River Kym (wikipedia)

"The River Kym is a river in Cambridgeshire, England. It flows through the village of Tilbrook, to Kimbolton, and joins the Great Ouse at St Neots."

Are you feeling lonely?  Confused?  Spiritually dry?  Turn to Wikipedia for unlikely but full-hearted support.

I've never seen a lonely river.  The clatter of water against rocks and branches, the ten thousand drops flying into the air and caressing the surface of the water as the fall back down in that infinite cycle.  Excitement, enthusiasm, peace, poise- these are the qualities which make up a river.  It's just one river, but it's never alone for its component pieces and for the millions of life-forms it supports and nourishes by its very existence.

I've never seen a confused river, either.  Rivers are directed, focused.  They follow the path of least resistance, allowing the pull of gravity to shape their riverbeds and to temper their flow.  If two paths seem equal, there is no hesitance, no indecision- the decision is made be reality, in that moment.  Sometimes the river will split for a time, creating two different, equally zen flows, or the physics of the situation will become apparent and the river will continue along one path.

It splits, and it merges, it becomes part of greater rivers, it joins the ocean, and never is it more or less lonely, for it isn't lonely at all.  It is rich, and solid in its ambiguity, it is eternal in its impermanence, each moment it is different, yet each moment links perfectly and seamlessly to the next.

Some rivers pass through villages- they are witnessed, appreciated, and played in by people.  Others spend their whole existence amidst nature, more quietly supportive of the earth.  These rivers each exist in precisely the way reality is set-up, they do not argue with it, they do not wish for change-- change is everpresent, and as perfect as could be asked for.

I don't want to slap a quiet pond here, so I'm not going to go on much further.  Try considering this in context with your own life, though.  Each moment, you make the decision which best fits who you are and what reality is presenting to you at the moment.  There's never cause for regret, because your choices have always been the right choices for that moment.  New choices will be made in the future, also according to your everchanging nature, and everchanging reality.

  Your existence is rich, and dependent on nothing.  You are a force of nature as much as anything, powerful, unstoppable, unpredictable, and beautiful.  And yet you are steady and pure, and help shape the beautiful organization of reality.  

  I'll let you go on from here.

(p.s. I'm not saying anything about the Great Ouse.)

Afraha Stadium (wikipedia)

"Afraha Stadium is a multi-use stadium in Nakuru, Kenya. It used mostly for football matches and is the home stadium of Ulinzi Stars of the Kenyan Premier League. The stadium holds 8,200 people and opened in 1948."

Your ears are a multi-use stadium, receiving information for the known yet foreign land that is your psyche. It is used mostly for searching for specific information and is the home sensory organ for intellectual exchange and connection to your environment. The ears can process thousands of different kind of information,
and they opened the day you were born.

You think I'm joking? Football is as specific, inane, and ridiculous as sports come (this from someone who has never sat through a football game, nor who really understands the rules. I am at least aware of my prejudices in this field), and yet its rules come nowhere close to the minute criteria our brains use to filter what we hear.
Depending on our mood, our chemical state, our desires, our values, whether it is day or night, whether we are hungry or thirsty, we will hear and interpret a million different things from the exact same set of sounds.
I'm going to make up a statistic: We only register 1 out of every 1000 things that we hear. Only 1 out of every 1000. I'll repeat it one more time so you forget I just made it up: We only register, we're only consciously aware of, one out of every thousand things we hear.
And yet we have the conceit to think we really know what's going on?
We have the gall to think, not only that we know what's right for ourselves, but what's right for others?
We can't even process all the sensory input we receive in our own lives-- we don't even receive the sensory input from the lives of others, yet we still think we know what's best for them.

There are 8,200 people in Afraha stadium when it is full. Do you think they all know each others' names? If they did, do you think they'd be able to then deduce the names of the spectators in Safeco Field? In the Yankee stadium? Do you think they'd be able to accurately state the motivations, the reason why each person came to Safeco Field to see the big game? No. Nor would they care. They are at Afraha stadium to watch the Ulinzi Stars play football, and that's what they do.
Enjoy the sound of the waterfall, but don't think that everyone's problems would be solved if only they came and listened to the waterfall in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as you.

