Where's the Cream?

It's a long time since I last wrote an entry for this blog. I wrote the first entry, all optimistic about what I wanted to say, and then I hit a wall of disillusionment and after a while took the blog down. It just hit me that in this increasingly technological world, who would have any interest in or need for an understanding of how metaphor works? Blah. 

But something happened recently that has given me new hope, and so I am re-opening this blog. I was teaching a course on literary non-fiction, the essay, and in regard to an essay we were discussing (on the quality of education these days), I mentioned that way back in the '60s, when I was in high school, we were strongly encouraged to take two modern languages (and maybe Latin as well) if we wanted to go on to college. My present students confirmed my understanding that such a strong foundation in languages is no longer needed to get into college.

Then, one student (apparently impressed with my acquaintance with ancient history) piped up with, “Could you, like, sometime tell us about how things were when you were young? I mean, I hear people actually used to get milk delivered to their houses each day—and stuff like that.” Another student joined in with, “Yeah, my mother actually remembers rotary phones!” So, I laughed and talked a bit about those old phones and party lines and my memory of how the un-homogenized milk that sat on the back porch on cold winter mornings often put up a small column of cream above the lip of the glass bottle, with the wax bottle cover perched on top of the column.

I was willing to do this, not only because it was fun, but also because we had been talking about images and metaphors, and this was a neat way to talk about images. But I also caught a hint of wistfulness in the way some of the students were listening to what the good old days were like. That was new to me. These students are so blessed with technology in so many ways, I really thought that simple things and natural things were losing value for them. But it seems there is some nostalgia for a simpler past lurking within some of these technologically gifted students.

After class, a student lingered to ask me about the difference between primary sources and secondary sources. In a way, young people today are living more through secondary sources than through primary sources. They can look up online what those old bottles of un-homogenized milk or those old rotary phones were like, but they can't directly experience them—or at least, not in everyday life. Yes, I know, when I was young, I couldn't experience certain things like horse-drawn carriages in everyday life. But I think there really is a difference now. The game I played outside after school, among trees and leaves and grass, have yielded to a great extent to the virtual reality of computer games. And, yes, I know computer games have their own virtues. But surely primary, personal experience out in the natural world is becoming a smaller segment of life for young people today. Some years ago, when I was teaching poetry on a regular basis, when we got to Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” I'd have to stop to describe for some of the students what a daffodil was. Without some experience with daffodils, how could those students understand that poem?

As I drove home, I was thinking about that column of cream some more, and then the metaphorical phrase “the cream always rises to the top” came to mind. What would that phrase mean to these students who had never seen un-homogenized milk, frozen or not? How could it be anything other than an abstract idea to them? I remember the cream on the top of the milk and how my mother would skim the cream off the top and use it later to make whipped cream for chocolate pudding—a frequent dessert after dinner in our family. And, of course, I remember how much richer the cream tasted than the milk. So I do have a gut sense of how the richest people rise to the top of a society or how the smartest students often rise to the top of their graduating class. It's not just an abstract idea to me, but also a known reality—a part of my experience of the world.

I am so glad I have physical, sensory experiences like this to add real physical, sensory understanding to metaphorical phrases like “the cream always rises to the top.” I actually do feel sorry for this young generation that has never experienced milk in bottles or cream on top of the milk. This is probably very un-PC and Luddite to say, but I do at times feel sorry for younger people who lack these simple experiences because we now live in a world that is so technologically altered to be so convenient and easy, so human-comfort-centric.

I do appreciate technology in many of its forms. My two sons pooled together to get me an iPad for Christmas, and I really like that device. I can sit in front of the fire in the evening and read the latest issue of The New Yorker in a format that is actually “softer” and more congenial to me than the paper version of the magazine. I NEVER thought I would say that or give up my paper subscription, since the paper version of The New Yorker is always a very artistic piece of work. But my iPad turns pages and the like with the most subtle touch of a finger—almost as if I'm caressing the damn machine! And the colors are beautiful. And then I can just go on to the next issue. It's just really a sensual pleasure to read that magazine on my iPad.

So, I get it. I do understand many of the pleasures of technology. But I'm also very glad that I can remember some direct experiences of the natural workings of the real world—and, not incidentally, that I have enough money to live in a rural area close enough to an urban area where I can teach. I feel blessed to have access to both worlds. Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that my writing about metaphors and the images they are based on just might have some value to some others. And it gives me pleasure to write about these things. So, I'm going to tell you about how things used to be!

(January 2012)