...& Semiotics, {2}: how I invented the metaphor.

I was sitting there in the garden, too, thinking about how that little overgrown yard with its tall and thriving weeds contrasted so sharply to the bed of grass that Lovely and I used to lay on, and realized that I could relate this contrasting relationship to my present circumstances! Was nature giving me a sign, I wondered, or perhaps God?

Well, that depends entirely on your religion. I realized at the same time, however, that if I were living three thousand years ago or so, before, for example, the Enlightenment, or even just before an established literary tradition, I might think that a higher being or spirit with a measure of influence in my life might be sending me some kind of of lesson or message to reflect on. Of course, you have to recognized something that seems meaningful to you as meaningful enough to be more than just a coincidence first. A physical instance, the grass, is made manifest into a mental or emotional response that encourages me in some way. Of course I have to manipulate the sign, or rather, the being that is Me manipulated--interpreted--the sign, if indeed it was one at all, in the way that I am designed [Designed?] to do. I guess, if something is sending me a sign, it probably designed me to interpret it, so we'll just assume this element of the equation works out.

Metaphor, from the Greek, to carry over. I also liked, Meta, "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent"--a concept which is an abstraction from another concept--and Phorm: put the two together and you have Adjacent Form. I added the M myself.

So I figure, some dudes were sitting around three thousand years ago, bored, like most of them were back then, and they realized that certain physical instances, seemingly arbitrary objects, signs (coincidence?) reflected what was going on in their lives, and translated the sport of semiotics from its practical uses in spirituality to the written page, in essence inventing the metaphor and empowering great auteurs like Russ Meyer in the twentieth century.

I wonder if I would have arrived at the same conclusion if I had been thinking three thousand years ago? It's a mostly discouraging internal monologue (I don't give myself much credit) for another day.