What's the Meta For? Metaphor: Denoting a word, phrase or action that is analogous to it. Metaphors are often used to describe real life, and in fact, stand in for *reality* as it were. "She's a french fry short of a Happy Meal" means "She's stupid". Where is this going? Did I just reread my Intro to English Lit. class notes? Nope. I stayed home pretty much all weekend. And that, ladies and gents, is a metaphor for my life. My life is a metaphor for itself. Lemme 'splain somethin' to you.... I had a fantastic weekend. I didn't make any specific plans to do anything. I just did what I wanted to do. Usually, my weekends are jam-packed with events and friends and things to do. Stay home on a Saturday night? What do you think I am? Some kinda loser? Well, that's what I did. I stayed home. I cooked. I cooked an elaborate Indian dish that required the frying of spices and the pureeing of onions. I read. I wrote. I watched Mad TV. I went to sleep at 1:00 a.m. instead of 4:00. I was on a roll. Sunday I continued a project I had started a few weekends earlier: cleaning out my cupboards and generally getting rid of a bunch accumulated *gah*bage. I cleaned out the fridge. I cleaned up the front yard. I cleaned the back patio, lit the bar-b-q. Roasted red peppers (is there anything more perfect?). Made another fairly elaborate chicken in wine and mushrooms thing. Fixed a lamp. The whole day was glorious. Especially the roasting the red pepper on the bar-b-q part. As I was I was the kitchen counter slicing mushrooms, I realized that all this solitary cooking and cleaning and fixing and sorting was really metaphorical. Representative of efforts I'd been making mentally. So, my cleaning and maintaining physical house was a metaphor for my cleaning and maintaining my mental house. Mental house. ~giggle~ And as that churned around in my brain for a while, I was trying to figure out what was *really* the genesis for what. Did cleaning out the hall cupboard give birth to mental health (my mother would agree)? Or did the desire for mental health generate a cleaner cupboard? Is my mind a metaphor for the clean and orderly cupboard. Or is the clean and orderly cupboard a stand-in for yours truly? Is my whole life is a metaphor for itself? Never the ding-an-sich (the thing-in-itself). Perhaps I read too much of the French postmodernists as a child. Maybe I just like to roast and eat red peppers. There is no denying, at least, that roasted red peppers are the food of the gods.