Metaphors to Live With, Chap 8 v1

METAPHORS TO LIVE WITH

CHAPTER 8:  CONVENTIONAL METAPHORS RAISE NO SPECIAL PROBLEMS FOR TRUTH

            Were my friend here, by the way, with me now, or Here Now, as the case may be, he would mention that my picture argument was rather specious and facile.  Or, rather, is.  Not was.  It is like asking if my blue is the same as your blue.  Which he did, by the way.  Ask, I mean.  If my (but he said his) blue were the same as my (where you most likely said your) blue.

            And but for were, I am certain you may read is.

            Earlier, I might have been confusing when I said what has gone before in conjunction with what you might want to re-read.  I just want to be clear that I did not mean everything, as in every word ever written.  Because that is most likely not necessary.  To read every word ever written, I mean.  For most likely, please read almost certainly.  Not necessary, I mean.  It is unclear to me what might or might not be necessary to read.

            To catch the missed elements of plot, I mean.

            And but so I also want to mention that I do not necessarily consider bare to be practical.  Because I mentioned that the small room where I am is practically bare.  And I do not know for a fact that the bare is practical.  Another possibly wrong impression I did not want to linger.  Not, by the way, that I am at all certain what I might want in the small room besides what is already here.  Or but even that I might want something other in the small room besides what is already here.

            It is already bad enough, turning away momentarily from the duck bedroll in the Bora corner only to find myself instantaneously overcome with the urgent suspicion that the duck bedroll is no longer in the Bora corner if only because I do not see it, even if peripherally.  I have the same fear of the table disappearing.  And the chair.  And the drain in the Mistral corner.  If I am at the drain, I am frequently looking over my shoulder to ensure that the table and the chair stay right where they were when I left them.  Same thing with the drain if I’m at the table, seated in the chair:  looking over my shoulder to make sure that nothing happens to my drain.

            Left them, I say, when what I mean is where they were when I stood up from the table and went maybe to the duck bedroll in the Bora corner.  Because I do not actually leave them.  Ever, hardly.  Or right them.  Again, ever, hardly.  Ha.

            My drain, I say, my drain in the Mistral corner, as though I can count the drain amidst my possessions.  This is one of the things that practically bare does for you:  you begin to count even the most nascent of objects as possessions.  My floor.  My wall.  My drain in the Mistral corner.

            I was trying to be funny.  When I said, Or right them.  I have no idea if it is clear that I am not funny.

            I do wonder if the Pi carver was the same carver as the one who carved on the incessant moebius strip.  Because if yes, then, was she also aware that if she switched from a right-handed strip to a left-handed strip that she might very well end up with a lemniscate?  If I had something to bet, I would bet that yes, she was aware that if she switched from a right-handed strip to a left-handed strip she might very well end up with a lemniscate.

            This, by the way, is not meant to exclude the possibility that she was left-handed.  She might, for instance, have started with a left-handed strip and then switched to a right-handed strip, her rightful inclination as a southpaw being to start with a left-handed strip.  Instead of a right-handed strip, I mean.  And I am presuming that by right-handed and left-handed strips it is understood that I am speaking of right-handed and left-handed moebius strips.  Still.  By which I mean the strips have not changed into something else. 

            Although it does again puzzle that they acquired the moniker of only one of their discoverers.  Because, again, why not the listing strip?  Or, the moebius-listing strip?

            It is surprising to me that in the history that was written for my existence it took until 1858 to figure out the non-orientable qualities of the strip.  It apparently took almost no time at all to figure out that potatoes, for instance, were edible, or that animal was better to eat if you made it very hot first, but then, seemingly forever to begin to grasp the qualities of a looping band that seemingly eats itself.

            It does occur to me that the Pi carver probably sat in this very chair at this very table thinking the same thing about my drain, repeating Here.  I.  Am.  Thinking the same think about her drain, of course I meant.  By which I mean, thinking that it was her drain.  Not some other’s.

