Tonight I am relaxed but with that comes unbelievable responsibility, at least in my book.

What I initially felt as dissociative was actually relaxed, a feeling so unfamiliar, it was foreign. I found today that my definition of relaxation is the absence of the maelstrom that swirls inside me barely contained.

This vacation has been interesting but oddly unsettling. I feel like I should be feeling something & yet I lack the necessary application. A vacation of it’s own it seems.

Tomorrow the world returns to normal and I wonder if I will to.

youmightfindyourself:

By Carlin Romano

Writing about metaphor is dancing with your conceptual clothes off, the innards of your language exposed by equipment more powerful than anything operated by the TSA. Still, one would be a rabbit not to do it in a world where metaphor is now top dog, at least among revived rhetorical devices with philosophical appeal.

“To be a master of metaphor,” Aristotle wrote in his Poetics, ”is the greatest thing by far. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it is also a sign of genius.” He described it most simply as “giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.” More recent thinkers explain its analytic structure with greater precision. One locus classicus is the philosopher Max Black’s 1955 article, ”Metaphor,” in which he set forth three traditional views of the device that still guide debate about it.

The ”substitution” theory argues that a metaphor of the form ”A is B” (Shakespeare’s ”Juliet is the sun”) presents some intended literal meaning of the form ”A is C” (”Juliet is the center of my solar system”). The ”comparison” theory, probably the most widely held, interprets the ”A is B” metaphor as an elliptical simile that really asserts ”A is like B in the following respects. … ” Here, the reader or listener must ferret out the relevant respects. ”Juliet is the sun” may call attention to Juliet’s gravitational influence on Romeo, the heat she radiates, the light she emits, or all these characteristics and more. Last, the ”interaction” theory suggests that the ”system of associated commonplaces” of A and B somehow merge to create a distinct metaphorical meaning that no literal statement captures.

Aristotle meant, by his kudos, mastery in using metaphors.Euripides struck him as a master, and Shakespeare remains one to us four centuries later. Mastery of the subject of metaphor, however, is an entirely different matter. Nobody back in ancient Greece, except Aristotle himself, talked much about the concept.

But in the late 20th century, metaphor studies took off across disciplines, with philosophers, linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and others—George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Samuel Guttenplan are some names that come to mind—elbowing one another aside in the rush to anoint “metaphor” as the concept at the crux of all thought, and maybe all human understanding. That academic work on metaphor has largely investigated its logical intricacies, tissuing out the implications of experimental and neurological data, or detailing its specialized epistemological relations to truth and meaning. Yet no one has tried to explain the big picture, and particularly metaphor’s everyday impact, to a general, educated audience.

More the pity, then, that James Geary’s playful, accessible I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (Harper), comes burdened with such an atrocious title. The line is a literal translation of one of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s most famous lines, better translated by Lydia Davis as “I am someone else.” No matter. Ignore the title. Think of Geary, even at his glibbest, as the bridge between the burgeoning field of metaphor studies and the man and woman in the street.

Geary announces his high regard for metaphor at his book’s outset:

“Metaphorical thinking—our instinct not just for describing but for comprehending one thing in terms of another—shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover and invent. … Our understanding of metaphor is in the midst of a metamorphosis. For centuries, metaphor has been seen as a kind of cognitive frill, a pleasant but essentially useless embellishment to ‘normal’ thought. Now, the frill is gone. New research in the social and cognitive sciences makes it increasingly plain that metaphorical thinking influences our attitudes, beliefs, and actions in surprising, hidden, and often oddball ways.”

Geary further unpacks metaphor’s influence in his foreword:

“Metaphor conditions our interpretations of the stock market and, through advertising, it surreptitiously infiltrates our purchasing decisions. In the mouths of politicians, metaphor subtly nudges public opinion; in the minds of businesspeople, it spurs creativity and innovation. In science, metaphor is the preferred nomenclature for new theories and new discoveries; in psychology, it is the natural language of human relationships and emotions.”

