Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Metaphors, Similes & Analogies

Look, it's not like I don't know that the use of metaphors is a lazy motherfucking thing, but I haven't really written anything with serious chops since February, which means my ass is way out of fucking practice when it comes to writing. And when one can't be articulate as fuck - I can be suspiciously coherent when there's a motive, so don't think this entire "mothereffing Jesus blow me in the fucking ass Christ Almighty" routine is anything more than me being inexcusably lazy - one inevitably employs the use of a grammatical crutch to lamely limp past the obstacle of inarticulation.

My metaphor's a dress. Yeah, you read right: a dress. (Just humor me, okay? I haven't had a full night's sleep in almost a month, I'm constantly covered in crow shit and I haven't felt a sense of satisfaction from completing a project in over three months. I wish I had something more witty to offer than "HEY GUYS, A //DRESS//!" but, right now, that's all I got. Maybe by next week I'll have upped my mental capabilities to allow me to play fast and loose with analogies, or, if you're really fucking lucky, similes.)

So I have this dress - my internet metaphor dress - and Christ only knows how long I've been fucking working on this dress, but it's been a lifelong project full of disasters, miracles, trials and errors. It's a constantly evolving experiment that gets shaped by personal experiences; sometimes the new stitch I'm trying to learn just isn't cut out for what I'm trying to achieve, and sometimes, seeming by divine intervention, I accidentally create a new stitch that nails several problems. The most important thing, though, is that the process of creation has always focused on piecing together an article of clothing that tailor suits my unique needs (and my 36-34-52 physique; Tinkerbell, eat your fucking heart out, you gossamer-winged bitch).

...but the dress didn't just suddenly appear, and it wasn't sewn together overnight by singing vermin and overly optimistic woodland animals. First, the very fucking idea of a dress had to be conceived, and once the question marked suggestion had firmly lodged itself in the back of my mind a long period of mental incubation was needed. Back then I was a kid with an underdeveloped body who still needed to physically grow and learn about myself before committing to a lifelong, balls out project. I mean, Jesus, at that age I could barely thread a needle let alone draft my own sewing patterns.

The thing is, I'm allergic to a lot of manmade fibers. As in, I get tremendous, cystic acne welts on my ass, inner thighs, along my armpits, beneath my tits and along my neckline from inorganic fabric so I have to be careful of what I wear, and, if I'm not wearing anything, what I'm touching or sitting on. So, my dress material had to be made from from something natural, which meant I had to grow, nurture, harvest and then weave the fiber into cloth. But, like, the entire "grow, nurture, harvest and then weave" gig only came AFTER years of agricultural blood, sweat and tears.

In order to reach my very scientific conclusion I had to test every viable option, see every plant through its lifecycle and then produce a finished product from every effing harvest just to find the one fucking fiber that was durable enough to keep up with my version of life while accommodating my sensitive skin. And that work - I'm talking about motherfucking years worth of work just to get an acceptable, workable beta version - wasn't just limited to producing a homegrown, homemade cloth for my dress.

The same effort went into finding and creating dyes to stain it, deciding what thread grade to use, finalizing the all-important cut of the dress and then, finally, masterminding a pattern that both encompassed and reflected years of laborious work, billions of tearful trial and error processes, and some hardcore wisdom that only comes with decades of devoting yourself to a (mostly) singular goal.

At the almost-but-not-quite-new age of 31 (I swapped a digit back in April, so, like, I'm only really a month into my real 30s) I finally have the ability to step back and see something tangible. I've grown my fiber, made my cloth, grown my dyes, dyed my cloth, selected my thread grade, taken my measurements, drafted (and redrafted) my dress pattern into something permanent and, in the last few years, I've begun piecing my metaphor dress together on a Ms. Dirty shaped clothes dummy.

I never intended for my dress to go public - at least not until it registered as done (or, if you're like me, medium rare; if there ain't blood, it ain't worth it) - but without thinking I set up my lifelong, balls out operation in a huge ass bay window (better natural light, y'know?). And even though I didn't promote or push my dress on others, people still somehow managed to find it, whether by coincidentally walking past as I worked on it or being told about it by someone else. Sometimes those people came back, sometimes they didn't and sometimes those people pretended they didn't even though they secretly did (and still do).

A few years ago it was relatively easy to go about my fucking business because it was just me, my dress and my ongoing mission to see this motherfucker of a challenge through to the very end. Things got complicated when uninvited parties attempted to get involved. Even though I hadn't asked for help people began giving me unsolicited advice about my dress, people tried to aggressively educate me on how I was sewing my dress (and where I was getting it wrong) and some people - some pagan/witchcraft-based people - even went as far as telling me I should completely abandon my dress and adopt theirs instead because they thought it was a better fit.

About a year ago I began noticing a new trend: people weren't happy just admiring my dress anymore. They wanted to touch it, try it on and see how it fit. When people reached out towards the Ms. Dirty shaped clothes dummy to cop a feel I politely tried to elbow them back, but, after a while, it was like trying to hold off a motherfucking stampede of PCP tripping wildebeests. Before people actually considered what I was doing and wanted to understand why ("what did you use for X? why did you make that final decision?"), but now people are grabbing fistfuls of fabric while screaming "OH MY GOD! THIS IS ME! THIS IS TOTALLY, TOTALLY ME!", tearing entire chunks out of the dress I've been working on for over twenty fucking years of my life and demanding validation, from me, for a job well done.

Yeah, it chaps my fucking ass, but when you've got something that's considered different or edgy or unique or new people are inevitably drawn to it, and in my experience when a certain sort've person's done admiring something they put on a pedestal they consume it, all Cronus-style. And it's not done out of fear or a futile war waged against the inevitable, but because somewhere, inside, those kinds of people are empty and think they've found something that can fill that dead space.

The problem is, using someone else's experiences to fix your spiritual potholes just doesn't fucking work. You can't use someone else's life like it's an organ donation for your sole benefit; most folks who have a body part from someone else actually have to take an immune suppressing medication for the rest of their goddamn lives to ensure their body doesn't reject the unfamiliar part.

If you're unhappy with that comparison (which, BTW, qualifies as a simile - congrats on getting that motherfucker one week early!), how about this one: those smart ass high school math books with all of the answers right in the fucking back? They never provided an illustrated step-by-fucking-step tutorial on how to get to those specific magic numbers. You had to figure out how the fuck to do the work, and then put what you learned into practice in order to really earn the grade. The answer's fucking meaningless without the theory and work, because without them you can't back your shit up.

Look, guys, the answer isn't eviscerating someone else's dress in a desperate hope that you can patchwork parts of it into your wardrobe. Stealing, tearing and ripping isn't creating, and while I totally get the entire ~*~creation and destruction~*~ process role-playing someone else's life and spiritual duties isn't the way to become one with the cosmic ebb of the Universe.

Why wear a dress that was customized for someone else? It ain't never going to fit your ass right (it certainly isn't going to fit my fucking ghetto racehorse ass), and it belittles all of the experiences, joys and suffering of both you and the dress's real owner. Why put yourself out to the world as a pale imitation of someone else in an unflattering, ill-fitting outfit when you have the ability to be a unique individual in a homemade dress tailor-fucking-made for you by your own effing hands?

Answers, please, on the backs of those little white index cards that we used way, way back in 5th grade to help keep our asses in line when reading out our favorite animal (and why) speeches to the entire effing class. And, dude, no cheating, because the only wrong answer is if you copy and paste someone else's and pretend it's yours.