Yesterday I went on a quest. My quarry? The most elusive metaphor of all.
If you spotted me yesterday, chances are pretty good that you were actually in my apartment. Aside from a trip to the grocery store and the coffee shoppe circa 7:30, I stayed indoors. I needed to wind through the corridors of my mind, and as a general rule one oughtn’t operate heavy machinery while making the attempt.
You see, the metaphor I was after is my own peculiar White Whale, a symbol of a self-reflexive metaphysics, the kind I use to run my mental life. If you think that sounds New Agey, just be glad I’m not close enough to reach out and slap you (unless you’re still in my apartment; I’ll check in a moment). Searching for my metaphor may well be the only practical, responsible thing I do all summer long. Without a sovereign metaphor to guide and govern me, all behavioral bald man bets are off. You might as well bargain with a jackal.
By my reckoning, I’ve gone through four longish stretches during which I lacked the needful anchorage of my metaphor. Generous observers have likened my behavior during these lapses to that of a wrecking ball. It’s not that I engage in self-destructive behavior during such stretches; I heart the bald man far too much to do him active harm. Instead, I simply divest myself of obligations and accountabilities. I do what I please, albeit with the help of an attendant craftiness that simulates mature responsibility quite nicely. Even the kindliest observers would tell you that it’s not a pretty thing.
To rectify this recklessness, my master metaphor serves as both an index and a compass, telling me how I’m doing and where I’m going. It’s also a liminal thing, existing somewhere between conscious thought and subconscious processing, so it often delivers missives of the mind I might not otherwise receive. In effect it makes vivid, provocative, and productive the kind of cognitive drama that often bogs me down. If it can be thunked, I can overthink it.
Over the past year my master metaphor has been the Glass Dais–which I will capitalize because it’s served me well–a raised, transparent surface on which I’ve scattered my Things (which I will capitalize because the stuff in my skull is important). Every single day I spend a little time at the Dais, seeing where I stand. The process is something akin to active imagination, which involves a kind of self-abstracted participation. Each time I approach the Glass Dais is different, with the surface, the surroundings, and the Things arrayed upon it reflective of Where I’m Standing (which I capitalize because, quite frankly, I’m on a bender). I may act upon my Things, but I have to do so on their terms. Those terms are always telling.
The most common Dais exercises involved nothing more than clearing or gathering–either cutting a path between my Things or else heaping them up in some needful way. As always, assuming I approached the Dais in a properly responsive frame of mind, I intuitively knew what I was meant to do (a goodly emblem of whatever real-life tasks happened to preoccupy me at the time). Then I’d try to do it.
It sounds easy enough, I know, and sometimes it was. Sometimes I’d step into a cool, white room and find the Dais spread with children’s blocks or playing cards that I could stack or tent to my mind’s content. Sometimes, however, I would find myself in a windy chamber and my Dais dusted with sand, or I would find the Dais narrow, shivering, and spread with marbles or ball bearings. (As you might expect, sometimes it’s terribly easy to lose your marbles and your bearings under such conditions–symbology can be pitifully literal.) Most of the time a little active reflection after the fact clued me in to major motifs of meaning–after all, what could be a more fitting metaphor for compiling tenure and promotion credentials than trying to stack marbles on a glass table?–and even when I wasn’t entirely certain what my mind was getting on about, I could always use my response to the task as a reliable index of my cognitive condition. Sometimes I find that trying to build a house of cards in a hurricane is infuriating, sometimes hilarious. Most days that’s all I’d need to know.
Eventually, however, it became more difficult to summon the Glass Dais with the same degree of crispness and clarity. That seems to happen to all master metaphors after a spell. The fabric of that little world began to fade and fray, so of course I started to get a little antsy. While I’m fully willing to concede that there may come a day when I’ve grown beyond managerial metaphors, this summer seemed like an unlikely time. I’m on the cusp of several major projects, and I’ve just shifted gears in several significant ways. The need for a new master metaphor would seem to be fairly strong.
The nature of the quest, alas, requires the seeker to concede to the chaos of cognition. It’s not like one can simply pick a metaphor that the brain will subsequently wire with all sorts of secondary connections and investments; the mind needs a vivid, versatile emblem it can endow with the requisite resonance. I spent a little time over the past several weekends clearing my head, waiting to see what the furnace might furnish, but nothing arrived. The beauty of my brain is that it has become easy to tell when I’m forcing the act, or when I’ve made a false start. I can conjure up images at a spectacular rate, but the Real Thing, the property of the mind’s driving dynamics, is palpably different.
Long story short: it showed up yesterday. I know it’s legit because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and every time I call it up I feel a deep satisfaction down to my marrow.
I don’t know what it means, of course, but that’s really beside the point. I know with perfect certaintly that it means, and I can’t ask for anything more.
