Metaphorically Speaking

Inspirational song: Music Box Dancer (Frank Mills)

I started thinking about my obsession with storytelling today. It's not just my enduring need to write a trio of paragraphs every night before I go to bed. I can't carry on the briefest of conversations without wanting to paint a picture with words. I always want to embellish--not in the sense of embellishing the truth in order to prevaricate, but rather to make the transmission of information more fun. I know not everyone shares this compulsion. I just can't imagine being the reticent type though. How boring it would be only to use simple, straightforward language with an unimaginative lack of imagery.

It was while I was working up my metaphors for how I was going to explain how I felt to my massage therapist, to tell him what to work on and how, when I noticed how often I rely on such  descriptors. I wondered why I'm like that. Is it just me? Is it common for people like me, who have had to find ways to describe pain to doctors and friends in such a way that they can understand even the weird stuff that normal people don't feel? I think of it like non-mechanically inclined people trying to tell their repair shops what is happening to their cars, making noises and gestures and using an endless stream of metaphors and similes. I also think most of my doctors looked down their noses at me like mechanics do to the goofier storytellers handing over keys to their cars with desperation in their eyes.

For the record, the sensation I needed to tell Slow Hand at the beginning of my massage today was this: think of the mechanism of a music box. It's a little brass cylinder with sharp points sticking out all around it. As it spins, and a stiff brass comb brushes against the tiny spikes, the teeth of the comb strike, making noise. Ever since the day after Christmas, when I stayed in bed with the beginning of flare that has kept me moving slowly and stiffly, if I move at all, I have felt like a music box. I am as rigid as brass, and all through my body, like it is in my blood, I feel the tiny needles flicking against the teeth of the comb--little shocks of pain that are gone in an instant but linger with a momentary resonance. I wanted to explain to Slow Hand that if I could be hooked up to a machine that could catch all the electrical impulses shooting through me, I would probably play a tune. It's not a song I'm enjoying playing.