All Hell Breaks Loose

Captured this shot on my drive home from work today (and didn't even get in an accident).  I was so taken with the contrast between the blue and the dust.

It left me wondering whether that wall of brown was coming or going.

Also made me think about the extremes in life, and how the good and the bad presented to us strike such a stark contrast when juxtaposed smack up against each other.  But of course the distinction is rarely so obvious.

Monday's Metaphor -- Battle of One

This is my daughter's Betta (fighting) fish.  Faced with his own reflection, he goes into fight mode, flaring and puffing out his gill covers.  Some days don't you just feel like you're your own worst enemy?

Monday's Metaphor -- Ready? 1. 2. 3. BITE!

Meet my nemesis the fire ant.  Looks harmless enough, but these little guys pack a powerful punch.  Here in Phoenix, they come out in force this time of year.  Mostly you'll encounter them outside, but sometimes they make house visits.

The other night, I fell asleep at around 8:30 p.m. while putting my youngest to sleep (typical) and woke up around midnight.  I stumbled to my office for a night shift of lawyer-ish work (also typical, unfortunately).  Sitting at my computer, I felt a sharp (and too familiar) sting.  Reacting with all the kung foo-like skills I could muster, I smashed a  fire ant on my right foot, but was bitten in unison by about five of its friends.  Most of the bites were on my toes and feet, but one actually reached my thigh when the message to BITE was broadcast across the ant waves.  I looked down to the floor and found hundreds of the little beasts swarming under my desk.  It's truly a miracle that I only received six bites.  I ran for a can of bug spray and used nearly the whole can to annihilate the whole bunch of them (gentle vegetarian, animal-lover that I am).

The miracle is even more dear because I'm severely allergic to fire ants.  I believe this is due to an unfortunate childhood experience that involved me sitting on a whole colony of fire ants, resulting in "ants in the pants" in the most literal way.  That's the thing about the venom of these things, your reaction gets worse (not better) with each subsequent encounter.  Ask me sometime about the time I was bitten by fire ants ON MY LIP.  The night before an oral argument in court.  I certainly wasn't going for the collagen-lip-injection-gone-awry look, but that's what I got.  And I looked that way in front of a judge on a really important case.  Good times.    

Back to my point.  So here's the amazing thing about these tiny bugs.  If you find yourself in their territory (or they decide to invade your territory), they will climb into your shoes and up your legs as a group.  They then send a signal to inform the entire group when to sting so that they can have the maximum impact possible.  How do they do that?!  I don't know, but I'm struck with how the stings of life often seem to come in unison as well, like a well-timed but cruel group effort of all that is bad in the universe.

Monday's Metaphor -- Gutter Glory

The winds are blowing in the heat of summer, and I'm grieving over golden grove un-leaving.  {Well, actually the palo verde trees formerly ablaze in golden splendor are reverting to green sticks.}

This sight left me thinking on the one hand about how fleeting the truly glorious moments in life can feel, but also how there is beauty to be found everywhere -- even in the gutter moments of our lives.

That and that, and also that there is a time and season for all things.      

The Metaphors, They Find Me

I'm out of town and out of pocket this week, immersed in a week-long leadership training course at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. Fascinating stuff. Spent the day getting at least a flavor for what it would have been like to go to business school.

On a break, I literally made a run for it -- down along a path that hugs the lake. It was blustery, cold and gray -- and lovely. What to my glazed over eyes should appear, but a flock of kites, trapped in the air. I stopped in my tracks and was blown away (blustery, I tell you) by the symbolic significance--at least to a metaphor hunter like me. About a dozen kites caught in a stand of leafless trees, blowing in the wind, but going nowhere. Abandoned. So vibrant against the lifeless gray sky and yet-to-leaf trees. Took my breath away.

Ever feel like a trapped kite against a lifeless backdrop?

Monday's Metaphor -- Gravity

Snapped this shot on a recent morning run and couldn't help but see the metaphor in it.  Sometimes if you can't grow upwards, you can at least grow sideways for a while.  Some stretches in life are (by necessity) more lattice than ladder.