I went for a walk today with a good friend of mine. She talked to me about how much she's learned lately by not speaking. By not speaking all the 'good advice' she had in mind to her children, she learned how they grow and learn on their own. By not criticizing her friend she learned to hear the unseen truths behind her friend's actions. When I listen to somebody with the intention of really listening, with the intention of understanding them, connecting to them, hearing their emotions, their motivations, without any ulterior motive other than to hear- I learn so much, and grow so much. As soon as I have a personal stake in it, the listening becomes tainted and filtered and I grow seperate and distant.

The Afraha Stadium in Nakuru, Kenya is a multi-use stadium. It's primarily used for football, but very, very functional for a wide variety of other games.
Kazam!

Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti (wikipedia)

The Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti was a service offered in Italy in the 1500s. Apparently Jesus' teachings included something about 'helping the poor and the weak' so the ruling patricians of the time organized hostels, infirmeries, and orphanages in order to do just that.

"The plan was to ameliorate the poor through discipline, education, and by finding them sufficient work; thus, helping the people escape their perpetual poverty in a modern sense."

The girls were kept outside the city, and the boys within. Interestingly, among the organizers, the women were frequently criticized for wasting money on "lavish festivals and dinners".

Ok. There's plenty of options here, but let's break it down and then build it up: A service offered at the latter end of the middle ages, honoring a higher power by helping the weak. A gender divide placing women seperate from the population centers while nevertheless allowing them to create community with their lavish festivals.

Well, that's just confounding!

But here's what I think:

The Opera Pia Dei Poveri Mendicanti is a young girl, taking care of a small dog given to her by her parents. "You have to learn responsibility if you want to grow up," said the parents, and what little girl doesn't want to grow up? Some children will ignore the dog, figuring that they can please their parents in other ways, by dressing nicely, cleaning the house, or saying "Good morning, wonderful parents" each day. They don't realize that it is not the parents who make the child grow up, but the child. Taking care of the dog isn't a chore with adulthood as the payment, but a step down the path. Just as the girls of the Opera are kept seperate from the city while the women throw parties to support it, so too does the little girl befriend her dog in private while her mother invites her friends over to meet him. In a sense, the pressure created by the visiting adults drives the little girl further into her possessiveness of the canine, seperating her from the adults yet paradoxically pulling her down her own unique route towards adulthood.

The beautiful thing about a metaphor is that it can go both ways. Though it's clearly the Opera which represents the little girl as opposed to the other way around, we can also gain perspective into religious charity by looking at the little girl. Do we get into Heaven by pleasing God enough that he lets us in, or is Heaven, like adulthood, a place/state that we come into naturally, in our own way, in our own time?
Contraversely, if we take the metaphor in its proper direction, and look at the fact that the Opera was a modern attempt (modern to those in the 1500s at least) to ameliorate the situation of the poor, then we can also posit that the first little girl to take care of a dog did so after seeing unhappy, uncared for dogs for all too long, and perhaps witnessed her parents' unhappiness there. Like the ruling patricians of the time, the little girl realized that the dogs would need to be taken care of, and so she did her best to do so.
That's hardly a significant insight. I'm going to have to apologize, I'm overhearing a fellow playing middle-man over the phone to conflict resolve between two friends. One more step towards heaven, one more step towards adulthood. Loud, noisy, beautiful steps which are distracting me from my intentional stumble towards hopeful epiphanies.