All true, though Geary occasionally makes it sound as if the importance of metaphor to human language, knowledge, and comprehension is a recent discovery. (At other times, he gives deserved credit to early champions of metaphor such as the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, who was born in the late 17th century.) In fact, many modern thinkers and scholars have agreed that all language is at root metaphorical. Rousseau argued that man’s ”first expressions were tropes”; modern analysts such as Nelson Goodman recognized that metaphor still ”permeates all discourse”; and continental theorists like Derrida concurred (”Abstract notions always hide a sensory figure”). Fontanier, the great French theorist of tropes, pointed out that even so abstract an idea as ”idea” grew from the Greek eido, ”to see.”

 Further undermining those who seek an Archimedean spot from which to analyze metaphor is that even the words ”metaphor” and ”figure” are metaphors. Derrida, in White Mythology, mocks Aristotle’s famous full definition: ”Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy.” Derrida writes that, in the original, every word of the definition is a metaphor. Paul Ricoeur describes the situation in his study, The Rule of Metaphor: ”There is no nonmetaphorical standpoint from which one could look upon metaphor.”

Of all philosophical writers on metaphor, Nietzsche probably draws the strongest conclusions from this situation. ”Tropes,” he writes, ”are not something that can be added or abstracted from language at will—they are its truest nature.” He argues that there is ”no real knowing apart from metaphor,” by which he means that we experience reality through metaphors, and our notion of literal meaning simply reflects the ossification of language, as figures of speech lose their vitality. He emphasizes in The Genealogy of Morals how metaphor tends to extend its sway, to bring wider ranges of experience under its wing. He goes so far as to say that ”the drive toward the formation of metaphor is the fundamental human drive.” For him, literal and figurative meaning are not stable categories, but historical ones determined by their social context.

The Nietzschean ”big picture” of metaphor’s role in language and culture lends support to Derrida’s point in White Mythology that the evolution of abstractions is always a case of going from the physical and sensible to the abstract. Derrida is critical, like Nietzsche, of the automatic distinction of the sensory and nonsensory in Western thought, believing that it shows a lack of self-consciousness in thinkers about the roots of their language. He thinks a key question in looking at a supposed ”abstraction” is whether the memory of its sensory origin remains in its usage.

That’s the rough and unarticulated philosophical backdrop from which Geary’s confidence arises, allowing him to note and dismiss the countertradition, particularly in philosophy, that saw metaphor as a temptation away from firm, supposedly literal truth: Hobbes’s description of metaphors as “abuses of speech,” or Berkeley’s admonition that “a philosopher should abstain from metaphor.”

The upshot of the boom in metaphor studies, Geary makes clear, is the overturning of that presumption toward literalism: Nowadays, it’s believers in a literalism that goes all the way down (so to speak) who are on the defensive in intellectual life, and explorers of metaphor who are on the ascendant. As a result, Geary hardly feels a need to address literalism, devoting most of his book to how metaphor connects to etymology, money, mind, politics, pleasure, science, children, the brain, the body, and such literary forms as the proverb and aphorism.

In those highly empirical arenas, Geary takes off.

Listen to him explain the metaphorical universe: the “teeth” on combs, the “spines” in books, and how active, dormant, and supposedly extinct metaphors each deserve separate categories. Take in his observations on business metaphors, such as the Wall Street term “dead cat bounce.” Follow his links from metaphor to Asperger’s syndrome and his discussion of the “affect heuristic” in advertising (You think “You’re in good hands with Allstate”?). Examine with him the neurological underpinnings of synesthesia, metaphorical gestures such as the “OK” sign, telling political phrases such as “climate cancer,” the imagistic competence of children, the need for metaphor in science, and scores of other telling, concrete examples of how metaphor runs our lives.

Writing with or about metaphors is not dancing with the stars, but dancing with asterisks—pointers to the figurative understructure of our supposedly literal language. The more we stay sensitive to that, the better we dance. As the Chinese say, “It’s hard to dismount from a tiger,” and every metaphor starts out as a wild beast, waiting to be tamed by usage.

youmightfindyourself:

By DUDLEY CLENDINEN
Published: July 9, 2011 NY TIMES

I HAVE wonderful friends. In this last year, one took me to Istanbul. One gave me a box of hand-crafted chocolates. Fifteen of them held two rousing, pre-posthumous wakes for me. Several wrote large checks. Two sent me a boxed set of all the Bach sacred cantatas. And one, from Texas, put a hand on my thinning shoulder, and appeared to study the ground where we were standing. He had flown in to see me.