I love how this tree is thriving despite its current direction.  For goodness sakes, it's growing parallel to the ground instead of reaching for the sky.  But it's not giving up.  I can relate.

Wednesday's Word -- Forgive

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."  (From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, p. 359)

My musings on The Brothers Karamazov (along with circumstances in my own cell) have me thinking about forgiveness.  The word means "to excuse for a fault or an offense; to pardon."  To forgive is "to renounce anger or resentment" or to "absolve from payment of a debt."  Breaking the word apart, it comes from the Old English for-giefan, meaning to give away (for = away and "giefan" = to give).  The related Latin word "perdonare" means "to give completely, without reservation" (per = thoroughly and donare = to give).  And I like that the word "forget" (so often attached to forgive) means "to lose one's hold."


Give it (the right to exact a pound of flesh) away and let it (the pain) pack up and go.  Easier said than done.

Also makes me think of a favorite poem on the topic.  A forgiveness tree bears sweeter fruit than a poison tree, after all.      

Holding On To the Ticket

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5
of The Brothers Karamazov

It's been nearly a month since I finished reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  The novel has been on my mental to-read list for a long time, and I worked through its nearly 800 pages with determination.  I must admit that I let out at least a tiny sigh of relief when I reached the end, eager to move on to lighter fare.  But passages, images and themes from the book keep coming to my mind unbidden, sitting here and then there, trying out the rooms like a mental goldilocks.  Here is one.

I cannot sum up The Brothers Karamazov in this short post -- at least not in any manner that could do it justice.  The short of it is that there are three brothers, Dmitri (28), Ivan (24), and Alyosha (20).  All three share a father (Fyodor Pavlovich), but Dmitri is from Fyodor's first marriage, and Ivan and Alyosha are from his second marriage.  Both mothers are dead, Fyodor is a "scoundrel" (to use a word Dostoyevsky uses repeatedly throughout the book), and none of his sons really love him.  In fact, at least two of them (Dmitri and Ivan) would like to see him dead.  Dmitri, the oldest, is much like his father -- a sensualist and a scoundrel.  Ivan is an intelligent atheist.  And Alyosha (the "cherub") is a novice monk who believes fervently in God, but is not without chinks in the armor of his faith.  To make a very long story short (without spoiling all the twists and turns), someone murders the father, Fyodor, and Dmitri is arrested and tried for the crime.  I won't tell you how the book ends, because that's really not the point of this post (and you should slog through it yourself, in any event!).        

Plot aside, the book is about free will, God, faith, doubt, reason, sin, virtue, truth, deceit, guilt, love, and so much more.  But it is especially about suffering.  In one particulary gripping chapter (Book 5, Chapter 4 "Rebellion"), Ivan talks/rants to younger brother Alyosha about the inequity of the suffering in the world, speaking of the "tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center."  (I like the way that sounds, don't you?  Can't you just picture it like a soggy loaf of bread?)  Ivan laments:  "Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else."  (Talk about metaphor.) 

He then asks his monk-brother:  "Do you understand why this infamy [suffering] must be and is permitted?  Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil.  Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?"  Rejecting the world that God has created because it is built on a foundation of suffering, Ivan proclaims:  "Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.  And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest many I am bound to give it back as soon as possible.  And that I am doing.  It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

I am no atheist.  But, like Ivan, I too struggle to understand incomprehensible suffering -- in the world, in my circle of friends and acquaintances, and in my very own life.  Like Ivan, I can't help but think that the suffering costs too much -- at least when it sacrifices the innocent on the altar of another's sin.  Or when it hits, lottery-style in a randomness that confounds all understanding.  But, unlike Ivan, I can see the joy too -- a joy that is (despite what he says) sweetened and strengthened by opposition.  Perhaps what Ivan couldn't (or chose not to) believe, is this: 

"Joy and sorrow are inseparable.  Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."  [Gibran, The Prophet]

That knowledge doesn't excuse the suffering, I suppose. But it at least grants me the perspective to hold on to my entrance ticket.

Evil vs. Super Evil

My 8-year-old loves presenting me with horrible choice scenarios of her own design. What would you choose:

1.  offer one of your children up for adoption, or die?

