, like the capital N Now, understood himself to exist worthy of capitalizations.  Hence, the G and the M, when referring to him, by the way.
            If it is helpful, the bedroll is constructed out a material known as duck.
            I could not begin to guess why this might be helpful, or to whom this might be helpful.  To the same degree with which I could not begin to guess, please disregard the note regarding the material construction of the bedroll. 
            Disregarding to the same degree would be easier, I understand, if the original degree in question, that is, mine, regarding the usefulness of the information, or even, as its basest quality, my guessing, were a known quantity.
            I said usefulness, but meant, as you are not doubt aware, helpfulness
            Not the same thing.
            I do not know how I came to know the word truncate.
            The Great Man would make up many words, before, when the right word would not come to mind.  I do not know what before designates here, nor am I clear on what might be meant by right
            Words are just words, after all.  Unless, or until, they accidentally become something else.
            Some of the words he would make up:  apindrop, bewheezered, slothrop, cocksure, Deuteronomy, fusner, graxioms, erdedy, fuzzicals, phi, dollbounce, bast, apennape…it seems to be an interminable list, now that I consider the sum of its total.
            The few words given here represent but a small portion of the list.
            I do now know that Deuteronomy is probably not a Great-Man-made-up word, just as apparently cocksure is also not original.  Nor phi, for that matter.
            I do know that I believed erroneously that truncate was pronounced with three syllables, thusly:  tru*nk*ate. 
            I do remember being confused as to what exactly (see above) it might be that true inks ate.  Most likely, at the time that this confused me, I could not have, with any confidence, explained exactly what an ink might be, or certainly what an ink might eat, and even more certainly why apparently only some inks were deemed true.
            Because if some are true, some must, diametrically speaking, be false.
            Apennape was one of the names the Great Man would call me.  As was apindrop.  Apennape, he would call, come here. 
            Or some such. 
            Or, Apindrop, if you do not want to get fusnered, bast it all, you’ll get over here right now, he would explain.  For instance.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas

No comments:

Post a Comment