metaphor

Whether or not he was in it, whether or not he could see or touch it, he'd thought there would always be a FIllory out there somewhere. He loved knowing it was there. It anchored his sense of happiness, the way a distant stockpile of gold might underwrite the value of a paper bill.

If you're good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.

I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.

My words are like Mummy: butterflies trapped inside a net.

It´s a metaphor: you see, you put the killing thing right between your teeth,you just don't give it the power to do it's killing.

My faith is a tool I employ, a metaphorical context I find apt, but it is inert until placed in a hand that needs it.

The birds are literal representations of the witnesses of those ordinary and big moments, but they are also metaphors for time itself, for the passing of time. It occurred to me, many years after I had been here, thinking about this idea, that every moment we have with one another is really our only moment, and because of that our every moment could potentially be a goodbye, so we have to notice and notice and notice.

Peeling an OrangeBetween you and a bowl of oranges I lie nudeReading The World__ Illusion through my tears.You reach across me hungry for global fruit,Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orangeReleasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre patternOn my white body. Rearranging, you bend and biteThe disks to release further their eager scent.I say __top, you__e tickling,_ my eyes still on the page.Aromas of groves arise. Through green leavesGlow the lofty snows. Through red lipsYour white teeth close on a translucent segment.Your face over my face eclipses The World__ Illusion.Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.We laugh against each other__ lips. I hold my bookBehind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.You say __ead on, I__ just an illusion,_ rollingOver upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soonI say __on__ stop. Don__ disillusion me.__nows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.

It's not always so easy," she said softly."Why not? It's a part of who you are, isn't it?" he asked with all the sympathy of an asp being prodded with a stick.

Metaphorically, governance is like a __teer,_ Risk Management is like a __rake.

Love is like a climbing rope. There are little knots along the way, but if you learn off of them, you can get higher than you ever expected.

In those hours he is awake and prowling through the building, he sometimes feels he is a demon who has disguised himself as a human, and only at night is it safe to shed the costume he must wear by daylight, and indulge his true nature.

They were coming back to his mother's neighborhood now, the eastern boundary of which was a bridge spanning a know of train tracks that cut through the city like a zipper.

. . .the particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape.

I love metaphor the way some people love junk food. I think metaphorically, feel metaphorically, see metaphorically. And if anything in writing comes easily, comes unbidded, often unwanted, it is metaphor. Like follows as as night the day. Now most of these metaphors are bad and have to be thrown away. Who saves used Kleenex? I never have to say: "What shall I compare this to?" a summer's day? No. I have to beat the comparisons back into the holes they pour from. Some salt is savory. I live in a sea.

It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.

The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience.

One of the things that happens a lot is you get to see how many times things happen, literal things happen and how they are completely metaphors for where you are. It__ like a mirror is being held up just about an inch to your face.