After four days of using linking qualities to find an effective source domain, we now switch it around. The prompt is the source domain, and you will use a linking term to find an interesting target. In other words, what could the prompt be a metaphor for? For today and tomorrow you will have a choice of linking words before you take the reigns.
Source Domain: Deep-Sea Diver Possible Linking Qualities: Totally immersed / Supported by a lifeline / Surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape Target Domain: ___
So firstly, pick a linking quality. Then ask yourself what else has that quality. Then write about this thing using the language of “deep-sea diver”.
Death bed patient - supported by lifeline - Deep sea diver
He lies in the adjustable bed, connected to the surface by a lifeline plugged into a boat whose radio gives a constant BEEP BEEP BEEP, but the interval between the dins is a little further each time. The adjustable bed is now his underwater propulsion vehicle, it’s propellers leave a vortex of IV tubes trailing behind. His wetsuit offers no protection from the pressurized cold due to the untied opening in the back. The depth gauge on the heart rate monitor sinks lower and lower. Oxygen is delivered through the mask vacuumed uncomfortably to his face, but the taste of sanitized plastic fades. Suddenly, he is free of his gear in an unfamiliar ocean, floating naked. A line of light connects him to his body. A black robed squid floats by, using its sharp beak to slice through the final tether connecting him to surface life. His soul floats freely into the beautiful, dreaded, wide-open, welcoming inky darkness.
Weightlessness takes over, as minutes turn to hours. The pushing and pulling of the current held steady by experience. Light bouncing off schools of fish, staccato flashes of fluid movement. The modal droning of the breathing apparatus clearing the divers head, allowing them to paint the colours of their mind onto the blue canvas. Before finally swimming back to the surface and seeing sun, disconnecting them from the freedom of total immersion.
Deep-Sea Diver - Immersed - Knowledge
He dives into the library, getting deeper and deeper into unexplored avenues, an ocean of lost and hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. One particular book shimmers in the corner of his eye, he picks it up and finds it submerged under a layer of sandy dust, undisturbed for years if not solitary decades. He becomes totally immersed in his discovery, and realises that it would be all too easy to drown in the knowledge found down here, transfixed in Atlantis and forgetting to come up for air.
This is a great metaphor. The floating feeling of being lost in the piano is captured really nicely, and then the coming back to the surface sensation - can relate to that!
Oh wow - very deep (if you’ll pardon the metaphor). The opening mapping works nicely - really clever seeing the wetsuit as the hospital gown, and generally all the hospital equipment fits the diving equipment very well. The death is beautifully described, very sensory-based, very peaceful in this ocean of “inky darkness” you have described. Very well done!
Really good sensory langauge, weightlessness, push and pull of current, staccato flashes (really like that one), droning, and the resurfacing. Really great.
This is really cool, you really captured the SCUBA feeling and have great descriptions of the library. I love the internal tension at the end, the desire to remain even though it would be harmful. That is a strong feeling.
Deep Sea Diver -Unfamiliar Landscape -Psychedelics
With slow and steady breath, I inhale deeply, transitioning to another world, unlike my own.
I sink to the bottom of consciousness, and the curtain opens to another landscape. My eyes readjust to the symphony of colors and wavy forms, as though frequency is constantly shifting. A gradient of royal blue to emerald green swirls around me as I see creatures that seem familiar, but I can’t remember seeing outside this weighty liquid universe encompassing me. I feel the bubbles float up and tickle me behind my eyes, and feel a sense of heavy euphoria and wonder. I close my eyes and check my breathing. I feel the urge to cry at the beauty I am experiencing, and feel so small in comparison to it’s vastness. I am weightless.
Given this is a topic notoriously difficult to capture using words, I think this metaphor has been a really effective vehicle to have a crack at it. You really have taken us to this other world, and the water represents that sense of fundamentally changing the medium of experience. “I feel the urge to cry at the beauty I am experiencing” is telling us instead of showing, and consequently I don’t think anything is lost by its removal. The colours, the forms, the sensations are all brilliantly sensory - well done!
This is really a good piece. The deep inhalation allows us to feel our lungs expanding and the concomitant pressure. The eyes readjusting is really great because it allows us to have the visual and also that weird feeling in your eye when it happens. There are some parts that get a little tell-y. The one that jumps out to me is “I am weightless”. It is a fine conclusion, but does not invite us to feel it. What are some things that would? Words like “float” or “Glide”; things like “gravity dissipates around me”… that kind of thing draws us in to your world a little more. Great job!
Target Domain: First Job
Linking Quality: Surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape
Source Domain: Deep-sea diver
I slowed my breathing as I hovered in the sickness of weightlessness, hesitant to dive into darkness of the unknown. I pushed forward into the gloom and took inventory of my surroundings. Clawed hands clicked away among miniature towers of black coral. Hidden inhabitants slowly crawled out, no doubt to investigate the disturbing, heavy breathing. My throat tightened and I forgot the cardinal rule, breathe. I kicked forward into the pressing depths beyond the cool shock of the thermocline and release a slow inaudible stream of anxiety behind. I swim through the labyrinth taking care to avoid any routes with predators cresting over the cubicles.
Reading these source-target exercises is one of my favourite parts of this community, and this is another brilliant example of completely bringing a description to life with a sensory-rich metaphor! It’s a difficult balance to keep the camera on the literal thing you are describing (the job) whilst being coloured by the source domain, without pulling us actually into the source domain, if that makes any sense. For example, my personal style would be to add a literal word after coral - coral what? Coral folders, paperwork, cubicles? I love the organic bodily senses going on, the weightlessness and the darkness give us a strong sense of your emotional state, as with the pressure of the depth and air-bubbles of anxiety - really lovely stuff Cosmo well done!