Brokenness (The Turntable)

     The simplest metaphor is often the best and, paradoxically, the most complex.

     Many metaphors suffer from an excessive specificity. The scope of the metaphor becomes limited and is only applicable to a single situation and, despite being tailor-made for that situation, creates many holes in logic that detract from the message (see: Frog Sadist post). Such metaphors often create a "Well, duh," moment for the reader, who, rather than having a revelatory experience, ends up feeling offended that the author would use such an asinine explanation to handhold them through an excerpt.

     Additionally, long, arduous metaphors leave the reader stumped. He or she is forced to re-read a section multiple times to dissect the meaning from the text, leading to frustration rather than gratification.

     Finally, metaphors can be too idiomatic. With idioms, not only is the meaning self-evident for anyone that would derive substance from it and thus arbitrary and cliché, but for those unfamiliar with it due to language or regional differences it reads as gibberish and serves to confound the reader rather than enlighten.

     These are obviously not definitive rules. Some of the best metaphors are pithy and specific metaphors that astound with the quality, cleverness, and/ or deftness of the comparison; when a metaphor is expounded upon with layer after layer of detail and continuity, each layer can seem to exponentially increase the reader's insight and appreciation (see: allegories); even idiomatic sayings can be cleverly deployed (typically in an ironic sense). The issues aforementioned are simply pratfalls that we as linguistic beings are prone to falling into.

     Even when employed deftly, metaphors of these kinds are fleeting. If they are used repeatedly, their cleverness and depth rapidly fade. The metaphor becomes a shadow of its former self, eventually fading into a spectre that will simply haunt the text rather than breathe life into it.

     There are metaphors, however, that seem to grow stronger every time that they are employed. These metaphors are basic, universal, and thematic. They evoke different meanings and responses depending on the situation. They have been around almost as long as the written word itself, found in the great Greek epics, Eastern writings, various scriptures, and of course modern literature.

     One such metaphor is "brokenness." I have been thinking about this metaphor a lot in my own life and every time I do I seem to come up with a different perspective on it.

     Brokenness as a metaphor has become so common that we don't notice it most of the time it is used. "I'm broken," is the reflexive response when you don't feel whole, that something is missing, whether that is due to something serious like a break-up, death, not landing a job that was within your grasp, or betrayal, or something trivial like a loss by a favorite sports team, the cable going out, or finding that the milk carton has been returned to the fridge empty. It's a simple way of conveying a complex emotion and conforms to whatever vessel it is placed in like water.

     The image of brokenness goes far beyond just the feeling of emptiness, incompleteness, or failure.  You've probably never thought about it, but the image beautifully extends beyond the initial shattered or empty feeling to the recovery stage as well. When something is broken, it will take intentional time and energy to fix it, and even after it is fixed it will never be the same, almost always resulting in a lack of quality.

     When a pot breaks, you can glue it back together and re-glaze it, but it will always have cracks and the structural integrity will always be compromised. When a road has collapsed from a pothole, it is fixed with a patch of asphalt to resolve the issue. The ride will always be bumpier in that one spot, though, and the scar of fresh tarmac will always be there. When our bodies heal, the wound is tender and much more susceptible to damage. We have to fend off infection and protect the wound, and no matter how well we do that we will still have a scar for the rest of our lives, resulting in a grotesque disfiguration and less sensation due to thicker skin. The applications for these extensions on the basic theme of brokenness are fairly self-evident, so you can derive them yourself. There is a central theme, though: brokenness never fully resolves, it just gets a little better with care and time.

     The reason this image has been bouncing around my skull is obvious; I am dealing with brokenness in my life right now. I am constantly battling the clinical depression that I have genetically inherited, coping with the loss of my father, struggling with college, having no idea even the general discipline I want to find a career in, and being unable to find a job. I am more broken now than I thought was possible. And the problem with being broken is that all structural integrity is gone, so now the simplest issues like losing internet or not finishing a run can ruin my day, whereas before I could let anything just bounce off of me and move on.

     I'm attempting my rudimentary repairs, but it's hard not to either look back at everything that has broken me or look forward at what I fear I will become- a grotesque reflection of my former self.

     There is hope from this metaphor though. Just a glimpse of it. Because, on rare occasion, brokenness leads to a stronger, better product in the end. In materials manufacturing, many materials are intentionally allowed to break because the material will actually form a stronger bond along the breaks. The material is imperfect and scarred, but strong and utilitarian. When a house is being built and is found to be unsound, it must be torn down and rebuilt from the foundation up. This is a costly endeavor, both financially and chronologically, but ultimately creates a home that will not need to constantly be repaired or that will endanger those that seek shelter in it. In electronics, gutting old, faulty parts and replacing them with newer, better ones results in a product greater than the original one. In any of these cases, you have to be willing to sacrifice lots of time and energy and the final form likely won't be what you had set out for, but if these sacrifices are made the dividends are great.

