Metaphors to Live With, Chap 5

METAPHORS TO LIVE WITH

CHAPTER 5:  PENNY WANTS A CRACKER

            The table I am writing on is so soft that I can sometimes see my pencil marks through the paper on the table top.

            I can also see the markings of some of those who were in the room before me.

            Here. I. Am.  I am in a small room in a building built to hold people who do not do very well in the world outside of small rooms in buildings built to hold people like us.  Well, us:  me, actually.

            Naught duck, being one of the possibilities.  And but I am unclear how I came to know that the Northwest corner is referred to as the Bora.

            Just as I somehow know that it is the Southwest quadrant that is the Sirocco.

            Which would explain wild desert wind as one of the definitions of sirocco. 

            Do very well would probably be difficult to explain if I were to try.  To explain, I mean.

            And for would read might.  As in might explain wild desert wind instead of would explain etc.

            One probably led to the other.  The compass point, or the wind, I mean.

            By the way, which knowledge has not given me or left me with anything substantial.  Knowledge about the compass points, I mean.  Some knowledge you just have.  It doesn’t, or isn’t supposed to, do anything substantial for you.  Or to you.

            When I say substantial I want to be clear that I do not simply mean materialistically substantial.  But because the knowledge about the compass points might be substantially rewarding intellectually.  Or some such.

            It is, however, not.  Substantially rewarding intellectually, I mean.

            I am not clear what I would consider substantial.  I am not clear why I would expect knowledge to leave a mark.  By leave a mark I mean give or leave something substantial.  Which for, again, see before.

            One of the markings that was already on the table from when before I became here looks like this:  -i  m n ere i m.

            Which I do not pretend to comprehend. 

            There are other markings around this one.  Things like partial dates and sort-of numbers.  Things like streaks of lead that you can tell someone has tried to clean out of the gouges that the lead produced.  Things like holes. 

            Some of them are deep.

            The gouges that the lead produced, I mean.  Are deep, I mean.  Some are so deep that I am almost not able to write on those spots anymore. 

            Because it will tear my paper, is why.

            Sort-of numbers are where you can tell that a number is what was once there but now is mainly gone because the wood has softened enough around it to leave it only sort of looking like its original self.  Like maybe only the right side of a nine is still showing, so it’s a curved line with the almost definition of its hump shooting out to the left.  Or the same thing with a six, only all reversed. 

            Or maybe what might have been a three or an eight.  Or an eight turned on its side to create part of an infinity sign.  And something that looks like Pi.

            The symbol, not the number.

            Because the number would take a long time to carve on a table.  Especially the binary version.  11.00100100001111110110 and so on, kind of ad infinitum.

            Can you imagine trying to carve all of those digits on a table with a pencil?  Or trying to carve the set of Borromean rings that someone was trying to whittle into the wood?  It looks like they tired of it and gave up.

            Whittling, I mean.  I do not know if they gave up gave up.  As in, the final give up.

            But Brunnian links.  Unknots. 

            I hope they eventually did not give up give up.  Anyone with the knowledge of how to whittle Borromean rings, well, just the knowledge of how to whittle, never mind the Borromean rings, should never give up. 

            I was going to say whittle unknots should never give up because the difficulty factor of making the crosses of the links look right, like making sure the left is under the right and then the right is under the left, or at least like being able to whittle the illusion that the left is under the right and then the right is under the left, would have to be unbelievably difficult. 

            So difficult that I cannot begin to imagine. 

            I was going to say.  Well, say.

            Even attempting to carve the links of a Borremean ring, I mean.  On a table, with a pencil.

            I do not know why the carver of the unknots would not have had paper.  It would be, I would think, so much easier to draw an unknot than to carve one.  Or so I would think.  But then, there is the depth problem.

            How to render depth in two dimensions.  Because a paper drawing is going to be, no matter how hard you try, two dimensions deep.  At most, two.  Mainly, one.  Unless the drawer is very skilled, and then, maybe, two.

            So but not the three you really need to capture the depth required to fully portray a Brunnian link.  Which is sort of like an infinity symbol gone awry.  Or like the story of the Worm Ourobouros that the Great Man used to tell me.

            A serpent that eats its own tail.

            So much energy spent on the irrational.

            No point in asking the question:  the answer is going to be Wu. 

            True ink ate, I thought once.  Just like the worm was once thought to be a sigil.  Or is still.  Thought to be a sigil, I mean. 

            Which I know is not just like my once thinking that truncate had three syllables instead of two.  Knowing that I know that, I cannot rightly say why I said that.  Rightly instead of frankly, in this instance.  Exactly would have served the same purpose, I am aware.

            I cannot exactly say why I said that.

            Which is not, after all, the same thing as rightly.




© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas