Fido the Yak

Now that it's winter and the snow is falling we can think about what happened. We can think about it from a distance. It happened in the springs, where the water springs from the earth. That's where we killed metaphor. We slapped its head against a rock like a poet taken out of his element.

We didn't have a plan going in. It was inspired, and yet it seemed natural. Metaphor stood for everybody we hated. One word was enough to send us over the edge. It shouldn't have opened its mouth. But it did. That's how it happened. That's how it started. It said something and we sprang on it. It didn't stand a chance.

There's kind of a contradiction in how we've handled it, an unspoken contradiction. It was a noble cause, a blessing in some ways. We did it for truth, a kind of higher truth, a magisterial truth. We drew from our commitment to this truth the sense that we had to surmount plurality at any cost. Paradoxically, then, it also seemed natural that metaphor should die, that is, it seemed as if metaphor died of natural causes and not for the cause of our allegiance to conviction, to the community of overcoming, the community that is our only protection against myth and falsity, thought's mortal enemies.

I don't know how to explain the silence around metaphor's death. Everybody knows that metaphor didn't really die in a boating accident but nobody wants to debate it with us. After all, we killed metaphor. That's just how things stand.

Whenever I hear the word "spring" I think about what happened. I don't feel guilty or anything. I just wonder what it all means. I wonder what it means now that metaphor is dead.

Labels: Levinas, metaphor, Spinoza, truth

posted by Fido the Yak at 11:29 AM.