Analogies and Metaphors

Future Novelists... These are actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays (sorry, I'm posting without credit because they're source unknown.)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a thigh master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star crossed lovers raced across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resemble Nancy Kerrigan's teeth. (gee, sorry Nancy, wherever you are)

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

"Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a really duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

He was deeply in love when she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightening.

Falling

Did I put on a parachute? Do I even have a parachute? This, I think, I don't really want to know. To know the answer is to defeat the purpose of the moment, which is to jump. Jump without knowing, and more importantly, if possible, without caring. I'm holding on to something. I look: it's a metal handle welded to a rib that curves around the fuselage of this airplane. It's strong, utilitarian, useful; the opposite of almost everything else in my life. It's one of the reasons I'm here. To find, and to grasp, something irrefutably solid and immovable, the purpose of which is single-minded: to give steadiness to someone like me when he needs it.

Reminded of the airplane, I become aware of the noise and the vibration. I look up and see an open door. Next to it, a man dressed in a brown jumpsuit and bright red helmet and gloves and goggles. And parachute. He is pointing at me and waving his hand to come forward. I realize I've just woken up from a dream - that I fell asleep while the plane climbed to jumping altitude. And I know I must have a parachute on. My hand slaps down over an oval clamp over my belly button; yes, of course I do. Still, the tiniest part of me wonders, how would I know if I'm awake, really? and I get up and stumble forward toward this young man and I stop next to him - waiting for instruction? - and he motions me on forward, into the mouth of the open door. My hands instinctively reach up on each side and grasp the frame and what do I find? Two more of those fine, reassuring metal handles, sized and placed exactly as needed by someone standing in this door, facing outward, ready to die.

I turn my head to the right to see his face and before I can glimpse his eyes, I feel his hand on my back and a push and the metal handles fail me, or I fail them, and I'm out. Falling.

Have I done this before? I seem to remember doing it, yes, or else I remember dreaming that I did. Then I remember that once, on a cold day drinking juniper tea from an incredibly fragile teacup handed me by a small brown woman with no teeth and a bright red scarf hiding her hideous hair, I wrote a little poem in which I floated like this, and remembered floating like this, and down I floated, wind whipping as if punishing me for something, eyes full of tears despite my goggles and unspoken apologies, arms extended in surrender, glimpsing something like the earth and trees and water and sand turning below me, turning slowly, then quickly, tumbling out of sight finally, and my thought at that moment, my final thought, was, I remember remembering a dream that became a poem that became life that became ....

#fridayflash: Gratitude Pill

Herr Docktor Franz Kelling, considered a genius in the pharmaceutical biochemistry world, was anything but when it came to his home life. He lived alone with his fourteen year old daughter Kara. Alone because his wife had left, fed up with both of them. Consumed with work, Franz spent little time with his daughter, and when he did, he found her increasingly angry.

"You're never here and when you are, it's 'Kara do this, Kara do that, Kara do the dishes, Kara take out the trash!' You can't be around me without telling me what to do!"

"But ... but!!" he sputtered. "I'm your father! I feed you and house you! You should be grateful. You must do as I say! You WILL do as I say!"

"OH!!" Kara stomped off to her room and refused to come out.

Being a scientist, Franz naturally started thinking about some technological fix to this drama. "I wonder. What if I make a pill that makes people grateful? I might have to slip it to her in her meal, but ...."

Within a few weeks, he had it. A small pill that lasted for a week or more. The Gratitude Pill. He couldn't resist patenting it and when he did, his institute found out. "Franz, this is brilliant work, but why did you not tell us you were working on something so fantastic? The public will claw down our doors to get this! And of course, since you did the work here, you must share the patent with us."

The institute rushed testing and approval and got the pill on the market in record time. They were right: the world was stunned: a pill to make people feel grateful? Wonderful! It would change the world! It was very possibly humanity's salvation. Who would lie or steal or kill or wage war for that matter, if they felt grateful to their neighbors? It outsold any other pill ever produced.

