When it comes to communication, it’s always better to show than to tell. That’s been the goal I have had in mind whenever I’ve sat down to write. Making statements about truth is great, but relying on them alone forces the reader to accept the ethos of the writer. Let me tell you, I don’t have much of that. So I resort to images, stories and of course, the all-powerful metaphor.
The problem with symbolism is that it’s easily abused, to the point of making it overwhelmingly cliche. And not every notion or philosophy needs to or can be illustrated by superimposing some more comfortably reached or understood (tangible) element over it. Lately, I worry that I’ve done too much of this in an attempt at poetic delineations that make everyone go, “Aaahhh. I get it!” Because before writers are actually paid, those kinds of reactions are our paychecks. Or maybe I’m just vain like that.
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I have a trashcan in my bedroom. I don’t think this is uncommon, but I’m sure a few souls out there cringe at the thought of keeping waste near where they sleep. The receptacle is empty right now, but the bag in it is novel to me. You see, this plastic liner is scented. I can’t really tell what fragrance it’s supposed to be sporting, but it’s some sort of fruity-floral mix. I actually hate everything about it and I and have been unabashedly judging whichever roommate was ridiculous enough to buy such an item. Because good-smelling trash bags are stupid. Garbage stinks because it’s the crap we don’t want. I might be wrong, but I think it’s supposed to smell bad. Have you ever been to a landfill? They smell awful and seagulls and other dirty birds swarm all over them eating things that really, no living creature should. I wonder, if the whole world used fragrance-infused bags for their garbage, if dumps would smell a little less acrid and a little more like grandma’s house. Probably not.
I put urinal cakes in the same boat. Urine should not smell like cherries or anything else that I’d normally want to eat. Our bodily excrement smells awful for a reason, so we leave it the hell alone and get on with our lives. I was a church janitor for a couple of years and still struggle with cherry-flavored candy after that interesting season. I’ve heard before that scent is the most powerful trigger for memories, good and bad.
Here’s where I go all Christian writer on you and make something into a metaphor. Sin and garbage and urine have a lot in common. One might go so far as to say that our iniquity is garbage (that really isn’t much of a stretch). If we follow that through, we see that it should be discarded rather than retained and lived with. Also, it should smell bad, but how often do we dress our self-will, lust and hate up to make it smell better? So next time you take out the trash or make a hasty exit toward the men’s room, please remember that your sin reeks like death and hell and patruli oil. Then live a better life. Much better.
There. I just over-spiritualized trash bags and the strange, little pink things we pee on every day. And you know what? I’ll do it again and again (probably without thinking about it). Maybe it’s just one of those things writers do and when we come up with a good one and it sticks, we’re proud of it. I just don’t know. All I can say is that I hope I can avoid becoming hackneyed and overdoing it.
Once again, you have made me think differently about urinal cakes. Wait, what?!
I just had a flashback to my last job. The urinal cakes were a green apple smell, covering a nasty urine smell. Weird howi remember that. But I guess that really is like our sin. We try to cover it up. We try to make it smell a little less. We try to pretend it isn’t as bad as it really is, but all our attempts to make our sin seem better really just ruins something else for us – like the urine cake ruined cherry candy for you.
Keep up the analogies, Jake. You have a talent for them.
GREEN APPLE?! Sick. Everything about that makes me panic. we really need to figure something else out, because the whole fragrance thing just isn’t doing it for me. I basically have red cherry flashbacks to church toilets and start screaming something about them taking Charlie… then I blackout for a couple hours and wake up with a new tattoo… wait, what?
I like the analogies, but I really worry that I do it too much. know?
i like patruli
Ha ha, I do too, friend. For some reason, I have to make fun of it though. I can’t figure out why! I hope you’re well! I haven’t seen you in ages!
Leave it to you Jake! It’s tough to argue with a good metaphor… even if it does make you stop buying cherry flavored cough drops…
I too like a good metaphor, I’m with you, show me, don’t tell me… I’m capable of painting my own image thank you very much!
Floyd, you’re great at putting pictures together. I love your stories!
But this is what writers do. We make connections that others don’t see. We put two and two together, because we live in the space between the words.
There are two truths: 1.)A Garbage is just a bit of plastic. 2.) Sin destroys us.
You live in the middle. In the tension between those two truths. God put so many metaphors in His creation, painted on His paper sky to tell us “This is like that, what you see there is a shadow, a pale representation of what’s beyond when you see Me on the other side of time.”
It is what writers do and we always will. I just hope I’m not ever over-doing it. The other day, i was driving down the road and realized that I look at everything as a symbol and started fretting that I did it too much and was going to have to make fun of myself for it… too often posts show up while I’m driving.
The thing is in a way everything is a symbol. Feel free to overdo it.