Exit, pursued by a metaphor

You might have noticed that my thinking about the world is almost entirely governed by metaphors. I think that I was just born with a brain that looks to see how one thing is like another thing, but I also think I have developed it into a baroque art because it is a natural antidote to boredom. If you look at things together, you get not only all the things which happen to you but all the combinations of things. Three things happened today? Hey! That's six different combinations! Was the shopping like the article you read in the journal? Maybe the shower you took this morning was sort of like the trip to the library! Your life is suddenly deceptively well-populated. There is an everlasting supply of things interacting, even if all you managed to do on Tuesday was change the laces in your shoes and eat a ham sandwich.

Generally, I think I could do with a pretty formidable dose of restraint in these matters, because it's easy to lull oneself into a sadly deluded sense of depth and profundity by playing with all these comparisons. Sometimes nothing happens in my life except sitting around seeing how different slices of life go together. Which is all very well, but I want to actually have some slices of life, as well.

On that note, here begins an occasional series on Xtin's Found Metaphors, so that I can get my hit while making a genuine attempt to stop corkscrewing my head so far into my, uh, navel.

Today's Found Metaphor is from my Bathtub Reading Hall of Fame, Dorothy Sayer's Busman's Honeymoon. We find ourselves faced with a weepy village piano-teacher. A handkerchief, my good man, my kingdom for a handkerchief! Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers' beaky sleuth, is always prepared:

Peter came to the rescue with what might have been a young flag of truce.

Lovely.