Omnipresent Metaphor

Here's today's quote,

"Adults try as much as possible to avoid metaphor, though they are never wholly successful."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 160

Here's my thought on it,

"Not me! I love metaphors!"

Further thought, 


I do understand this quote though because often in regular conversation, it seems that my metaphors are not appreciated or fully understood by others. People seem to try to avoid them in conversation as well.

Underlying Order

"My friends, as you can see, the chaos of the world had an underlying order. When the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled across God’s building block for the world, and they worshipped Nature because of that.  And one can understand why. God’s hand is evident in Nature, and even to this day there exist pagan, Mother Earth—revering religions. Many of us celebrate nature the way pagans did, and don’t even know it. May Day is a perfect example, the celebration of spring …the earth coming back to life to produce her bounty. The mysterious magic inherent in Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of time. Man is simply playing by Nature’s rules, and because art is man’s attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator’s hand, you can imagine we might be seeing a lot of instances of the divine Proportion in art this semester."

- Dan Brown. The DaVinci Code. DoubleDay: New York, 2003. pg 95-96

The Power of Metaphor

Keep Me in your heart
Originally uploaded by avenue207

"The function of the heart became clear only after the invention of the pump. Indeed, as Jonathan Miller argues, the function of the heart became knowable only after the invention of the pump. Once people understood how a pump worked, they could use that knowledge to make sense of the heart’s function. With the advance of technology an analogy was provided which enabled understanding of things which were otherwise mysterious."

- Kieran Egan. Teaching as Story Telling. The Althouse Press: London, 1986 pg 31

This is exactly how metaphor works. It's not simply about comparing things for literary effect. We can't even seem to understand how things work without such comparisons. That is the power of metaphor.

Winds of Change

"The winds of change - sometimes they're a gentle breeze, a welcome relief. Sometimes a brief gust quickly forgotten. But other times they blow in like a foul and devastating gale blazing a path of destruction, which leaves us, holding on for dear life."

- Narrator on television's Everwood

Irv Harper is the narrator on this excellent series. He is played by John Beasley (pictured)

Adequate Analogies

"Our thinking is suffused with metaphors and analogies. There is an important in which we use the world to think with. We can use the telephone exchange as a tool with which to think about the brain. The analogy is hidden in the theory, but it has provided the means whereby we can get some conceptual grasp on it. We need, however, to be constantly concerned that our analogies are adequate."

- Kieran Egan. Teaching as Story Telling. The Althouse Press: London, 1986 pg 32

Story = Life, Life = Story

"the idea of "one's own story" is so powerful, so native, that I hardly consider it a metaphor, as if it's some new lens through which to look at life.

Your life is story.

Your story is your life."

- Jim Loehr "The Power of Story" Free Press, 2007. pg 4

Process the Unprocessible

"Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors."

- Brown, Dan. The DaVinci Code. DoubleDay: New York, 2003. pg 341-342

Layers of Truth

“I often think of truth like the skin of an onion – you peel it back and what do you find? Another skin. And beneath that, another and another. Truth always has behind it, a more fundamental truth.”
- Crumb, R. & Peter Poplaski. The R. Crumb Handbook. MQ Publications Ltd: London, 2005 pg 234. As written by Harvey Kurtzman as an into to a Crumb collection in 1976.

In the last thirty years this metaphor has become cliché but that doesn’t make it any less powerful.

Games Teach

About “This Little Piggy”

“This is played on five toes with a tickle at the end for the noisy pig. Parents who play games like this with their children are conveying several important messages:

1. I choose to spend time playing with you.
2. I like your toes.
3. Toes can be pigs (metaphor).
4. Language can be fun, play.
5. Stories can be physically felt.
6. I am sharing a tradition of literature with you.
7. I enjoy your pleasure.
8. I respect your intelligence.
9. I like to be a baby too.
10. I like to say poems.”

- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 154

Isn’t it amazing all the things that a little finger play with a baby can accomplish? I think that one of the most important things that any parent can spend on their child is time. This passage just goes to show that the little things in life can carry a lot of meaning and importance.

Happy Monday Everyone!

People Don't Know

“Joseph Campbell, the scholar of mythology, once complained that people don’t know what a metaphor is so, for these people, a myth is a lie.” - Crumb, R. & Peter Poplaski. The R. Crumb Handbook. MQ Publications Ltd: London, 2005 pg 260

I think this might be why organized religion seems to be going through a crisis as of late. Mythical stories are easy to openly challenge. In our scientific world we can disprove some of the religious writings that we have relied on for our spiritual existence for so long. But if we step back and realize the importance of myths, then maybe we can see the truth in the metaphor.

I remember hearing a minister say that we are not meant to understand the holy trinity of Christian faith. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being one is deliberately confusing to remind us that we can never truly understand God. And maybe we can never fully reach a clear understanding of the world either. At least, we will always have metaphor.