            Here.  I.  Am.  She thought.  Probably over and over again, carving her Pi and her moebius strip.  I.  Am.  Here. 

            Carve, carve, carve.

            Do Lord o do Lord o do remember me I’ve got a home in Glory Land that outshines the sea o do Lord o do remember me.

            Which is something I sing to myself, on the occasions when it gets really bad.  Well, sing:  something I hear in my head like a song.  On the occasions when it gets really bad, that is.  Sometimes, too, when it’s just normal.  Normal, that is, being the term I use to designate how I feel it must be for everyone other.  Than myself, I mean.

            Everyone other’s level of normal being what I, supposedly, according to the Great Man and some of all of the people here, should be thinking about aspiring towards.  Why can’t you just be normal, the Great Man might say, repeatedly. 

            Say repeatedly, I mean.  Not just be normal repeatedly, the Great Man might say.

            Which should not make me sad, but then, somehow, does.  Not being normal.  And not the Great Man exercising every possible opportunity to point out my inability to obtain the level of everyone other’s normal.

            It should but this is not what makes me sad.

            It is the It that makes me sad.

            When I was just a little kid, I enjoyed building forts in the tall grasses of the vacant lots around the house in which I was raised.  The grasses were not so tall, by the way.  Maybe three feet at most.  But I was not so big that I could not hollow out an area and completely disappear from sight. 

            I can imagine the Pi carver and I sitting in my hollowed-out fort, discussing the principles of the moebius strip.  For instance.  Or why Möbius and not Listing, or both.  For instance.  I can imagine her name being something like Penny.  Short for the old-fashioned Penelope.  Well, old-fashioned:  as old as a muse might turn out to be.

            We could trade marbles in the fort.  She’d give me a steely for three of my tiger-eyes.  It would be okay because I have a lot of tiger-eyes.

            Sometimes when you think about something that is sad for a long enough time, it no longer makes you sad.  It quits having the saddening effect upon you.  Instead, it simply buries you.  It buries you and you no longer even really remember what made you sad, you do not any longer exactly know what happened that you were saddened over.  And maybe you do not even exactly feel sad anymore because you no longer know the difference between what sad feels like and what not sad feels like.  And but by then, you are buried.  Then being when you no longer know the difference between what sad feels like and what not sad feels like.

            For over, you might also possibly read about.  Saddened about, it would then read.  Or Saddened regarding.  And for you, in this case, you the third person can read you the second person as I.

            You are buried then because but when you reach the stage where you cannot say exactly what the something was that saddened you in the first instance you are at the point where it is everything that is saddening you.  Well, everything and everyone.

            Even if you are in your hidden fort with Penny, playing marbles and winning because you have properly traded for a steely and steelies can beat other marbles almost every time if you are a good enough aim, and even if you are winning and no one can find you because you are hidden in your fort with Penny, even then you might accidentally be buried.

            Penny is okay with losing at marbles because it is not really the game that matters so much to her as it is the opportunity to expound on her theory of how infinity was discovered.  Penny is okay with losing because she takes the Hellenistic view of infinity, a view that in your opinion is infinitely less sad than the Indian view that you have adopted.  Even though, on the surface of it, it would seem that a view that seemingly embraces multiple lives would be the less sad of the two. 

            Penny, by the way, discredits both Euclid and Archimedes and accredits the discovery of the infinite to someone she calls Artemeaus.  I have never heard of an Artemeaus, by the way.  Which is not to say that Artemeaus does not, or rather, did not, exist, but is just to say that Artemeaus certainly does not receive very much credit in the classical texts on the notion of the infinite.  Penny explains that Artemeaus was stoned for his views and made to drink hemlock and was run out of town on a rail and that she is the 24^th reincarnation of Artemeaus’ restless and wandering spirit.

            I win another round of marbles.

            Penny claims that Lewis Carroll was also one of Artemeaus’ descendents, as it were.

            This is how you can become buried.

