IT’S JUST A LITTLE BLOG called
“Metaphorager.”
I hope it offers respite.
Prosatio Silban and the Mapping Lesson
(Five printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy!)
NIGHT, AND THE CLEAN SMELL of salt. Slap of waves and wind-flapped canvas. Creak of leaping timbers. An urgent overhead call, and a soft but substantial splat.
I just served that, Prosatio Silban thought in mild vexation, and grabbed a nearby mop.
It was not the beefy cook’s first brush with someone else’s seasickness, and in fact he himself had suffered from the Mariner’s Malady for the first three days of his current adventure. For he was aboard the Golden Rose, working his passage around and across the Rimless Sea by helping out in the galley (and environs) as needed. Right now, that meant standing vigilant on the weather deck with seedcakes and a hotpot of yava to ballast the crew’s queasy stomachs – and a ready mop for when he couldn’t.
5 Thoughts: Pattern Matching
1. THERE ARE TWO TORAH STORIES which have troubled me for some time.
2. The first is about the giving of the Ten Statements (AKA the “Ten Commandments,” but “statements” is closer to the actual Hebrew). What should have been a joyful event was marred by the incident of the Golden Calf — epiphany ruined by idolatry.
3. The second has to do with the consecration of the Tabernacle: the portable God-tent containing, among other things, the Ark of the Covenant (which itself contained the aforementioned Statements).
Prosatio Silban and the Sovereign Cure
(Five-and-a-half printed pages, inspired by our current situation. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy!)
THEY SAY, SOMETIMES, THAT THE cure is worse than the disease. But to Prosatio Silban’s way of thinking, that just means it must be the wrong cure.
The Cook For Any Price was slowly driving his galleywagon along the dusty main street of an apparently deserted village. He had been there before, though long enough ago that he had forgotten its name. However, he did remember the laughter of its children, the music of its minstrels, and the burble of its creek. It had then been a small but bustling hamlet of some two hundred lively souls – but now, all that greeted him were the deep croaking of creekside bullfrogs and the dismal drone of hidden watch-crickets. A pennant of smoke hung in the distance, the view of its source blocked by tumbledown shacks.
365 Names: God*
GOD* came about after I saw someone refer in like manner to the current president (at this writing, in early December 2019) and some sports figures. Although it’s meant to indicate someone whose office or standing is shot through with controversy (hence requiring a footnote for fuller understanding), its Divine usage is meant to express that the simple monosyllable “God” likewise requires a footnote — the word doesn’t adequately convey the depth and breadth of What one is attempting to express. (It just doesn’t, that’s all.)
Road Bound (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Three-and-a-half printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)
MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains known (and less understood) about the shy beasts. Read on, o seeker after mythic mysteries, and much more shall be revealed about the origin of one particular buopoth…
* * *
With an angry grumble, Prosatio Silban cast a final spadeful of earth on the makeshift grave and sighed.
Be more respectful, he reproached himself. After all, this was what might be termed a close acquaintance. But — what will become of my galleywagon?
Minute Mitzvah: Play Nice
Today: Don’t shame anyone.
Explanation: When you make someone feel painfully self-conscious, you destroy a little piece of the world — and not only for them. Your own soul / psyche / personality suffers as well. In today’s hyperpartisan social climate, the temptation exists to make others hurt as much as they want to hurt you; but that’s a trapdoor without a bottom.
Exercise: Ask yourself: “Do I really want to be That Guy?” Tone down the snark, online and off. And act according to your ideals.