Then the side effects kicked in. Everyone who took the pill for more than a few weeks (most of the world) began to feel terribly guilty. Guilty for all those years they had failed to be grateful. Guilt, naturally enough, quickly became resentment. Some dealt with it by ignoring their friends and loved ones for as long as they could. When they began to feel guilty about doing this, they once again turned to the Gratitude Pill. And so the circle turned. Others dealt with their guilt by buying and showering their friends and loved ones with presents. This resulted in a world wide spending spree that so pumped up the world economy that when their friends, feeling guilty themselves, returned the gifts, or just dumped them on the doorsteps of local charities, the world economy deflated like a punctured balloon. The national economies spiraled down into recession and unemployment. When things got unbearable for people, they either killed themselves, or spent what little they had to buy Gratitude Pills. And so the circle turned.

Franz, not insensitive to all this, decided to create a solution to this problem. He promptly invented a No-Guilt pill. Predictably, there was instant world-wide demand for this. It was all the factories could do to turn them out by the billions.

Franz's institute was by this time fantastically wealthy. They showered Franz with bonuses in addition to his patent earnings. During this time, Franz learned that wealth was no solution to his problem with his daughter, who had adamantly refused to take any pills of any kind, and who sensibly inspected her meals before eating.

The side effect of the No-Guilt Pill, of course, was a world wide wave of criminality.

Franz was appalled when they came for him and charged him with masterminding and amplifying crime around the world. His institute discharged him and claimed no knowledge of his work or intent, and thus saved itself, however feebly.

Franz's daughter came to visit him in prison. "Hello father. I just wanted to tell you in person that I'm off to see the rest of the world now that you're no longer around to imprison me in our home. And to say thanks for the money I've inherited, and for going away to jail so I can lead my own life. For all of that, I'm just terribly, terribly grateful!"

Lady of the Marshland

Teddy Keller had a friend. Her name was Alice Mason. He was eight, she was ten. She lived two doors down the shanty row by the tracks. When Teddy wondered why she played with him, that fact, being his neighbor, seemed as good a reason as any. She was, he thought, rather pretty for a girl, though she liked to dress rough and wear her hair under an old watch cap and run hard and be tough like the boys in their school. She even tried to be a bully when she first met Teddy. But he just laughed and refused to play and so she gave that up. It was only an experiment anyway, she told him.

They walked the sedge by the tracks on Saturdays, out toward the marsh opposite the yards, away from town, trading urban scruff for barren sandy flats with mud pits and the odd grove of poplars and willows, where their imagination could stretch and there was room to run. There, she quickly assumed the role of Queen Alice, Lady of the Marshland. This meant Teddy had to be her squire and run imaginary errands for her, which he tried until he tired of being told what to do. From then on, he was The Invader, bent on breaking through her defenses and crushing her armies. He liked doing this and however clever Alice thought she was being in countering his offensives, he always found a way to break through, which usually meant tackling her directly and throwing her into the gorse, which he declared her prison. She would scream in protest and giggle as he tried to pin her shoulders to the ground. Then he would insist she shout "Give!", which she refused to do until, finally, she did. Then the game seemed over and he would release her, with promises of peace in the land, to which she would agree. Then they would play castle, with he the prince and she the princess, with their father, the King, being off waging war on the Persians or perhaps visiting kings in surrounding countries. Alice would then declare her intention to hold grand tea parties for visiting grandees while Teddy spent his time nearby but not quite in the castle, jousting with his cavalry. Then dusk and their stomachs signaled time to walk back home. This too seemed a good time for Teddy, because they could be who they really were, and talk about school and other friends and how things might be when they grew up.

"Mum says I might work in Aunt Fergie's china shop in town next summer," said Alice. Spring was well on them with showers and sprinkles and mists. They sat in the doorway of Teddy's da's tool shed and looked out over the network of steel tracks in the switch yard beyond the rusted steel fence that bordered his parent's property.

"What would you do?"

"Dunno. Dust things probably. I don't want to go. Sounds boring to me," she said.

"We could still play, right?"

"Suppose," she said. Then, "I might just run away though."

Teddy thought about that. "Where to?"

