PARK THAT BROKEN DOWN METAPHOR

by Melodie Johnson Howe

It’s Monday. The day I set aside to write the Criminal Brief blog, which JLW masterfully puts up for me by Tuesday. I’m sitting in bed, sipping my first morning cup of coffee, flipping through the Los Angeles Times. My mind is not on the paper. I’m wondering what in the hell I’m going to write when a headline grabs my attention.

Dilapidated metaphors on Lebanon roads.

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What are dilapidated metaphors? Maybe they’re the ones that never made it into the New Yorker’s Hold That Metaphor? But that doesn’t explain their condition and what they’re doing on the roads of Lebanon. Hitchhiking? There is a picture which I hope will explain the article so I don’t have to read it. I study the photo. A man is driving an old rusted Mercedes. Hmmm. I read the caption:

HELD TOGETHER: In Beirut, this scarred Mercedes – prone to overheating — struggles forward as a taxi.

There is more to the caption but I’m too confused to go on. Struggles forward as a taxi? Isn’t that a dilapidated simile struggling to be a Mercedes? I take a gulp of coffee to clear my head and continue reading the caption hoping for lucidity as clear as a maiden’s eyes.

The exodus of Lebanon’s young and talented has intensified as a deadline approaches for the government’s two opposing camps to come up with a president.

Uh? I check to make sure I’m reading the right caption under the right picture. I am. I sigh and lean back on my avalanche of pillows. They are as white as snow. Damn, I’m going to have to read the article. I give the newspaper a good shake like a mother shaking her naughty child.

“BEIRUT – The scarred Mercedes taxi rumbles to a halt. Its flaking paint exposes a layer of rust. It spews a noxious brown exhaust. That it can move at all appears to be a miracle.”

Appears to be a miracle? Why isn’t a miracle? I mean a miracle either is or isn’t. Isn’t? I adjust my pillow which appears to be as white as a starlet’s teeth.

I scan the article. Finally the seventh paragraph offers me a ray of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Perhaps the taxi is a metaphor for the broad malaise that afflicts Lebanon. Never a very solid proposition to begin with.”

Perhaps the taxi is a metaphor? Perhaps? Whoever is writing this doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own symbols. I study the photo. Does this hard working taxi driver know he’s driving a metaphor through a malaise? I continue the article:

“The government is caught between a rock and a hard place.”

What? I reread. It doesn’t say that. How odd for that beat-up phrase to hop in and out of the article? Again, I continue.

“The government is caught in a seemingly intractable deadlock (Oh, that’s better) with two opposing camps so far unable to come up with a president and name a government as a Friday deadline looms.”

I put the paper down. I feel the headache of a forced metaphor coming on. I smooth my pillows. (By doing this I’m really smoothing my brow.) They are as white as a young bride’s wedding veil, as white as milk, as white as marble, as white as whip cream on angel food cake, as white as a cloud. They are a pile of downy similes. I look at my hands. They are covered with newspaper print as dark as the exhaust from an old dilapidated metaphor.

1. Los Angeles Times [↩]