2.  eat a cat, or hug the stinkiest,slimiest person on the planet?

3.  change a million poopy diapers, or run a thousand miles?

Where does she come up with these things?  Today's choice made me laugh:

Would you rather be evil or super evil?

How to answer?  I suppose I'd rather be just evil.  Perhaps there's a better chance for reform?

Angry Birds As Metaphor

You know I love a good metaphor.  My kids are obsessed with Angry Birds these days, and I can't help but find it fitting.  Especially in the evening when I'm trying to do dinner, baths, homework, and my own work (home and job) all at the same time, those angry birds are attacking.  I'm not sure if that makes me a pig?  I tend to think of myself more as the structure that is falling as the angry birds fly in with their strategic attacks. 

Of course it would be much more proactive of me to see Angry Birds as a metaphor for attacking my day's to-do list, but I must admit that isn't the symbolism that occurred to me first . . . . 

Pruning Hurts, But It Encourages Growth

I have a black thumb.  You can hold that truth to be self-evident.  Because I lack nurturing skills, I have been ever-impressed with the desert plants here in this part of the country that will grow and thrive despite the circumstances.  

Take the plant at left as Exhibit A.  Nearly all the plants, bushes and trees here in Arizona were damaged by repeated frosts this winter.  Now that the weather is warming, all these damaged plants have been pruned down to the ground.  Nothing careful about it.  

How amazing that this doesn't kill them.  They grow right back, stronger and more vibrant than before.  I did a bit of research on pruning, and here are a few interesting things.  Pruning forces growth.  New growth happens close to the pruning cut because dormant buds are stimulated by the cut.  New growth generally results in several stems replacing the single one that was removed.  Pruning permits you to choose the direction a plant's branches will grow.  Thinning plants allows light and air to reach inner branches, and this prevents disease.   

How's that for a metaphor?  (I've pondered on related metaphors here and here.)  I've been feeling much like a pruned bush of late.  I'm just waiting for the new growth to sprout.  

Beware the Ides of March

Vincenzo Camuccini,  Mort de César, 1798

Well, given that it's March 15 today, this painting just feels right.  If you're puzzling over the meaning of "ides" it really just means "middle."  And why beware the ides of March and not the ides of May or June or January?  Because this is the day (way back in 44 BC) that Julius Caesar heard the seer's fateful warning ("Beware the Ides of March!"), laughed about it, and then didn't live to tell.  No, he was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate by Brutus with the help of about 60 other conspirators.  Not a good day. 

What I love about the story (ala Shakespeare's telling) is that when the seer foretold that harm would come to Caesar not later than the Ides of March, Caesar joked, "Well, the Ides of March have come" (so there!), to which the seer replied:  "Ay, they have come, but they are not gone." 

Some days are like that.  They can't be over fast enough.            

Wednesday's Word -- Color

I happened across this quote from Van Gogh:

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange."  

I like this.  As you can see in many of Van Gogh's paintings, he appreciated that juxtaposing complementary colors (like blue and orange) makes each color pop and seem brighter than it would otherwise.  Blue on its own isn't as blue as it could be if paired with orange or yellow, and vice versa.

Here's what he had to say about the technique:  "To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I  come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow . . . . I make a plain background of the richest, most intense blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky."

He of course used this technique not just when painting hair, but nature too.

Taken as metaphor, "There is no blue without yellow and without orange" means (to me) that diversity is a beautiful thing.  The true potential of one thing (or person) may not reveal itself until put up against its complement.  Is your orange missing its blue?  Maybe you already have the blue background you need for your own personal pop, or maybe you need to find it.   

Ironically, the word "color" comes from an Indo European root (*kel-2) that means "to cover, conceal, save."  In a true sense, color can be a cover.  Paint the barn, paint the walls, paint your face.  Color may hide what lies beneath.

But color may also reveal.  On a technical level, color is the effect produced on the eye and its nerves by light waves of different wavelength or frequency.  Light transmitted from an object to the eye stimulates the different color cones of the retina, thus making it possible to perceive various colors in the object.

