Antique Rugs and Metaphors

    When I’m thinking well, everything stands for something else and nothing is itself. A gold wristwatch is half a pair of shackles and a necklace is a chain. Bus stop benches are deathbeds and alone on a winter night, a final bottle of whiskey is a ticket out of this place.

Metaphors are neuron connections in your brain, tangled shining threads between words and sensations, semantics and emotions. The place where you feel icy sprinkles and smell wet concrete is connected by glistening twine to the place where you say “rainy day.” Sometimes the connections are thick, obvious: the sea is saltwater and saltwater can be sweat and tears, and trickling tears are like rainfall washing into the sea. 

Sometimes, you didn’t know two things could go together until you drew out their edges, spun them each a new filament, and wove the tiny ends together.  All the sudden a goldfish is a princess and a castle is a fishbowl. You can drag your fingers through these lacings and tug whole worlds into place, like weaving an antique rug. Sometimes you never fully figure out how things connect, and you’re not sure that they should except for the feeling somewhere in your body that tells you they do. Sometimes you don’t even use words for this.

    When I read, and when I write, I gather the those spider string metaphors in my hands and then I eat them. I slurp down sticky cobwebs and feel the phrases in my organs. There are drizzling motifs and stonework themes that drip and clunk through my insides. They make me feel. It is so unpleasant.

    I love for things to be unpleasant. A reader should feel anxious or enraged or suspicious or feverish or hopeless or bereaved. Basically I want to make people feel terrible. And burn things to the ground.
I don’t feel bad. Guilt is an old dusty grit that gathers new layers every year. Once you accept that things get dirty it doesn’t bother you so much and you can draw pictures in the ashes.