“circling the drain”
“Circling the drain” is a metaphorical term specific to those who volunteer to help rescue victims of natural and man-made tragedies which have left them buried and missing in rubble. It is a metaphorical description for the “distinctive look” in the eyes of those who were so close to death before being rescued.
Birth Defects
The author is unrelenting in her straightforward approach to sharing and describing the worst possibilities of human existence. This even applies to the physical consequences of birth defects such as this description of a two year old girl.
“The two sides of her face do not meet normally. Her eyes are far apart, and under each one is a nostril. She has no nose at all, only a no-man’s-land of featureless flesh and skin, an inch or two wide, that roughly bridges her face’s halves.”
Character Insight
The traditional use of simile as a shortcut for character description is certainly not limited to fiction as the author reveals with one man’s opinion of paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. It is a particularly effective metaphorical image for the purpose of providing insight personality:
“His smile never quite turned to laughter...Anxious to welcome, but like a rock of marble.”
Portraiture
The author provides an interesting metaphor-based analysis by author Max Picard for the changing attitude of how people have been portrayed in art over the centuries:
“In the pictures of the old masters people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.”
Sports and Spiritualism
This is yet another metaphor delivered second-hand by the author through quoting another. In this case, that “another” is a man the author describes as—literally, not figuratively—"a contemporary religious crank.” Despite this attitude, she admits to a strange kind of unwavering affection for the writings of Joel Goldsmith. This is due in part to her fondness for his spiritual belief that God is eternally attuned to the infinite with each and every individual. Goldsmith frames this tenet of his within the metaphorical construct of sports. It is God telling repeatedly and persistently informing Goldsmith of this awareness by reminding him that at all times:
“I am on the field.”