"Dunno. Maybe up to Swansea. Da took me there with him once. There's lots of ships. I could go anywhere."

Teddy looked out over the noisy, smelly train yards. "Can I go too?"

"Do what you like," Alice said, sniffing a little. It was her Queen voice, dismissing the trivial thoughts of a vassal.

"Well I might do anyway," Teddy said, standing up suddenly. "I could take a train, be there before you are, you know."

"As you wish." Alice stood up too, rubbing her knees and brushing dust and cobwebs from her jeans, looking bored and restless. "But what can we do today?"

"We could go over the yard. Look in empty box cars," said Teddy.

"You know we aren't meant to go in the yard," said Alice, but there was a glint in her eyes.

* * *

A year later, plus a little, late spring when school was let out, Teddy and Alice met again at the fence by the train yard. They had played together less this last year. Teddy wondered why. "Mum is making me stay in and do things," Alice said. "She says I have to learn to work, to make money. I don't like it. I don't like it a bit." She said this with a tone Teddy couldn't remember hearing before. Something, a catch in her voice, the pitch a little different from what he was used to, made him feel strange.

"You're out now, right? We can have fun. It's almost summer."

"No. Mum arranged it with my aunt. I'm meant to go work in her shop this summer." Alice dropped to a crouch, arms wrapped around her knees, head on her arms. Teddy could see tears. He'd seen Alice cry before, but it had always been tears of pain from a scrape. This was something else. "I'll have to wear a dress and proper socks and shoes and everything. I'll have to scrub myself and be on time every morning. It's horrible! I don't want to do it!"

Teddy didn't know what to say, so he crouched by her side, silent as a sentinel, waiting for her mood to change. Finally Alice stood up, wiping her nose on her jacket sleeve. "I'm going. Don't follow me, okay? I just want to be by myself for a while."

To Ted's surprise, she didn't turn toward the narrow lane in front of their houses. She turned to the fence and slipped through the hidden gate they had made for themselves long ago. Ted watched her silently as she walked over tracks in the direction of the overpass, away from the switching house. She started to run. He watched, trembling with worry as she finally disappeared behind a line of box cars.

It was the last time he was ever to see Alice.

#fridayflash: My True Profession

“Be seated,” said the judge, seating himself at the bench. We all sat down. “Mr. Golden, you are accused of being smart but hopelessly pessimistic. In fact, the State has accused you of having no sense of humor at all. How do you plead?”

My attorney nudged me and we both stood back up. “Uh, your Honor, I ... I don’t know what to say. I have a sense of humor. I do. And I’m not a pessimist. So there must be some mistake. I suppose.”

“You suppose? A simple answer please. None of this hedging. Are you guilty of the charges as read, or not?”

“Uh, no. Not guilty, your Honor.”

“So noted. Prosecution may proceed.”

The prosecutor talked for a long time about my personality, how I am disliked by some and ignored by most, about my published works, both fiction and non-fiction. About how the critics, when they bothered to mention my work at all, uniformly complained, not about what I had to say, but about how I chose to say it. “Your Honor, considering that the accused is a writer of some note, even though he’s disliked by most of the critics, and considering that his work directly influences the attitudes and general happiness and welfare of the public, we intend to demonstrate through the evidence that his attitude, and specifically his unwillingness to lighten the tone of his work and to entertain the public, has a deleterious effect on the public welfare. We ask that a judgement be placed against him and that he be duly restricted from further harming the public by publishing his work.”

My lawyer, a young, inexperienced public defender, then rose. “Your Honor, defense pleads nolo contendere. While my client does not admit guilt, I have been unable to discover evidence to counter the prosecution’s arguments.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I thought he liked me at least. Well, not liked, exactly, but would do his best to defend me. I stood up. “I object!”

“Sit down and shut up, Mr. Golden. Attorneys, approach the bench,” said the judge.

So it happened that day that I was fined a hundred bucks for lacking a sense of humor. And then another two hundred when I objected and tried to prove my innocence by telling a joke so bad that the judge declared me in contempt.

