On Allusions

In our youngest and most vulnerable years as children, our first allusions are charming and generally cartoon-based.  Our parents generally understand our allusions as they control what we can see of the world.  Therefore, a child's allusions are reflective of the parent rather than the child.

Years later, as teenagers, our allusions are verbal evidence of the work we put into shaping and manufacturing our personas.  Our allusions tend to be more esoteric as we try to use them to evade our parents' understanding of the persona we labor so painstakingly to create.

Sometime in our twenties, we realize that communicating who we are shouldn't have an adjective like "painstaking" nailed to it.  We discard the persona and discover the person.  Our allusions become reflective of the person.   And we use them as tests--Who will understand this reference?  Is this person someone who I can't be real around?  Will this person be thrilled by that which thrills me? 

I've just hit my thirties.  I have no idea what happens next, but I fear and I suspect that my allusions will start to wrinkle and grey and date me.  

On Fashioning Analogies

I consider the art of analogy the number one indicator of intelligence.

In Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta, Chuck Klosterman tries to capture in analogy the differences between Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen and succeeds: 

"Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you've loved for the past ten years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at the Tastee Freez."* 

While I trust that I won't need to employ such modifiers such as "foxy" into rhetoric battle, I hope that I will be able to fashion analogies like his. 

*This analogy would, of course, explain why I would choose Blind Faith, Cream, or Derek and the Dominoes over Van Halen.  It also explains why my husband prefers the Van Halen of the David Lee Roth years.