Yes, color brings a thing to life.  Makes me think of the original Wizard of Oz movie with the opening Kansas scenes in dreary hues of black and white, followed by colors that seem to burst from the screen once Dorothy reaches the Land of Oz.

Color can have that same effect on a smaller scale -- the food you eat, the clothes you wear, a pop of color in a room of your house.  Color can indeed save.  So go put something orange against an intense blue background and see what you see.  It might just improve your outlook on the day.

Mission Impossible

I'm working on a potentially brain-stupor-inducing training presentation for client employees and looking for ways to spice it up.  As you know, I love a good metaphor more than just about anyone.  How's this to introduce the potential perils of tricky settlement negotiations? 

This clip originally comes from an old BBC documentary called Daylight Robbery (from the 1990s), but here it is being used by a beer company.  Not sure what lager has to do with the squirrel's amazing abilities, but that's a beer commercial for you . . . .

How to Train Your 8-Year-Old Dragon [Child]

Spent too many hours working on a mind-numbingly-complicated flowchart for a client.  So naturally, I thought it would be a relief to waste some time creating this light-minded decision flowchart to address other pressing issues.  

Wednesday's Word -- Resolution

Do you make New Year's Resolutions?  I typically am a big time resolutioner, but this year it seemed the most I could muster was the unimpressive likes of:

get out of bed
take care of kids
do job
keep it together

Not all that inspiring or resolutionary (if I can make that a word).  But you do what you can.  Sometimes that's more, and sometimes that's less.

Humor me while I share a few thoughts about the word "resolution.  Resolution comes from the Latin resolutionem, which means the "process of reducing things into simpler form."  Take the overwhelming whole and break it down into bite-size pieces.  It comes from the stem of resolvere, meaning "loosen."  So, now you know why a cleaner that claims to loosen and break down dirt might think to call itself "Resolve." 

Given my sub-par cleaning skills, it probably won't surprise you to know that I'm a bit more interested in other meanings of the word.  Resolution is also degree or sharpness of a computer-generated image (think pixels across and down your display screen).  Resolutions give you clarity.  Put all the pieces together and you get the picture. 

But here's my favorite meaning.  Resolution is the process in harmony whereby a dissonant (unstable) note or chord is followed by a consonant (stable) one.  I don't know about you, but I could use more consonance and less dissonance in 2011.  Here's to a resolutionary year.

Sobs, Sniffles, and Smiles

Each Christmas, I select and give a book to each of my children.  It's my little way of emphasizing the importance of reading.  I always tell them that the love of words and books has shaped my life in powerful ways.  When I'm gone, I hope that is one of the memories they will have of me.  This year, I gave one of my daughters an illustrated copy of The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry (a much loved story).  Some of the words are above the average reading level for children (or even adults of this day and age -- e.g., "the silent imputation of parsimony"), but my girls enjoy the story and illustrations very much.

Here's a line from the story that has stuck in my mind:  "[L]ife is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating."  I wonder, is that true?  I suppose O'Henry means that our circumstances usually aren't on either end of the spectrum (either all sobs or all smiles), but rather somewhere in the middle (sniffles).  I'd prefer to think that sniffles are not the middle ground status quo, but some stretches of life do feel that way.  

A couple of days after Christmas, my oldest daughter asked me to take her to get her hair cut.  I thought, "well, good," because I have been suggesting it for months and months.  Turns out, she was inspired by Della in the story, who had her long lovely locks sheared off in exchange for $20, which she used to buy a gift for her dear husband, Jim (and you know the rest of the story).  I thought the moral of the story my girls would take away was that gifts of love and pure sacrifice are the wisest of all.  But it turns out that my daughter was just hoping she could get some payment in return for the hair cut off her own head . . .       

Wednesday's Word -- Undermine

{Well, it's not Wednesday, but it sure feels like it to me}

If your family purchased a green-screened Apple II+ around 1983 or so (like mine did) you may remember the joys of playing Lode Runner (like I do).  Lode Runner was a miner who was an expert at digging holes, although if you played poorly (like I did), you often met your demise buried in holes of your own making.  Well, that's a metaphor for another day.