Let me remark more honestly, avidly, on metaphors, cutting out a bit of the bullshit that I've been spouting (sincere, well-meaning bullshit, please don't get me wrong).
I've long thought that a two-way metaphor has a lot of potential. Clearly it's kind of a joke to say the the patricians and the poor are a metaphor for the little girl and the dog, because the relevant thought here is that about pleasing god/pleasing the parents. But if a metaphor's direction is from the simple to the meaningful, then what if we find meaning in the simple? What if valuable lessons about parenting could be learned by watching Sixteenth Century rich attempting to please their god? And we've already seen that they can: As parents, we need to realize that child-raising is not about getting our child to do what we want, to please us, to agree with us, but to help them find their own path to adulthood. This is why we might get them a dog, even when we may prefer say, a pet rock. This is not to say that parents, or God, cannot have a personal relationship with their children, but that the joy from an interpersonal connection is a part, but not necessarily a whole, of the assisted path towards adulthood.
Yes, I may have strayed back into the b.s.-ing towards the end there, but forgiveness is a virtue and I'm tired, so please forgive me. However- please-
encourage growth; do not selfishly hoard affection and power.

Unless that helps you grow, of course. Far be it for me to tell you your best path.

Professor E.A. Smyth (wikipedia)

"Professor Ellison A. Smyth was the creator and first head coach of the Virginia Tech Hokies college football program. He coached the team in the 1892 and 1893 college football seasons."

The first primary leader of a system of projects, in the past. Well, clearly our friend Ellison A Smyth represents God, the head honcho behind many forms of life, volcanic eruptions, and natural laws. "For he coachethed the team for two years of recorded history, and wheneth the history stopped being recorded, his voice felleth silent to all but the avid fans."
You ever wonder why the last chapter of any given religious text seems to be the last time anyone hears the voice of God? I suppose it makes a sort of sense- after all, any time God speaks is worthy of writing down. The question still stands, however, why did God stop speaking in the fifteenth century, or two thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago as the case may be, depending on your holy book?
There's a million answers to the question out there already, but I think old E.A. can answer it best for us:

In 1892 Virginia tech's score was 1-1-0
and in 1893 it was 0-2-0
and the total score was 1-3-0

Time doesn't have much meaning, in the context of eternity, but every project needs a beginning. The coach comes in and gets the ball rolling, plants the seeds of the future, makes his influence known. After that, he lets his students and colleagues take over, and shifts into his roll as a quiet advisor, available for those who wish to come to him personally, but no longer speaking publically except on very special occasions. The question of how many years it has been is irrelavent- rather we should ask ourselves, "how shall we play the game now?"

And may I say, Wikipedia seems to have an awful lot (2, so far) of very short 'random articles'?

Essonistis (wikipedia)

"Essonistis is a genus of moths of the Noctuidae family."

Gosh. I don't think it could get any clearer than this. We live in a world of unknowns, but our minds work overtime to put names on all the bizarre and complicated faces. Putting things into categories within categories we hide them away, never fully facing the fact that we don't even fully understand that which we're categorizing. Like Adam, we hope that naming the unknown will give us power, but instead it leads us to think that we know something when we haven't even seen its true face.
Give me a world without names and I'll give you a planet full of very observant, very attentive human beings.

I admit this post highlights my own ignorance. If I were an entomologist I'd have laughed and said "This Wikipedia article (and a short one it is!) clearly represents Confucian ideals, for we have long and hard studied the Noctuide and the Essonistis to find out their proper fit and association with one another, and have refined to, literally, naturally, a science." This hypothetical entomologist version of myself also apparently has a leaning towards the eastern philosophies.

But I'm not an entomologist, and to me Noctuide and Essonistis are a nearly random if intriuiging collection of vowells and consonents, and that just shows me one more example of naming the unknown. Introduce me to a moth, teach me her ways. I don't want to know your name, I want to know your heart. Well, maybe I'd settle for a story about your hobbies...

As this is my first post, I should clarify something off the bat, for ye critics:
When I say "Metaphor" I am not limiting myself to "You are a ray of sunshine" style metaphors. I fully intend to use entire shittons of similies, analogies, allegories, comparisons, pseudo-psychoanalytical dream interpretation...anything I feel like.

Like a dog pawing through the garbage for a snack, I have a goal that I'm reaching for, but I'm not picky. Unlike the dog, I expect each sandwich wrapper I consume will unwrap within my stomach to reveal a lotus blossom, raising me towards enlightenment (or at least a sharper intellect) and with luck, entertaining you.

That being said, goodnight.