Metaphor is the bomb; at a minimum, it is the talisman. Metaphor immediately invokes a powerful image, a connotation, and related inferences. Through its linguistic iconography, metaphor efficiently conveys the reader beyond the flat world where the pencil drawings of introductory remarks slowly sketch their outlines of the dialogic landscape. Metaphor delivers us quickly into the beautiful, full-color relief of a well-defined and fully furnished three-dimensional environment that serves linguistically as a virtual reality in which subsequent exploration, negotiation, and dialectical navigation may all safely transpire.