In this way did I become, over time, a reasonably competent digger of sewer drain ditches. When my fellow diggers ribbed me and tried to engage me in humorous banter, I politely refused to participate, out of fear of making my situation even worse. Until the day the foreman fired me and had me arrested. The charge: lack of comradeship with my fellow workers, and no sense of humor.

Unemployed, with no useful skills and a demonstrated talent for offending people, I finally found my true profession, at which I am finally successful. I took up the only profession around where no sense of humor is required: literary critic.

Pema Dorje (excerpted from "The Lazlo Mission"

(Based partially on true events...)

Pema Dorje, seven year old shepherd in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, suddenly remembered who he really was. It might have been frightening or confusing. It was neither. It was a moment of pure joy for Pema.

There was no one around to tell except his faithful sheep dog and the sheep crowding before him as they moved down the mountain toward their winter shelter. Pema looked out over the sheep at the slope, at the spread of the Kanjora valley below, at the endlessly varied shapes of stone and grass and earth and sky and clouds, and he remembered. He remembered not just his former life, but many lives before them, and especially the life he had lived in the north of India when, inspired by a great teacher, his incarnations took on a different purpose. It was then he had taken the great vow to forgo the final merging of his consciousness with Atman until all of humanity was ready to achieve similar transcendence. It was then that he was given the name of Avalokitesvara. And later he was to be known as Padmapa-ni and Loke-avara and Guan Yin. Guan Yin. That had been his most recent incarnation. A healer and a teacher. He remembered his life, and he remembered his death at a great age in a tiny village in northern China.

And suddenly he remembered something else. He ran at his sheep, yelling and waving his staff, urging them along as fast as possible. His urgency was not that of need but of excitement. He must find Samdruptse, the village where his servant and protector Chin had planted the jewel.

Later, at home, his charges safely penned and fed, Pema went to his father. “Please, I must go to the village of Samdruptse. I beg you to help me get there safely.”

Pema's father had long felt his son's destiny lay beyond the hills of his birth. “I have not heard of this village, son. Let us consult the governor to find where it may be.”

This required patience, as the regional governor passed through their district only once a year. Pema was patient. If anything, he became a better son to his family and worked hard for the family welfare. At last the day came that his father said, “Let us go to the market today. The governor is coming.”

When they gained audience and posed the question, the governor answered, “Samdruptse. Let me think. Ah yes. A small village in the foothills of the Drolmari as I recall. Or so it was in my youth. That village has grown into a fine city. It is the city of Shigatse that you seek. Six days to the north and the west. Just north of here is a fine road leading to Shigatse!”

After that it was preparations and farewells to his mother and sisters and an arduous journey across mountain ridges west and north. When they reached Shigatse, which was more than a village to be sure, but less of a city than the governor had led them to expect, Pema asked his father to take him to the temple of Avalokitesvara. But no one they asked could tell them where such a temple might be. Finally they were directed to a humble monastery on the edge of the town. “Can you tell us where we can find the temple dedicated to Avalokitesvara?” Pema's father asked the monks. They were led to the abbot, an old monk draped in robes of yellow and deep scarlet. When Pema's father asked the abbot about the shrine to Avalokitesvara, he led them behind the monastery to a small and ancient shrine hidden in the back of a walled garden. Pema immediately sat in the lotus position and began meditation before the shrine.

The abbot asked him, “Pema, you have come from far to the south. Tell me why you have sought this shrine and no other.”

“It is because this is my shrine.” He looked up at the abbot with shining eyes. “I have remembered who I am, grandfather.”

After this, there was great questioning of the youth, and the monks quickly understood this boy was the incarnation of Avalokitesvara. Pema was born in 1391, seven hundred years after the death of Guan Yin and almost two thousand years after the death of Avalokitesvara. His family was invited to live nearby while Pema was instructed in the monastery known as Nartang. As he grew, his knowledge and wisdom and intelligence and compassion impressed all who met him. Eventually he took the name Gendun Drup and established the largest monastery in Shigatse, the Tashilhunpo, and founded the line of spiritual leaders in Tibet known as the Dali Lamas. His influence was so great in that region that he renamed the Drolmari mountains behind Shigatse the Tara mountains, to honor the memory of Guan Yin.