     I am currently trying to repair my turntable. It lost the signal from the left channel one day. I found out by dumb luck that tilting the table up at an angle would resolve the issue, but each day the angle got steeper. Eventually, I was past the forty-five degree boundary and the needle couldn't even stay on the vinyl anymore. So I had to do without the left channel. After my dad died, all I wanted to do was listen to his favorite records on the turntable that he gave me. But they sounded hollow and incomplete with only half of the song coming through the speakers. In a way, it was appropriate; the songs reflected my emotional and psychological state, as well as my feelings and emotions regarding my dad.

     The turntable is the closest tie that I have left to my dad, and even though it is only valued at around $50 nowadays I can't bring myself to replace it. I mean, I had already replaced the needle cartridge on it for the cost of the entire player, and that was while he was still alive. So I devoted 2 straight days to opening up the chassis, testing everything, and re-soldering bad connections. I figured out the issues and was certain that my patch jobs, as unglamorous as they were with globs of solder and electrical tape everywhere, would bring the machine back to it's former glory. Then, as I closed it up, all of my connections broke again beyond repair. I almost embedded the damned thing in the wall. My failure to fix the brokenness of the turntable reflected my inability to fix the brokenness inside myself. It represented a continually growing gap between my father and myself. I was the turntable, analog in a digital world, a relic handed down from the last generation with faulty wiring unwilling to be mended, desperately clinging to the after images of better times.

     My setback with the turntable is certainly a major one; my best attempts at repair have only made matters worse. The internal wiring can be replaced, though. The bad parts can be gutted and replaced with newer, better pieces. I can resurrect the treasure that my dad gave me and even include a little bit of myself in it. And of course I can still get help from a professional, albeit at an exorbitant rate. I am still the turntable. I can still do all of these things. I still have hope.

Sucking Venom

     One of my friends was recently talking about a difficult situation that he went through and, to help explain how he dealt with it, used a snakebite analogy. "It's like when you get bit by a snake; you have to immediately suck the venom out to prevent damage, then you have to spend the rest of your time avoiding snakes." He's a smart guy, and made a good point through this metaphor, but before he had even finished I had started to flip the argument on him in my head.

     He immediately started backpedaling as soon as he finished, saying "Now I suppose that was a bad metaphor… I mean I wasn't trying to call anybody a snake, I was just trying to explain why I had to react suddenly and extremely and why I am so cautious in similar circumstances now." Maybe he started over-analyzing his own metaphor because I was already smiling at how I was going to foil his argument (I am a terrible poker player. No, on second thought, I'm actually just a smug bastard), or maybe my reputation just preceded me (I mean, this blog's readership is, like, in the tens!). Regardless, I had a different reason why the metaphor was inadequate.

     For almost as long as they have been around, the Boy Scouts of America have been teaching our children to immediately have a friend suck out the venom from their wound if they get bit by a snake. Now there were a few minor flaws inherent to this advice, the most obvious one being the supposition that children knew the difference between a venomous and non-venomous snake. But these are boy scouts we're talking about. Of 'Merica nonetheless. "BE PREPARED," and all that. So I'll allow the suspension of disbelief for now.

     It wasn't just the boy scouts, though. Wilderness first-aid, movies (Anyone else remember City Slickers? Anyone else wish they could forget City Slickers?), books, your overzealous biology teacher. For years we were conditioned to suck first, think later. And the urgency of not hesitating and immediately sucking out the viper juice was always emphasized, leading to a reflexive response if the situation should arise.

     But ay, here's the rub: Scientists have recently (and almost unanimously) agreed that sucking the venom out of a bite is one of the worst actions to take in this emergency. In addition to being ineffective at removing the venom (it spreads rapidly through your bloodstream and soft tissue), it exposes the sucker to the risk of being afflicted by the venom if there is an open sore in his/her mouth (or anywhere in the early stages of the digestive tract if swallowed), and it exposes the bite wound (which is often cut open further to enhance the sucking process) to the swarming hordes of bacteria in the sucker's mouth.

     So, if you are keeping score at home, initially there is a single victim worrying about the damage that the venom will cause. Now, there are potentially two victims, one who should be worrying about the venom but isn't because he/she thinks he/she is a hero, and another who should be worrying about the venom AND an infected wound but isn't because he/she thinks his/her friend is a hero. God, I love irony. Except, I suppose, when it comes at the cost of human life. At least one good thing comes from all of this, though: my irrational hatred of the Boy Scouts of America is now legitimatized.

     I told this to my friend (much more succinctly, and with a stupid-looking, smug grin on my face) and basically used this new scientific revelation as a basis to argue that not only was his analogy faulty, but that this empirically proved that his approach to the problem we were discussing was faulty as well- something to the effect of there being no quick fixes when an attack penetrates deeply, whether from a snake or a human, and that trying to take a short cut to healing can cause greater harm not just to yourself but to those around you. I will admit that my friend's lack of knowledge of new first-aid methods is not a fair basis for arguing matters as deep and complex as human relationships, but I am not afraid to ride my small victories into grand, sweeping conclusions that will help to perpetuate my opinions. Anyway, we agreed to disagree... until I emailed him an article about the foolishness of venom-sucking and the true evil of the Boy Scouts of America (you had to read between the lines for that last bit, but it was there).

