The Urban Sherpa - a blog by Christopher DeWan

(o, negative...)

The Urban Sherpa keeps a collection of stories and curios filed under Mythic Proportions.

Breakdown / Metaphors rating=2

June 15, 2006
File under: Crazy Talk

"It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive."
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Man Without Skin"My brain is on fire" is a metaphor.
"My brain has been on fire for a week."
"My brain is a house of cards."

"I am Jenga tiles."
"I am pick-up sticks."
These are metaphors.

"I am a raw nerve, a cracked tooth."
"I am fractured."
"I am a man without skin."

"A sacked castle."
"Wilting."
"Flotsam."

"Meltdown" is a metaphor.
"Collapse" is, too (though also somewhat literal).

Even "breakdown" is a metaphor:
I am not an engine.
I am stalled. (Metaphorically.)

All words, really, are metaphors—approximations of feelings and ideas which can never—will never? should never?—be expressed: an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction.

Everything: just a figure of speech.

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