What I'm thinking about tonight, is the miner who digs holes and tunnels as a matter of strategy.  More specifically, I'm thinking about undermining.  

Undermine

You probably know that the word "undermine" means "to slowly weaken or injure; sabotage; subvert."  (I'd actually also like to take a closer look at the words injure, sabotage and subvert, but it's late so I'll stick with undermine for now.)  Or consider this definition (which I quite like):  "to injure or destroy by secret means or in imperceptible stages."  But more literally, to "undermine" is to "make an excavation under; dig or tunnel beneath; to weaken or cause to collapse by removing underlying support, as by digging away the foundation."  

UNDERMINE = Under (beneath) + Mine (passage beneath enemy fortifications)

The word "undermine" was originally coined as a military term.  The word "mine" has been used in the sense of "to dig under foundations to undermine them" since the late 14th century.  The verb "mine" began to be used in the 1620s to reference the tactic of tunneling under enemy fortifications to blow them up.  Consider this description from Wikipedia:

In warfare during the Middle Ages, a "mine" was a tunnel dug to bring down castles and other fortifications. The technique was used when the fortification was not built on solid rock, and was developed as a response to stone built castles that could not be burned like earlier-style wooden forts. A tunnel would be excavated under the outer defenses either to provide access into the fortification or to collapse the walls. These tunnels would normally be supported by temporary wooden props as the digging progressed. Once the excavation was complete, the wall or tower being undermined would be collapsed by filling the excavation with combustible material that, when lit, would burn away the props leaving the structure above unsupported and thus liable to collapse. Later, explosives were used for greater effect.   

Of course "mine" can also refer to an excavation for the purpose of extracting valuable gems and ores (that's what the Lode Runner was after, after all).  And it can also mean "that which belongs to me."  I kind of like that, because digging under another person's foundation does often result in excavation of something of value belonging to the undermined person.  


So, do you have any underminers in your life?  (I do.)  Or maybe you build up the fortress and then undermine it all on your own?  (I do.) 

To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield

 The night is not young, and I have much to accomplish before I sleep.  So let me be brief.  Aren't these road-crossing caterpillar mobs something?  They appeared yesterday morning and spent the day crossing an extremely busy road near my house in droves -- inexplicably pushing towards some unknown goal.  This morning on my way to work, they were still crossing, although in diminishing numbers.

I can't stop puzzling over them.  I have lived here for well over a decade now and have never observed such behavior.  They are crossing from the Indian Reservation side to the Phoenix suburb side.  I keep asking people who live near me, "have you seen the caterpillars?"  "Do you have any idea why they're crossing?"

No one seems to find this curiosity as curious as I do.  And no one seems to care about whether they make it.  And me, I'm the crazy lady who's driving about 5 MPH in a 50 MPH zone, trying not to run over the little guys and hoping they do make it -- wherever and whyever they're going.  

So in honor of the little guys, I've had these lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" in my head all day:

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars, until I die.
. . .
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Wrath Repressed, or Wrath Expressed?

Wrath is such a strong word.  Wrath is not mere irritation, but rather "violent anger; vehement exasperation; indignation; rage; fury."  I get upset when my children act like there's no sound coming out of my mouth.  I get exasperated (but not vehemently) when my husband lectures me.  I grumble and murmur when someone at work does something to undermine or disrespect me.

But I don't rage.  No wrath.  No violent anger.  No fury.

I've been thinking recently about anger and how we manifest and resolve it.  I repress.   I let it simmer, and let it pass.  For the most part, this works for me.  Or at least it works better than the alternative.  Although I deal with disputes for a living, the truth is that -- in my personal life -- I don't like contention.  I'd rather internalize the injustice, kill the unkindness with kindness, and believe that it will all come out fairly in some future grand reckoning of life.

Pondering on the topic, the words of William Blake's poem "A Poison Tree" came to mind.  Do you know this one?  What do you think, does repressing and holding onto anger yield poisonous fruit?  Perhaps for both the one growing it and the one partaking of it.  I suppose the key is not to let the tree grow in the first place?  Pull it out before it can take root?

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

~William Blake, 1794