"It is as substantial or insubstantial as the shadow of a house, in which some things will grow, some not."
— Richardson, James (b. 1950)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
Keene, NY
Publisher
Ausable Press
Date
2001
Metaphor
"It is as substantial or insubstantial as the shadow of a house, in which some things will grow, some not."
Metaphor in Context
407.
When I re-married, I started remembering things--the smell of yarrow, words of my father--I hadn't thought of in years, as if they had suddenly become necessary to the new self that was organizing. The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time, and this is true from hour to hour as well as from era to era. I am different tones, capacities, intelligences, memories when I am phoning on business, walking by the canal, or waiting with that finely tensed blankness for a line to write itself. For the most part there is nothing romantic about the unconcious. It starts as the sentence we did not say, the love we did not use. It is as substantial or insubstantial as the shadow of a house, in which some things will grow, some not. Which moves as the sun moves.
(p. 88)
When I re-married, I started remembering things--the smell of yarrow, words of my father--I hadn't thought of in years, as if they had suddenly become necessary to the new self that was organizing. The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time, and this is true from hour to hour as well as from era to era. I am different tones, capacities, intelligences, memories when I am phoning on business, walking by the canal, or waiting with that finely tensed blankness for a line to write itself. For the most part there is nothing romantic about the unconcious. It starts as the sentence we did not say, the love we did not use. It is as substantial or insubstantial as the shadow of a house, in which some things will grow, some not. Which moves as the sun moves.
(p. 88)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
James Richardson, Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays (Keene, NY: Ausable Press, 2001).
Date of Entry
06/03/2011
