Metaphor has been an insistent leprechaun stomping its foot to gain my attention for most of my adult life. A teeny gremlin of coincidental and weirdly connected situations exasperatedly expecting me to “get it,” and then, immediately dissolving—cotton candy evaporating and taking the taste with it. Elimination of the information is often so complete I can come to believe I made it all up. Last week, it was coyotes and…I’ve forgotten the other one. From what I am able to recall, it was a large volume of oddisms that stamped their foot until, poof, the topic disappeared. The last several years these mystical-metaphor events have been increasingly scarce and hard-to-pin, like leftover butterflies hellbent on flying to Mexico before the first frost.
For some as yet indeterminable reason, metaphor season recently split wide open. Message-riddled and shouty coincidences have been rolling in faster than I can tabulate or label. To keep track of the most recent, I offer…
A Conflux Of Many Matters
A large garden bed in my front yard has a mixture of bushes and perennials. The shrubs were put in twenty years ago, and aside from one of them taking on the role of the runt until I dug it out and amended the soil, they’ve all remained nearly the same size. This summer, a bush didn’t bounce back from annual pruning and has been overrun with volunteer lemon balm; an invasive herb that smells wonderful until September when it oddly shifts closer to eau de dirty feet. Today, I decided to determine the cause of the bush’s dwindling span since my mood was perfect for the occasion. I felt like hacking something to pieces, and this project offered me the opportunity to vent outwardly, rather than in my own mind.
Making my way to the bush by digging up lemon balm and turning the soil, I reached my destination ferociously mad, hot, and dripping sweat. Each shovelful drummed into a dull ache in my teeth. I’d been clenching them since the dark morning hours. Most of the night had been spent dodging nightmares and anxiously bolting awake to avoid topics my subconscious wanted to create descriptive pictograms about. It was a series of dreams from each developmental stage; stories from childhood, young adulthood, and into old lady land, every one of them dealing with a consequential and difficult ending. While I worked, I grew angrier as the snippets reorganized sequentially in my mind, trailers for movies reflecting long-gone relationships. The bush, impacted, resisted my perusal, and I fantasized about inviting a chainsaw to ease my grinding fury. The only thing saving the plant from becoming bush chips was my intractable belief in not killing something that’s minding its own business.
The shovel needed precise positioning since angles were required to not over-stress the bush, and that made for questionable footing. Breaking a bone would shift this day into a raging exclamation point. After nearly an hour, I discovered the primary reason the bush had regressed. Over the intervening two decades, a maple tree had extended and thickened its roots and was strangling the growth of the bush. Beneath the soil, it was surrounded by one-to-two-inch bands, a Jenga tower of roots crisscrossing down deep. The clench from the maple roots had reached a tipping point, and I thought about how tipping points are nearly always simultaneously out in the open and hidden. The energy of events, relationships, and timing are both easily visible and deep in the soil, slyly offering clues that something is going on while people lah-di-dah with other matters.
A conflux of many matters had been loudly and silently twisting in my soil, caging the ability to expand until life-movement had dwindled. It took this restricted bush to remind me that I’ll remain stuck and dwindling until I dig myself out. I stopped shoveling the dumb bush from Jenga expiration and took in what had risen from the earth. Silently sweating into my dirty creases, the concept wove through my mind until the shouty leprechaun gleefully handed me the plant’s name, and I guffawed.
Burning Bush.
A species likely named after the one from the bible story.
The shouty leprechaun had a metaphoric sense of humor.
Not a newsflash that my life-growth has been restricted. This is an at least, decade-long issue. Many of my coincidence-laden metaphor topics are irritatingly repetitive for the obvious reason that I haven’t figured out how to evolve out of the need for them. I’m sure the shouty gremlin would agree on that point.
The last several months had launched expected and unexpected transitions to relationships. One after another, and another, then another until I looked up from the burning bush and realized it is me that’s stuck on the edge of transitioning. While exhaustedly squeezing the shovel between Jenga bars, I visualized myself fearfully grasping onto the edge of the vast unknown that’s emblematic of a big transition […insert swears you’re comfortable reading].
After finally extracting the plant from encapsulation, I watered the burning bush in a new and expansive location. I wondered if I expanded my own wings and evolved, whether or not this time I’d fly or go splat. Even I didn’t need a metaphor to understand that evolving needs me to release the stranglehold on what was binding me in place. The exasperated leprechaun and I will have to wait and see.
I'm sure it will not surprise you to read that I am grateful (feel free to insert eye roll) to the burning bush for its potentially transformative (albeit perhaps simultaneously annoying) revelation. xoxo