1 Mulligan for Largely Overused Metaphors. And Toast-Engravers.

I’m not sure what this mood I’m in is all about.

I’m waiting and I’m not any good at waiting.

But I have this persistent, milky-odd sensation that reminds me –if I were to stick my hand in it— of heavy cream and bath beads and cherry jello. Something you can squeeze and release and squeeze again and change the integrity of the whole, but maintain the whole of the parts.

And it’s all… very, very good. Very hopeful.

For instance, I’ve had an obsession with the sky lately. Even though it annoys me to the end of all get-out. Not the sky... the obsession.

I realized, last Tuesday or so, that I’ve always had this fixation. I’ve watercolored it endlessly; I’ve pulled up its mutating patterns and shadings of blue-orange-pink-black when I otherwise would have thought about digging my fingernails into my wrist; I’ve asked it questions and waited with a crazed stare for an answer; I’ve gotten answers (although most, if not all, had nothing to do with the questions asked).

How trite, right? To shove my worries and hopes into the biggest metaphor ever? That’s, like, so like me. When times get rough and messy and incalculable, toss ‘em all to the vast upstairs, just like I do in my little apartment space: sure, obsessively neat on the surface, but –shit- check out my closet.

I hate that I love the sky. I want to love something more specific, more categorical, more kitschy. Isn’t random cool? If I love the sky, do I also love Winnie the Pooh and Disneyland and Ben and Jerry’s and heart-shaped chocolates and candles that smell like jasmine? Does that make me have bumper stickers on my car to the tune of It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and own ceramic figurines of little boys and girls in fur-trimmed snowsuits?

Why oh why can’t I love those little toast-press contraptions that you push into your toast to emblazon your bread with sayings like “GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE” and “SWEET THING.” Why can’t I have a fetish for fish tank pebbles? Or cat’s eye marbles? Or, for christ’s sake, tie-dye lambswool booties?

Do I really love the sky? [collective gasp]

Nah. I feel like the sky and I are like buddies. Like I would wink at it in the closing scene of a movie while the Goo Goo Dolls sing some kind of scratchy, all-encompassing ballad about frozen love, sweaty sex, broken records and gin. I wouldn’t really know what I was winking at or why, but the audience might sniffle despite themselves, because they would think that I had figured myself out.