“We need to go buy you a pistol, don’t we?” he asked quietly. He meant to shoot myself with.

“Yes, Sweet Thing,” I said, with a smile. “We do.”

I loved him for that.

I love them all. I am acutely lucky in my family and friends, and in my daughter, my work and my life. But I have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., more kindly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, for the great Yankee hitter and first baseman who was told he had it in 1939, accepted the verdict with such famous grace, and died less than two years later. He was almost 38.

I sometimes call it Lou, in his honor, and because the familiar feels less threatening. But it is not a kind disease. The nerves and muscles pulse and twitch, and progressively, they die. From the outside, it looks like the ripple of piano keys in the muscles under my skin. From the inside, it feels like anxious butterflies, trying to get out. It starts in the hands and feet and works its way up and in, or it begins in the muscles of the mouth and throat and chest and abdomen, and works its way down and out. The second way is called bulbar, and that’s the way it is with me. We don’t live as long, because it affects our ability to breathe early on, and it just gets worse.

At the moment, for 66, I look pretty good. I’ve lost 20 pounds. My face is thinner. I even get some “Hey, there, Big Boy,” looks, which I like. I think of it as my cosmetic phase. But it’s hard to smile, and chew. I’m short of breath. I choke a lot. I sound like a wheezy, lisping drunk. For a recovering alcoholic, it’s really annoying.

There is no meaningful treatment. No cure. There is one medication, Rilutek, which might make a few months’ difference. It retails for about $14,000 a year. That doesn’t seem worthwhile to me. If I let this run the whole course, with all the human, medical, technological and loving support I will start to need just months from now, it will leave me, in 5 or 8 or 12 or more years, a conscious but motionless, mute, withered, incontinent mummy of my former self. Maintained by feeding and waste tubes, breathing and suctioning machines.

No, thank you. I hate being a drag. I don’t think I’ll stick around for the back half of Lou.

I think it’s important to say that. We obsess in this country about how to eat and dress and drink, about finding a job and a mate. About having sex and children. About how to live. But we don’t talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren’t one of life’s greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull. But we have to be able to see doctors and machines, medical and insurance systems, family and friends and religions as informative — not governing — in order to be free.

And that’s the point. This is not about one particular disease or even about Death. It’s about Life, when you know there’s not much left. That is the weird blessing of Lou. There is no escape, and nothing much to do. It’s liberating.

I began to slur and mumble in May 2010. When the neurologist gave me the diagnosis that November, he shook my hand with a cracked smile and released me to the chill, empty gray parking lot below.

It was twilight. He had confirmed what I had suspected through six months of tests by other specialists looking for other explanations. But suspicion and certainty are two different things. Standing there, it suddenly hit me that I was going to die. “I’m not prepared for this,” I thought. “I don’t know whether to stand here, get in the car, sit in it, or drive. To where? Why?” The pall lasted about five minutes, and then I remembered that I did have a plan. I had a dinner scheduled in Washington that night with an old friend, a scholar and author who was feeling depressed. We’d been talking about him a lot. Fair enough. Tonight, I’d up the ante. We’d talk about Lou.

The next morning, I realized I did have a way of life. For 22 years, I have been going to therapists and 12-step meetings. They helped me deal with being alcoholic and gay. They taught me how to be sober and sane. They taught me that I could be myself, but that life wasn’t just about me. They taught me how to be a father. And perhaps most important, they taught me that I can do anything, one day at a time.

Including this.

I am, in fact, prepared. This is not as hard for me as it is for others. Not nearly as hard as it is for Whitney, my 30-year-old daughter, and for my family and friends. I know. I have experience.

I was close to my old cousin, Florence, who was terminally ill. She wanted to die, not wait. I was legally responsible for two aunts, Bessie and Carolyn, and for Mother, all of whom would have died of natural causes years earlier if not for medical technology, well-meaning systems and loving, caring hands.

I spent hundreds of days at Mother’s side, holding her hand, trying to tell her funny stories. She was being bathed and diapered and dressed and fed, and for the last several years, she looked at me, her only son, as she might have at a passing cloud.

I don’t want that experience for Whitney — nor for anyone who loves me. Lingering would be a colossal waste of love and money.

