Synesthesia
Synesthesia is the attributing of a sense to something that is normally associated with a different sense. For instance, darkness is defined visually by the absence of light. Here, however, the imagery transforms the sensory observance of darkness into something that is smelled rather seen:
“If darkness could have a smell, it sees like being by the creek smell dark. The trees and the sound of the water and the squishiness under feet had a dark smell to it that was nice.”
Portait of a Seedy Bar
A vivid portrait of the interior of a seedy bar in a seedy part of town is offered is probably enough to give the reader unfamiliar with this type of establishment the good sense to avoid it. Those who already find it beyond the limitations of their imagination to wonder how people are drawn to such a place will certainly not have their minds changed:
“Blinking lights ripped like domino stacks or windblow grass or a secret cipher of winking jewels, hard and round and yellow, with the wave of blinking sweeping across the top of the wide rectangular mirrors behind the bar and down their sides and under them and then the blinking lopped down between them like descending ferris wheel at some night circus.”
Memories
Because Gloria may or may not actually exist, she is painted with imagery that may or may not actually be a memory. The memories and the reality often collide to result in the combustible probability that what is reading is nothing but a lie. And if it is a lie, then what do these memories really matter:
“Gloria was hopping around the car like a sparrow so that Gloria’s mother kept saying just calm yourself girl, but Gloria said I want to jump as high as the tops of the mountains! and Jimmy said you be a mountain and I’ll be a cloud.”
A Philosophy of Life
A short description provides tangible evidence of the manner in which an unfortunate girl making a living by selling her body gets through each encounter. This imagery-laden paragraph concludes with an existential commentary on its philosophical foundation:
“For we all must build our worlds around us, bravely or dreamily, as long as we can shelter ourselves from the rain, walling ourselves in gorgeously.”
