Gnome (nome or no’-mee): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.
“When the fire lights, you will smell the flame.” I have applied this saying to my life for the past 62 years. I had learned it from the “Whining Monk” I had met when I was selling lightbulbs for the Boy Scouts door to door in my home town of Rahway, New Jersey. I had just finished dealing with a woman wearing only an apron who told me to deal with her dog Frank, named after Frank Sinatra. She said to the dog “Sing Frank.” Frank started making weird whining sounds that sounded like “Strangers in the Night.” I was about to wet my pants when Frank said “2 bulbs.” The lady paid me and I left feeling dizzy with a very small stain on the front of my pants.
My next stop turned out to be the Whining Monk. He opened the door and said in his whiny voice “When the fire lights, you will smell the flame.” The saying almost knocked me over. I had visions of candles the size of the Empire State Building filling New York with the scent of truth, justice and wisdom and the streets were filled with cabs with their “On Duty” lights on joyfully ushering fares into them. It was like Utopia. I started crying and vowed to “follow the scent” for the rest of my life. The Whining Monk bought 4 lightbulbs and wished me well. I felt like his whining voice lifted me to Heaven to comport in sublimity with angelic friends.
Then, two days later, I was walking through the mall and saw that my saying—what I thought was the Whining Monk’s saying—was a saying that Yankee Candle used to promote its scented candles.
Initially, I felt swindled, but seeing the saying at Yankee Candle hadn’t changed my resolve to “follow the scent.” I learned that sayings are like veils obscuring, accenting, and displaying their meanings all at the same time. It does not matter why they are cast—people will take them to mean what they need them to mean, or ignore them. Semiosis is a free ride to everywhere your wit and imagination can take you
I opened a shop selling scented candles. I competed with Yankee Candle by making scented candle sculptures of the U.S. Presidents with their most famous sayings molded into them. They all had the same smell: grape juice/raspberry smoothie. I also made combo-candles combining famous monuments and Rock Stars. My favorite was Elvis Lincoln, followed by Sting Roosevelt, and Hopalong Cash.
Although it was my life’s compass, I couldn’t use the Yankee Candle slogan for my candle shop for legal reasons, so I made up my own slogan. My initial creation was: “The house of meaning shelters your soul from the chaos of anomie.” I decided that was a little heavy handed. It took a month, but this is what I came up with: “May a candle be your handle. May its smell wish you well.”
Enough said!
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu
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