I've just lit a couple of candles to make the house smell nice, and, since these are cheap candles, I ended up having to drop the match in to both of them to get it to catch the wick. Watching as the flame burned along the match and finally caught the wick, it suddenly struck me how much like people matches look, with their heads and all. And I was suddenly more disturbed than I thought I would have been -- the gesture of throwing something in just to be consumed was too familiar. Isn't this how we often treat real people -- as sparks to feed some larger flame? It's not a particularly deep insight, of course, nor is it entirely true. For one thing, it is not as if you couldn't structure the metaphor another way: the flame is knowledge and it's being fed by learning, or something. Or you could construe it as an act of bonding: both the matchstick and the wick play host to the same fire. Those uses of metaphor both actually make more sense and are more how I tend to think about the world than my feeling that the match was a person being consumed, flattened by a force outside herself.
Why the depressive outlook, then? I think perhaps it is the sheer inappropriateness of the metaphor that made it meaningful, after all. Because it was so odd to think of lighting a candle as wasteful or violent, when the positioning of the match suggested personhood to me, the connection -- though illogical -- was stronger by virtue of surprise than any of my normal figurative associations with candles might be.
Also, of course, I'm anxious because it's the end of the semester. When you're anxious, oppression metaphors seem to...wel...crowd in around you and oppress you. Ukulele will help. But so will getting back to work!
Why the depressive outlook, then? I think perhaps it is the sheer inappropriateness of the metaphor that made it meaningful, after all. Because it was so odd to think of lighting a candle as wasteful or violent, when the positioning of the match suggested personhood to me, the connection -- though illogical -- was stronger by virtue of surprise than any of my normal figurative associations with candles might be.
Also, of course, I'm anxious because it's the end of the semester. When you're anxious, oppression metaphors seem to...wel...crowd in around you and oppress you. Ukulele will help. But so will getting back to work!
Labels: quotidian
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