[November 2001 journal entry]
Metaphors that have mattered deeply to me:
- the pole climber leaning back from the utility pole and trusting his work belt,
- crawling under the Vermont house we were ready to purchase only to find a seriously cracked foundation,
- the need to find healthy tissue before beginning a hernia repair,
- placing storm windows when you do not have enough to cover all windows,
- my eyes locking with my eight-year-old daughter’s eyes as she lost control of her bicycle in some gravel,
- the decision to remove training wheels,
- a black hole’s inward pull and resulting destruction,
- the free yet shared experience when jazz musicians play together,
- being in Parliament but not in ‘the government’,
- the huddle behind the line of scrimmage on the football field,
- the wilderness,
- the difference in perspective when traveling through Appalachia on the interstate or on the back roads,
- a solar or lunar eclipse,
- remodeling a house,
- my Boy Scout 2nd-class required five-mile hike through fields compass in hand with my Dad,
- theatre’s prompter,
- leaven,
- the porch,
- the Norwich ‘dump’ where parents taught children about recycling and ‘community’,
- the irrigation ditch,
- the mudder on a drywall team,
- the elementary school student who learns there is no Santa Claus at the North Pole,
- driving a nail deep into the wood,
- the parcel in Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence,
- the pivot,
- . . . .
