On the Metaphorical Import of Tannins

I notice that I often latch onto a metaphor for weeks at a time, which is just about the dullest nerdy thing I can imagine anyone saying as a way of characterizing him- or herself. Not to mention that my mind’s repetitive use of a single metaphor reveals either a lack of inventiveness or a degree of obsession that likely makes an appearance in the DSM-IV.

Lately my metaphor has been tea. I’m seeing everything in terms of tea, and that’s an all right way to see things, it seems. Functional, anyway. Some days are chai and others are Earl Grey. Some people’s voices sound as if they’ve steeped too long, as if they’re overloaded with tannin.

What is the dual nature of tannin all about, anyway? Why does tea have to be so touchy? It’s too weak for the first seven and a half minutes, then too strong forever after that. I don’t believe that the perfect steep exists. Never satisfied, I’m always going to throw a wrench into its gears. Should I stumble upon what a majority consensus would call the perfect steep, I would likely take three sips, deign it too weak, and stick that tea bag back in for another minute until it was loaded with enough tannin to give my tongue a good shellacking.

This says a lot about me.

In his 1964 Playboy interview or maybe some other interview, Vladimir Nabokov said that there was no point talking about his writing process. He flipped through a stack of index cards and read several. There was a sentence about his interpretation of a particular word in Ulysses, a brief description of a teacup, a grandiose generalization about the human condition, and other things of that nature.

Maybe that’s how all our ideas have to start, as little fragments that grow on us, that develop unconsciously behind our backs. But we have to get them down on paper at just the right time, when we’re in the right frame of mind and when the ideas’re not too simple or too complex.

You see where I’m going with this. Writing is like [insert metaphor].