            Even your imaginary friends can contribute by creating imaginary Greek philosophers who somehow endow their spirit through the ages to such luminaries as Lewis Carroll.  Because how can you argue with this?  Or, worse, why would you want to?  Sometimes the dirt hits you and you know it and you know where it’s coming from and you know that at some juncture in the future it will stop, and sometimes the dirt hits you and you have no idea where it is coming from or how long it is going to last or when it is going to stop or for that matter for when read if.

            Penny is, by the way, full of theories.  Not just about infinity, either.  Theories about things other than infinity, I mean.

            Penny has theories on grammar, on the French, on phallocentric politics, on hyper-realism as practiced in the 20^th/21^st century as opposed to how it was practiced in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, on why the 20^th and 21^st century could and should be considered one century, which doesn’t make sense until you hear her explain it, on my notion that history begins and ends with the individual, on photography as an art form, and on how she is not simply a character in my own personal history.

            But and on other things, too.  Theories, I mean, on other things, too.

            Such as Russell being wrong about Pythagoras.  Because, in Penny’s reasoning, if Pythagoras, then definitely instead Anaximander.

            Heraclitus, I might argue, being a more natural choice than someone named Artemeaus.  Someone, I might and do occasionally add when I am speaking with Penny on the subject, that oddly enough no one other seems to have ever heard of, by the way.  Artemeaus, I mean.

            Never having been heard of.

            Artemeaus taught Heraclitus how to tie his shoes, Penny’s rejoinder will be to my argument.  Or some such.  Because if I do not posit Heraclitus, and say instead I posit a more natural choice, such as the afore acknowledged Euclid, she will rejoin with the factoid that Artemeaus taught Euclid the proper purpose of toilet paper and where to use said toilet paper.  On his body, I mean.  I mean, Artemeaus taught Euclid where on his body to properly use toilet paper.  According to Penny, that is.

            Because imagine the first person who dug up a potato and stuck it in his mouth.  Or, her.  And then you sort of have to imagine that same person, the one who takes a potato and sticks it in their mouth, as quickly probably figuring out the principle of washing off the dirt, perhaps.  The dirt off of the potato, that is.  Because otherwise, a mouth full of mud, basically.  And then but you learn to wash off the dirt only to figure out fairly quickly that there is a skin on the potato.  Because so, then the conundrum:  which is what you are supposed to eat?  The skin or the stuff beneath the skin.  Because until you do something with the potato, the skin and the stuff beneath it taste pretty much the same.  Bitter, being how they taste.

            At some point, you have to learn how to boil.  Because you sort of have to figure that frying, as a option for cooking potatoes, came much later than boiling.  Or baking, even.

            Penny does not, that I know, have a theory on the first potato-eaters.  She says that only the forlorn would waste time on thinking about such obvious things.

            Forlorn.  I can only normally reply, Oh yeah?

            It is when she says things like essentially calling me forlorn that I quit for a while imagining what the Pi carver might think about the carvers who have come before her.  Or him.

            Here I am, do Lord.  Alone, oh do Lord or do remember.  Me, I mean.

            Maybe what the Pi carver and I are discussing is why I always put an e in Moebius when we both know, the Pi carver and I, that Möbius’ name was not spelled with an e.  Well, was.  For the second was, please read is.  Möbius’ name is not spelled with an e.

            Because it is when Penny says things like essentially calling me forlorn or a waste or stupid that I quit for a while imagining that Penny even is the Pi carver and start remembering that I used to think that the Pi carver might be Tony.  Only a stupid waste might think something like that, being what Penny might sometimes say when she is in complete disagreement with me.  Or when she is so sure of herself that she can allow for no possibility such as maybe I am correct about something.

            Or but when maybe I have a point to what I am saying.  Which very certainly depends upon what we are speaking about.  My having a point, I mean.

            Which is one of those times that I start thinking that the Pi carver isn’t Penny at all, or Penelope, but is instead Tony.  Who is also allowed to play marbles in my fort.

            For a lot of the times that I use the word can, as in can imagine and can contribute, read do.  Do imagine, do contribute. 

            Do become buried.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas