An Overabundance of Literary Metaphor

The plumbing is fixed. I think the plumbers had to redo the fittings. I hope it didn't cost too much.

It seems kind of silly at the moment to be talking about mundane things like plumbing. Have you ever experienced that heady feeling, like the air is electric? Ever have those moments where you can feel a page turning?

Have you ever heard someone say they were starting a new chapter in their lives? That strikes me as a slight overstatement. I think about the most a person can muster from sheer will-power or life choice is a new paragraph. Yes, the setting has changed. Hit "Enter", and be sure to indent. Not that I'm belittling those kinds of changes in life. But I think that chapters change all by themselves. We don't control the beginnings and end of chapters, and they don't just affect us. They affect the whole story, the whole book, everyone.

Nothing really happened that evoked this sense of shift. It's just that there's something new. You know it's coming, because you can see the new heading. But you haven't yet read far enough to know what it is, what it means. And conventional wisdom tells you that it's okay to be excited, as long as you know it's going to be scary and involve conflict, and there's always the chance that the hero might fail. Maybe that's where the paragraphs come in.

Some chapters are all exposition or characterization or dialogue. Then you turn to a new one and you've got fair warning that everything may change completely, for better or worse or both. That's the deal. Keep reading if you want to know. Shut your eyes if you don't, but it won't stop the story from being played out. On the days that I remember to make a conscious choice, I choose to read. This last chapter was all set-up. The new one promises to be dynamic: exciting and sad, wonderful and horrible. Stuff that makes you want to sing and stuff that makes you want to vomit. Probably not a good time to shut your eyes.