If I choose to have the tracheotomy that I will need in the next several months to avoid choking and perhaps dying of aspiration pneumonia, the respirator and the staff and support system necessary to maintain me will easily cost half a million dollars a year. Whose half a million, I don’t know.

I’d rather die. I respect the wishes of people who want to live as long as they can. But I would like the same respect for those of us who decide — rationally — not to. I’ve done my homework. I have a plan. If I get pneumonia, I’ll let it snuff me out. If not, there are those other ways. I just have to act while my hands still work: the gun, narcotics, sharp blades, a plastic bag, a fast car, over-the-counter drugs, oleander tea (the polite Southern way), carbon monoxide, even helium. That would give me a really funny voice at the end.

I have found the way. Not a gun. A way that’s quiet and calm.

Knowing that comforts me. I don’t worry about fatty foods anymore. I don’t worry about having enough money to grow old. I’m not going to grow old.

I’m having a wonderful time.

I have a bright, beautiful, talented daughter who lives close by, the gift of my life. I don’t know if she approves. But she understands. Leaving her is the one thing I hate. But all I can do is to give her a daddy who was vital to the end, and knew when to leave. What else is there? I spend a lot of time writing letters and notes, and taping conversations about this time, which I think of as the Good Short Life (and Loving Exit), for WYPR-FM, the main NPR station in Baltimore. I want to take the sting out of it, to make it easier to talk about death. I am terribly behind in my notes, but people are incredibly patient and nice. And inviting. I have invitations galore.

Last month, an old friend brought me a recording of the greatest concert he’d ever heard, Leonard Cohen, live, in London, three years ago. It’s powerful, haunting music, by a poet, composer and singer whose life has been as tough and sinewy and loving as an old tree.

The song that transfixed me, words and music, was “Dance Me to the End of Love.” That’s the way I feel about this time. I’m dancing, spinning around, happy in the last rhythms of the life I love. When the music stops — when I can’t tie my bow tie, tell a funny story, walk my dog, talk with Whitney, kiss someone special, or tap out lines like this — I’ll know that Life is over.

It’s time to be gone.

egonx:

Wanted to share this link with everyone. This is a very interesting story about using the iPad and iPad Apps to increase fine motor skills in children and the disabled.

…

I need to know you to need me
I haven’t heard from you in hours
and all I think is that you forgot me

I am grateful for distance. It gives me perspective. From here I can see how bad it all really is & it makes here look so much better.

libraryland:

“Somebody said ‘true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.’ I’ve seen both and I don’t know how to tell you which is worse.” 

“Why do we do it then?” she asked…

“Because we do,” he said

“That doesn’t seem like the right answer”

“But it is the only answer we have, it isn’t mulitple choice.”

“Well, there ought to be a choice…’

“There are.  There are always choices.  You could choose not to do it, you could choose to do nothing or you could just go with it.”

“Are you happy?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“What is good enough?”

“Joy.  Joy is good enough.”

“Ancient Egyptians believed two questions determined whether or not they would be allowed to proceed to the after life

Did you find joy?

Did you bring joy?”

“That’s lovely. The Buddha taught that each one of us is given 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys.”

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas comes out as an illegal immigrant in New York Times Magazine.

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

I give up. I’ll wave the white flag. I surrender. At your feet I will lay my self-respect, self-esteem and dignity. It has fallen from me in shreds Completely exposed, I lay prostrate at your feet. This wasn’t supposed to be a war, This wasn’t supposed to be a battle This wasn’t even supposed to be a skirmish, a quarrel, a fight, a mess, a hassle or a struggle.

So why are we struggling? Because I miss you. Because I love you. Because, well because…

You’re missing it. Missing me, missing messages. In a hundred ways, you’d be better off with me. And maybe you should. I can’t chase you anymore, it only breaks my heart when you keep running.

Does it feel good to be chased? Because as good as it feels for you, the worse it makes me feel, but only because I can’t ever seem to catch you.

You think a little goes a long way? Not really. A little you is just that, a little you. I find myself wanting much, much more. And I find that I have nothing - neither little nor more.

I have laid all that I had left at your feet, I am exposed & vulnerable and yet I do not expect you to protect me. I don’t even expect you to notice.

It’s been 15 years & I find that I’ve been living all this time.