The Metaphor — a Writing Exercise
So as the prompt instructed, I made a list of concrete nouns (as opposed to abstract nouns) and came up with the following:
- Axolotl
- Charging Brick
- Ginger
- Navel
- Algae
The prompt also told me to come up with a list of abstract nouns, and it also told me to keep the first one ‘life’. So…
- Life
- Anger
- Legend
- Courage
- Music
Looks like I have written myself into a corner here. But regardless, I’ll proceed with the exercise and make remote associations with the concrete nouns in the first list, and the abstract concepts in the second list. Let’s see how creative I can get.
Life is an axolotl at times. It keeps growing back onto you even when you try your best to cut parts of it off. It is adorable on certain occasions, but mostly disgusting. Life is said to have begun in water, so it makes sense for it to be amphibious. No matter how tired you are of it however, it seems that in a sick sort of way life keeps smiling at you all the time — like someone somewhere out there is deriving pleasure out of your suffering. So yeah, that is why life is a smily, regenerative, amphibious axolotl.
Anger is an energy-filled charging brick, which manifests itself (and thus its contained energy) when it comes in contact with a vent or an outlet. It keeps growing and simmering over time, and the larger the capacity of the person in question — the more their temper — the longer they are going to keep it inside of them. Charging bricks are dangerous things to deal with, especially if they are broken or consist of loose parts. Interact with an angry person too much and they are bound to electrocute you with the stored energy they’ve been accumulating. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that charging bricks are only destructive in nature. Efficient leaders can channel all that stored energy and create unimaginable power — power that has the capability to cause nations to go to war. This is something that fascists and dictators exploit when leading a nation of bigots. They untap the anger of a significant portion of the population, and let it loose on their targets, thereby mobilizing the masses and garnering popular support. It is almost poetic that digital devices work in the same way.
Ginger and legends go hand in hand. Soft and ugly on the outside, a people can recount stories of hard and handsome heroes that have battled giants and led armies against the enemy. Like any kind of spice, ginger has a tendency to heat. It is this heated passion that legends of heroes evoke within a people — just as ginger does within the bellies of the peckish.
Courage has to be one of the older emotions of mankind. While H.P. Lovecraft would disagree and say that it is in fact, fear that predates courage, I would go ahead to argue that closely linked with and succeeding fear shortly afterwards in the history of humanity, is the much revered and highly respected emotion of bravery. It is why I think courage is the navel of humanity, and it is through it only that our ancestors derived intellectual nourishment and motivation.
Lying at the centre of the prehistoric man’s exploits, courage became the reason why the modern man came to take birth.
If our ancient counterparts wouldn’t have battled the elements the way they fearlessly did, our link with the present (and thus the future) would’ve more than likely been broken. Courage in the face of adversity is why we didn’t go exinct millennia ago. It is this navel of courage that has provided life to the modern man, and modern bravery, though a mere fraction of the courage our forefathers bore, is the vestigial reminder of where we come from.
Music is an algal bloom that has acquired a pattern and now is no-longer assymetric.
It is a result of the barest, rawest, most primitive of natural sounds, which, due to the nature of our brains are perceived as melodious.
Thousands of years of evolution have made us develop a particular taste in what we consider music, and doubtless, the more recent cultural and religious developments have a lot to do with it. Teeming with life, and a signal of not just humans, but the living in general, music is the natural expressing itself.
But it shouldn’t be forgotten that music has a destructive side too, and can corrupt the soul, similar to how algae on the surface of ponds can suffocate the fish and other plants deep below. Much like the soul, we cannot see the dying fish, but their passing into the next world can spell disaster for the ecosystem at large. It is why music should be heard with some caution and its beauty, if at all, should be admired from a safe distance.
