Here’s a quick aside. Something more substantial at the weekend I hope.
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I’ve got metaphors because I can afford them. I’ve got metaphors tumbling around me, piled up all over the place. I trip over them everywhere I go. There in the bathroom, next to the toothbrush, behind the toilet seat. I’ve got them hiding in cereal boxes. I'm picking them out of my shoes. I have to wash them from behind my ears and dust them off my coat. Sometimes I have no idea what the difference is between one of them and reality. I’m a metaphor billionaire. I will never spend them all and that's a disturbing luxury.
I prattle on about the bus. My favourite metaphor of the moment. Every vacant face on there belongs to my collection – a gorgeous, rattling microcosm to there and back again everyday.
There’s a fat guy who eats his lunch when there’s a traffic jam and then crunches the empty plastic cola bottle to relieve his anger at himself. The crackling plastic is loud, obnoxious and puts me on edge. After that he gibbers to himself and belts out irate phrases at the slowness of the bus. I imagine him at lunchtime queuing in Burger King twittering at the extra money he’s spending and the fact he didn’t lose weight again today.
There’s the demure woman with petite freckles dotted on her cheeks. She seems afraid of every turn and wobble the bus makes. I’ve never heard her speak, but if I did I guess it’d be almost inaudible. She generally reads a book, but never seems to turn a page. I’ve never seen the cover of one of them – I suspect it’s the same one and she’s never read a single sentence. Her coat is perfect. Are there invisible fairies preening it for her when she sits?
A couple of builders in scruffy cloths swear loudly and everyone pretends they’re not really there. When they say ‘cunt’ you can feel the atmosphere ripple from the back to the front and back again. Everyone winces imperceptibly. They regale each other on weekend drunken tales of alcohol, sex and fights. Their conversations contain more numbers in them than I think they realise. They measure their sex in litres and fights in kilograms. They declare too often they have know idea how much they drank.
I could go on. Each one a piece of behaviour. A compartment from a full personality. I recognise myself in each and every bit. Sometimes the brute. Sometimes the martyr. Other times the mute.
I could go on.
And because they’re in boxes they can’t really exist, can they?
It makes me wish I was dumb. Or at least that I knew I am. Metaphor's going nowhere for now - I've still got tons in the bank and continue building interest.
I'll try spill more all over myself if you don't mind.
