In discussion with Hannon

A metaphor is a lie the brain tells about reality.

To make reality palatable.

Not being able to bear too much reality--as noted by T.S. Eliot and others--we resort to metaphors.

In other words, language is the manner in which we sugar-coat reality in a way that makes some sense of a world that is otherwise incomprehensible.

When the librarian said, during wildflower season, that she loved seeing the bright colors of the flowers and that they made her happy, she was shocked when Michael Hannon said to her "it's just energy you're seeing Marge, quivering, nervous sub-atomic particles..."

Marge, an otherwise sturdy and practical woman, looked broken when she heard this, the image she held of flowers as flowers having been destroyed, destroying a large part of her happiness in them.

The mission from now on, in regard to reality, is to watch particles break apart and dissolve while maintaining a lively, disinterested awareness.

Ps: the ancient poet Lucretius, whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is a poem all other poets might have been very happy to write, compared his own poetry "to honey smeared around the lip of a cup containing medicine that a sick man might otherwise refuse to drink."