     In case you were curious, I also learned during my pursuit of the perfect article with which to gloat to my friend that you should also avoid icing the bite wound since that will slow the spread of the venom and ultimately cause more severe tissue damage and necrosis, and that using a tourniquet is also not advisable since you could pretty easily lose a limb from a lack of blood flow. And now you know these things, too. So don't say I never gave you anything in this blog, you ungrateful leeches.

The Frog Sadist

     My elders have often told me about how if a frog is put in a pot of hot water it will immediately hop out in a reflexive effort of self-preservation. If, however, a frog is placed in a pot of room-temperature water which is then slowly brought to a boil, it will remain submerged in the water until its insides literally boil.

     Now while this may be a great metaphor for how the slow descent into gloom and doom (typically from temptation or weakness of mental fortitude) is more perilous than the quick drop because the gradual change is almost impossible to detect, it always left me wondering- who the hell decided to boil a frog in the first place in order to arrive at such a grand metaphor?

     The other question that now plagues me, however, is why doesn’t anybody care about the frog that was dropped into the already tumultuous and scalding water of this frog-sadist’s maniacal pot of allegorical experimentation? The second one died, sure. This is sad and there is a lesson to be learned from it: carry a metaphorical thermometer for the literal problems that the world gives you.

     But what about the first frog that is limping away (...limp-hopping?) from the sadist’s kitchen with burns all over his body, wondering what in Kermit’s name just happened to him with every ounce of processing power his tiny brain can muster? Does this frog ultimately reach a much more painful and drawn-out demise than his amphibious brother due to complications from his brief but hellish dip in the metaphor-making, frog-killing waters of the sadist? I mean, the second frog was at least treated to a warm bath while fading away amid the luxurious ignorance of not realizing his own peril.

     And what if his body eventually mends? What about the psychological trauma that the frog now has to fight through, the intense shock that has tainted his worldview? There are no frog-sized therapy couches, no "Frog Whisperers" to help him return to normalcy. Will he never be able to join the rest of his bayou buddies back at the pond because he now lives every moment of his life afraid of the waters around him roaring to life and finishing the job that they failed to complete before?

     This metaphor is simply too bizarre. No matter how interesting you may find the random fact that frogs lack organ-boiling cognition or how insightful you may find the message behind the tale, everything is drowned out by one inevitable thought: "Wait, what?" As a result, the only thing this metaphor teaches me is that I would rather die in warm ignorant bliss than have crippling social anxiety due to paranoia and illusory lakes of fire.

Prologue

Disclaimer: Because of the personal nature of this introduction, this will be the only post in this blog that will read like a stereotypical blog post. The rest will be more along the lines of short essays and commentaries.

     For most of my life I thought that I would be an engineer by career. The past year has drastically changed that view, and engineering no longer seems like a life-calling but rather a harbinger of toil and despair. So now there is a void that my life-map once filled before spontaneously combusting, and I am reeling to fill that void.  After briefly considering spiraling into a life of debauchery (I don't have the money for drugs nor do I know where to get any, and I am too introverted to approach a prostitute, so the thought was short-lived), I turned to writing.

     I have always loved to read and write. I excelled in English in high school. Unfortunately, I had never paid this any mind since I was predestined to be an Engineer. I should have paid attention when I got greater enjoyment out of writing up reports for experiments rather than performing them. I never noticed the foreshadowing of my courses getting confused with English courses on paper (course prefixes of ENG), but of course real life is not a novel and irony is only appreciated in hindsight.

     All of this is to say that I am exploring a few of the sprawling paths that lie before me, and the one with the well-worn sign reading "The Written Word" in curly-cue script has a special place in my heart. Reading and later writing have helped to bring me out of some very dark times in my life and sharpen my mind closer to what it was in my prime (which is sad to admit, since I am only 22). So I owe this old friend a proper opportunity to grow unhindered.

     The purpose of this blog, then, is to explore this path and develop my writing style further in a forum where I can be held accountable by others. You are invited to give me advice, harangue me on my brutality against the written word, or simply chime in on any of these posts, either publicly in a comment or privately to my email. In fact, you are encouraged to. If I have no idea what aspects of my writing are helping and hindering me, I can't improve, and that defeats the entire purpose of this venture. Be as brutally honest as you like, just play nice with everyone else.

     For those that know me well, you will likely be able to hear my voice in these posts. The style of these posts will heavily reflect my personality: highly analytical, highly critical, and occasionally comedic. All of the posts will deal with metaphors. I chose to focus on metaphors because the metaphor may be my favorite part of language; I love it like a father would a son. And just like a father would a son, I want to celebrate its achievements and correct its mistakes. So each post will either laud or (let's be honest, more likely) chastise a metaphor. I'll post twice a week for the first 2-4 weeks, then will likely post once a week on a designated day (Wednesday most likely).

     My good friend Cody has helped me design this site and will occasionally contribute photos to reflect the content of the posts. I am beyond grateful to him for his continued help and encouragement. You should definitely check out his photography: http://www.codyoloughlin.com/

     I look forward to where this project will take me, and hope that it will provide consistent entertainment for those of you willing to follow me down this path. And now that the background info and logistics are out of the way, we can begin!