Great Secrets

Mick pulled back the curtain, entered, and sat in a small camp chair across a TV table from a very pretty young woman. "Welcome," she said. "I'm Pam. What's your name?"

"You should probably be able to tell me, right?"

Pam sighed. If she had a buck for every time she'd heard that. "Doesn't work that way."

"Okay, if you say so. My name's Mick. Now you know everything about me." He smirked, trying to cover a slight nervousness. He'd never done this, got a reading or whatever it was supposed to be. And damn if she wasn't great looking.

"Hardly. Everyone has a great secret. Something they wouldn't tell anyone, no matter what."

"What's yours?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? That's way too personal. Besides, let's keep this about you." Pam dropped her eyes to her purse. Stuck her hand in it and rummaged. Pulled out a small tube of lip gloss and applied it. She looked back up into his eyes. "Want to tell me yours?"

Mick laughed. He didn't mean to. It just came out, a short bark. A split second later it occurred to him that, well, it was funny. He followed it with a wide grin. His best feature, he knew. "I don't have any great secret, I can tell you that. What you see is pretty much what you get."

"Right," Pam said with an ironic twist to her now glossy and very full lips. "So, it's five dollars. In advance."

Mick reached into his jeans and pulled out a wrinkled bill and handed it to her. She took it carefully between two perfectly manicured fingers and dropped it into her purse.

"Now give me your hand."

"Which one?"

"Either one. Your right one. You're right handed?"

Mick reached out his right hand, palm up. He felt the feather-soft touch of her fingertips cradling the back of his hand as she stared intently down at the lines and curves of his palm. He was suddenly aware of how long it had been since he had washed it. "Uh, so, can you really see stuff there? It mean anything to you?"

"Of course. Shhh. Let me look." A few seconds later, "You had an accident recently. A bad one." He tried to jerk his hand back but her fingers gripped his wrist and held it in position. She continued to look at his palm. "Oh my, you have a temper, don't you. That had something to do with it, I think." She never looked up at him for confirmation. "Lost something." She twisted her head a bit for a better look. "Something important."

This time Mick pulled his hand back hard and she let go. "Sign says you can tell my future. Didn't say anything about my past." Pam looked up at him with as neutral a look as she could manage. "Okay, sure, if you want me to."

Mick wasn't sure he did. He looked at her, his face a shifting map of anger, fear and confusion. He was from out of state, visiting cousins who for a lark had taken him to this county fair. She couldn't have known about the accident he'd had six months before. No one here did. The accident that resulted from chasing a buddy who had thrown beer on him. The attempt to follow him over a chain link fence, and the rip to his groin when he failed to jump over it. The surgery that followed resulting in the removal of his penis and testicles. Sexless and ashamed, that was his great secret.

He felt the bile of a challenge rise in him. No sex organs didn't mean he wasn't a man anymore. "Sure I want you to. Tell me my future."

Pam gazed at Mick's face carefully. She'd been doing this a long time, ever since her mother taught her as a kid. Something about this guy, though. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him more.

"Your hand," she said, looking down without changing her expression. This time she held his wrist lightly with one hand and gently stroked his palm with the fingers of her other hand, following the splay of lines, letting the image and the feel of them create patterns in her mind. She closed her eyes.

Then, "Tell you what, Mick. I'll refund your money and we'll just call this one a nice try, okay?"

"Why?" His features hardened. "Just tell me what you see."

"Nothing. I'm getting nothing."

"I don't believe you," he snapped. "Okay, you were right about the accident thing. So tell me what else you see!"

Something in Pam rose and hardened in her throat in response to his belligerence. "Are you sure? You may not like what I see."

"Yes. Tell me!"

"Okay Mick. You're going to have a sex change operation. You're going to become a woman. Now go away." With that, she released his hand, rose, and left the tent from the back exit, feeling confused and annoyed with herself. What bothered her was the feeling that flooded her when she realized his fate. A feeling of overwhelming attraction for him, or her, or for who he might become.