I was all set to write this post (by “all set” I mean I had my titular phrase and some rough ideas to bounce around) and then I totally got derailed by the following sequence of events: I mistyped the post’s title at first as “What’s a metaphor?” then was struck by the idea that there has to be some pun that could be made here, then I was stymied by my inability to come up with one. Now I’m having trouble remembering what the ideas I even had were.
Curses.
What’s a metaphor? It’s for fucking up my blog posts, apparently.
I wonder if this works at all….
what’s a metaphor? It’s 4 4 4 4
get it? 4 fours? a group of four consisting of units each of which is a 4? it’s meta, see…? Ugh.
How about - It’s like a four, in a way.
What in the hell was I going to blog about anyway?
I *could* blog about how this - this post I mean - is a metaphor for my mental state over all, but … it’s not. (I insist!) And plus I don’t have anything else to say about that, that’s the real reason I’m not saying more.
Oh!
I got it!
I remember! My sore shoulder! What is my sore shoulder a metaphor for? Now that I remember of course I have other stuff I need to get to. Trying to be brief: I’ve been climbing a bit and trying to work out for climbing using the fingerboard. It’s great and I love it and I think I’m already seeing progress (I’d like to think it’s progress attained in the short term but it may be long term progress that I’m only just now noticing). The only thing is, with the workouts and climbing and all I’m sometimes sore afterward. I’m not really in all that good of shape so I need to watch it, to not do more than my body can handle. I don’t think soreness *must* mean I’m overdoing it, but it *could* mean that, and if I was to workout while sore that would definitely be overdoing it.
Here’s the bit I want to come back to re: muscle soreness. I think it’s incredibly interesting that my body is capable of generating force greater than my body can withstand. That is, I can generate force in such a way that I damage parts of my body that sustain my ability to generate force, and even damage the very parts doing the force generation. Interesting. And I think a metaphor for … well, something. It could be anyway.
And now on to other things, this jumble is all I can manage right now. What’s (this) metaphor (for)? I’m not sure, is it for bungling (and for) procrastination?
What’s a metaphor - well for me, it’s a way to shift a conversation to a level that either dissolves what seems to be a problem at the lower level or reveals a problem that is occluded at the lower level. So what it’s really for is to make me the life of parties and a hit with the ladies.
Your shoulder is a metaphor for the kind of nonlinear dynamics - big effects from small causes - that began to fascinate Marx in Capital. How’s that?
Comment by Carl — August 14, 2009 @ 9:15 am