Allegory (al’-le-go-ry): A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.
When I woke up I was a butterfly. When I went to sleep I was a butterfly. I’m always a butterfly. I flutter. I flit. I have intricate colorful patterns on my wings. I slurp nectar in the morning. I am chased by birds. Somebody always wants to catch me, chloroform me and pin me down, displayed as an example of my kind. Maybe I am beautiful. Maybe I’m not so beautiful—especially when I’m a young fat caterpillar: bird food recently born from a hanging cocoon.
But, I’m always a butterfly, whether I crawl or fly—inside I am a butterfly, no matter what you see. It all goes so fast from egg to winged, to migration to return, to breed, to become tattered and ragged, to fall to the ground to be eaten by ants. The cycles are inevitable. They can only be thwarted by predation, or some kind of terminal malady. Sometimes I wish I lived a more dangerous life—a life routinely cut short by violence. Not long, drawn-out waiting for night to close in, for sunset to expire, and night to close the door.
But time and its consequences are unstoppable, except maybe by the occasional replacement part—a joint, an antenna, even an eye. They are good. They are welcome—they return you to your past, thwarting time with welcome patches. However temporary, they make you whole again, almost resurrected like an angel on Judgement Day. You flutter again. You flit again. You may feel eternal.
I could never think these thoughts fifty years ago when I was a tiger. Lithe. Handsome. Strong. Fearless. Unconscious of my own mortality. Swatting at butterflies as they flitted by, taunting me with their zig-zag trajectories.
Now, of course, I think of time—how much time I’ve had and will have in my ragged fragile state. But, I am not ready to leave this incarnation. In a way, my tenacity slows down time. It prolongs my life. The only problem with this is memory. There is horror. It drifts into my consciousness unsummoned— like a telemarketer that you can’t hang up on, maybe lodged for days, maybe not shutting up, maybe needing medication to chase away. Then there’s love: if reciprocated, the strongest life-magnet of all. My wife. My daughter. Pure, undiluted love. The greatest blessing. A fountain of hope. The light at the end of the tunnel.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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