The Metaphors Are Rusty.

I’ve been up a mountain.

It didn’t help.

No change to my personality or outlook occurred, nor do people sense a degree of empowerment about the way I walk now.

I meet challenges in the exact same manner as I did before.

And so it was that I came to realise- these metaphors…they are bollocks.

A mountain is the literal poster-boy of determination; the metaphor used by those to say: “you should probably respect me because I went up that, you know”.

Climbing a mountain is one thing that takes determination for some. It is only relative.

This was one of those metaphors that one simply encounters in life, and it has no bearing on the way you perceive your events and course. Climbing a mountain- something that for some is the establishment of ‘Let’s do something tricky’, is for many others a challenge that is not apparent as such.

For many others, a greater challenge would be what consumes their interest. Like a woman that sits down one morning and decides that the only way to continue is to eat only things that are alive and really rather wriggly when encountering a fork.

That is tricky.

Now, I’m not saying that for me climbing a mountain is easy, though it is one ‘helluva’ (that’s right- ‘helluva’) lot easier to walk up one than to climb up one. It’s just…what’s the pay-off?

Well, in this you have two main aspects.

To begin with, finally you have the view from the top. That’s a big one, though interestingly enough you need to be atop a mountain with the view a bit further than the end of your nose. Fog, mist and cloud cover might get in the way of what there is to see, although as well, perhaps the fog is what there is to see. I suppose it’s a little weird, so I suppose it’s a little enjoyable.

And this leads me onto the second point. The interesting things that might occur to your person as you make you way up and down.

I was nearly blown off a mountainside in a torrent of rain and punch of wind. A tempest you might say, only punchier.

Here, the acquisition of the summit mattered not- it was the danger and activity at all other points that made me smile. The pay-off was the wandering, not the arrival.

And so it might go as truth to say that all the pleasure of the journey could have been achieved by avoiding the top. Should anything of value to you occur at the top- then that is due to luck rather than likelihood.

Yet, for so many the summit seems to be the entire point, whereas one might argue that, aside from what I have already, the point is in striving through the climb and having a really bad time. If you don’t do that, then the reason for the climb is lost for so many.

“I hope you nearly fall off the mountain. That’s why you’re going isn’t it?”

And what other metaphors and sayings amount to a severe need to be reconsidered?

‘Sheep’?

The question: ‘Sheep?’ is a good one.

Yes, sheep are like the people they are aligned to in metaphor. Running to and with the crowd. Gnawing upon crud, doing little else. Being fairly thick.

But you’d better believe that for some reason, out of nowhere, out of some-hellish-blue those woolly fuckers will head-butt you and any part of you.

The average man in the street is not of this ilk. He will not head-butt you here, there or anywhere, whereas I prefer to assume that a sheep is going to head-butt some portion of my person. This is from valued, ugly and- yes- regrettably woolly experience.

As for a next step from here, now that we all know what’s really going on, it is apparent that we should establish a whole bunch of new metaphors and, as such, sayings.

“Eiffel Tower It” is a saying that I hope will come into pass one day when someone does something vital at the time to someone else using the Eiffel Tower. Whatever that thing is, and it will likely involved thrusting, I hope the saying lasts.

“The Metaphors Are Rusty” is evidently an appropriate saying for when the components of the old world crumble in the face of actual experience by each new generation. “The Writing’s On The Wall” in this case, that a thorough and piercing re-evaluation of what words in a certain order were previously ours.

So “The Metaphors Are Rusty”, and I’m about to make like a banana.

You may find me making like a banana at neither the top nor bottom of a mountain, but everywhere in-between.

Sam.