Metaphors to Live With, Chap 4

METAPHORS TO LIVE WITH

CHAPTER 4:  THE OBJECTIVE NATURE OF PARTIAL STRUCTURE

            I have heard some of the people here call my small room a safe room but I know that to not be true. 

            That, being that my small room is a safe room.

            There are, as if now it bears explanation, people here.  Not in my small room, of course, but outside.  Which is not to say that I am not a person, I suppose.  Other than myself, that is, there are no people in my small room.

            My small room is in a bigger room that is in a bigger building.  There are pencils here, and straps on the duck bedroll.

            I am given the pencils to write with or to eat or to stab myself with or to do any possible number of things with. 

            Pencils are just one instance of an unsafe item in my safe room, by the way.  I could choke on them if I tried to eat them.  And it would hurt if I stabbed myself with one of them.  They are kept very sharp. 

            This is how they are brought to me every morning:  sharp.

            Apennape, by the way, is not my actual name. 

            Neither, by the way, of course, is Apindrop.

            There are, again, by the way, an infinity of possible numbers.  More numbers, by far, than there are things which I can do with a pencil.

            The reason it would bear explanation is because people have not yet been mentioned.  Unless one considers the aforementioned people to be one and the same with the aforementioned they.

            By the way, by practically bare as way of description, I mean other than the table, the chair and the duck bedroll, the small, safe room I am in has no other furnishings, no wall cover, no window, no decorations, if you will.  Unless you count a drain in the southeast corner floor to be a drain.

            More a hole, really, rather than a drain, per se.  A drain, by itself. 

            Almost doesn’t make sense.

            I would, in case you are wondering, never stab myself with one of the pencils.  Because everything has an express purpose and stabbing is not a pencil’s express purpose.

            Nor would I stab myself with the table, the chair or the duck bedroll.  For very much the same reason as with the pencil.

            Plus the difficulty factor.  Per se, by the way, doesn’t mean what context of usage would make it seem to mean. 

            The difficulty factor, that is, of stabbing oneself with, say, a chair, or a duck bedroll, for instance, or, of course, a table.

            It would be easier to use a pencil.

            If what one wanted was ease.  When stabbing oneself, I mean.

            I have to be careful, least I begin to fixate.  I am aware that fixating can be unhealthy.  Aware here meaning that I’ve been told, repeatedly, that fixating can be unhealthy.

            So much so that the telling begins to seem like a fixation.  Which is not something that I am forward enough to point out to the tellers.

            For forward read brave or courageous.  And but because they are not the same thing.  Brave and courageous, I mean, being not the same thing.

            I might need to point out that I have never ever attempted to stab myself with a table, a chair or a duck bedroll.  In case the previously used would had left some vague or perhaps comic ambiguity about that fact.

            Would not and have never.

            Once upon a time, I would have used a pencil.  If nothing else was available.

            This once upon a time is when the things happened that encouraged the Great Man to offer us alternative choices.  His phrase.  Alternative choices. 

            And us:  his pronoun.

            This decision, he said, based on choices that I had made. 

            My given name, as if it matters, is Ancel.  It is pronounced like ankle. 

            A cut above the foot, we are, the Great Man would always say.  The Great Man would always say this when he was trying to make a point about something or other that I was never completely and forthrightly clear about. 

            But a bit below the knee, I once said back, thinking I was joining in some new sort of undetermined, unknown fun.

            The Great Man was not amused at the time.  And at the same time I had no idea why the Great Man was not amused, but now I sort of do.  Have an idea, I mean.  About why, I mean, for the idea.

            I have come to realize, lately, that many of the things that I found amusing that the Great Man did not find amusing are really very easily explainable.  As to why, I mean, they were not amusing to him.  But might have been to me.  Then, I mean.

            For lately, see many of prior comments about words that depend upon other words to make sense.

            Not that lately is always one of those words, but it is sometimes, like then, after my coming to realize.  Then being that particular instance.

            And but I realize that Ancel is not so much better than Apennape or Apindrop.  Not at all better, really.

            I do not want to leave the wrong impression:  I never actually hurt anyone.  Actually not meant to diminish the possibility of hurting anyone.  And for anyone, read someone else.  Meaning, someone other than myself.

            Which is not to say that I hurt myself.  But or at least, not often.  I don’t think.  Much of what actually (not used the same way as above, by the way) occurred has become much of a blur to me.

            Is one of the reasons I’m here, again, actually.  Or, maybe, frankly.

            Because again, if not, then where?

            The Great Man would say that he made up such words as sparrow, or necessitate, or depress, or infrastructure, or cardioid or trajectory or sorrow, but I now know these to be message words that he didn’t necessarily make up but that he did want me to take seriously and to really, really work to understand deeply.  Deeper than even etymologically, I mean.

            Not that understanding took so much work, really.

            Sparrow, for instance, because of the bible verse.  By which, I gathered, I was to take seriously and really, really work to understand the bible verse probably, not necessarily just the sparrow.

            Matthew 6:29-31.  Which are contradictory, frankly.  Because either you are or you are not worth more than a handful of sparrows.  Or but at least, maybe, the numbered hairs on your head are worth more than a handful of sparrows, but then, maybe you are not.  Just your hairs are, I mean.

            I am not sure why, earlier, I said it might assist to know that I am seated.  Duck, by the way, is a heavy woven cotton material.  It might be numbered duck or, I’m not making this up, it might be naught duck.

            It has to do with, again, not making this up, the warp and the weft.  Of the weave, I mean.  The warp and weft of the weave determine if it’s going to be naught duck.

            I could not make this stuff up if I tried.

            The previous being something I once heard a man who was being funny say.  He was laughing when he said it, and I do not remember now what it was that he could not make up, but I do remember that whatever it was he could not make up he referred to as stuff when he said that he could not make it up if he tried.  I do not know how long he tried before he realized that he was inadequate to the task of making up similar stuff to the stuff he could not make up.  When he tried.  Well, when.  Maybe he did not.  Try, that is.

            If he tried.

            Not that I am now, or would ever be, trying to be funny.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas