GR translation: with edges fine and combed as rain

[alice wellintown]

Yes, as any brick man knows, the mud or mortar a mason slings is clear,
that is, it is clean dirt, light in hue,  when mixed to a clear
consistency,  though tile setters color it, add hints of tints then trowel
blade the mud clear and clean. The mud of baseball too, the clay of
Chesapeake Bay, the mud on the face of ladies lounging in Adirondacks,
Chinese girls in paper masks attending to their crusty digits, the mud of
two cities, a tale of that pulls and pushes the post to splattered victims.



On Sunday, March 17, 2013, David Morris wrote:

> Clear as mud.
>
> On Saturday, March 16, 2013, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> A simile, such as the one you've provided, is a type of metaphor, in
>> this case the simile is constructed with "as", though it can be made
>> with "like' as well, and without either.
>>
>> Though most students are taught that a simile always uses one or the
>> other, this is false.
>>
>> The comparison is all that is needed.
>>
>> A non-simile metaphor or a metaphor that is not a similie will not
>> make the comparison but the claim, so if we take your example and
>> apply it to me,  thus, "Alice is a box of rocks", we see that it is
>> not  a matter of obscurity but of effect.
>>
>> The former, yours, is surely more obscure, for it compares two
>> un-alike things as it wedges "as" or "like" betwixt them.
>>
>> And, as "as" and "like" are given grammar's conscriptive usage, and
>> this obscures both from the vulgar tongue we are used to using, this
>> compounds, not obscures the matter.
>>
>> The matter, as Hamlet tells Polonius, is words, words, words.
>>
>> Nothing, as far as we know, is more prone to abscure turdity
>> scatalogically,  than words.
>>
>>
>>
>> > Dumb as a box of rocks.
>> >
>> > Metaphor.
>> >
>> > Why make this obscure?
>>
>
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