Breakfast with Pandora

Small triumph cinnamon buns - II

It is Christmas, and to some that means the baby Jesus, and/or the light returning, and/or the smell of spruce, and/or red and green tartan skirts. To me it means all that and cinnamon buns.

Last year at this time I committed myself to opting out of the self-fulfilling prophecy of doom I had attached to the making of these buns, and by extension, to the self-fulfilling prophecy of doom that has often ruled my life, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

This year the buns rose slower than normal, and they baked slower than normal, but when they came out they were fine.

And I am happy to say I found my digital camera in time to take a picture of the results.

Praise God, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

And my new favorite actress is... (spoilers!)

Audrey Tautou, the best thing about the exposition-fest that is the Da Vinci Code movie.

Thanks to Kelly for spurring me to watch the movie, which came out last month on DVD. The premise, that Christ married Mary Magdalene and had a child by her, thus beginning a "royal blood" (sang real = san greal = Holy Grail) line of descendents all the way down to the unsuspecting 21st-century police cryptographer Sophie Neveu (Tautou), captivated me the way any good princess story should. It is as beautiful and romantic as Audrey's impossibly enormous brown eyes.

The screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, admits that the movie is not really about the Da Vinci Code, but about Sophie as Cinderella:

For me, the most interesting thing was the story of this girl, this girl who turns out to be far more than she ever imagined she was, who is on a search for identity. Now, from a movie-writing point of view, that's very fertile, that's something to get your hands in. It may in fact not be anywhere near as panoramic or epic a starting place as many of the other facets in the book, but for me, that was the most compelling part, the most human part.

Good thing. I have not read the DaVinci Code, and during the movie it was a tough job trying to detangle all the history and the secret history involved with the Opus Dei group (bad Catholic guys) and the Priory of Scion (good guys and gals), for which a knowledge of the Christian and Gnostic Gospels, early Church history, medieval European history, Gnostic and Orthodox theology, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment is de rigeur.

The central question about which the two groups are fighting seems to be the divinity of Christ. If he was divine, then Christianity is true, and if not, then it isn't. If it ever comes out that Christ got married and had a child, he couldn't have been divine, and all this Church stuff is nothin' but hooey.

Mmmhmm.

So we must ignore a central tenet of orthodox Christianity, which is that Jesus was human in every way, including in his reproductive organs. He was, so this theology states, perfectly capable of begetting children-- and also divine. That's what makes him so special.

So, that controversy over, let's return to Audrey.

Almost ten years ago, after the death of Princess Diana, I published an op-ed stating that there are fewer more captivating stories than that of the hidden princess, the worthy woman who is revealed in all her splendor at the end. We all knew that the dazzlingly beautiful and golden-hearted Diana had to be a princess when the paparazzi found her working as a preschool teacher with the light shining through her skirt (don't have that picture; this will have to do).

Audrey Tautou plays a woman whose first act upon appearing onscreen is to rescue a man she's never met. Throughout the film, she has several other princessy roles to fulfill, including

• telling the story of her girlhood being raised by a mysterious grandfather
• astonishing Tom Hanks with her cryptography skills
• being told by Ian McKellen she has a lovely smile
• charming a young Londoner into using his cell phone to Google "Pope"
• smashing a bad man's head on the hard pavement of a church (twice)
• Seeing herself at the age of four as if she was another adult in the room
• being held at knifepoint and gunpoint
• holding a gun in a menacing position
• figuring out, beshawled, what she will do with her newfound status as royal heir to Christ's (hidden) kingdom
• being kissed on the forehead by Tom Hanks even though she gives him the OK sign for a kiss on the lips

Code author Dan Brown rightly credits Tautou's combination of toughness and vulnerability as that which wins the audience to her. She has ample Gallic self-esteem and smarts, while at the same time allowing herself now and then to be the damsel in distress. Now that's a princess.

Today I was at the mall, Christmas shopping for my daughter, who through an unusual set of circumstances has preferred sleeping in one of my (to her, oversized) white t-shirts for the past several months. On a hunt for a set of luxurious and dignified pajamas, I came across any number of frilly pink shifts with the word "Princess" emblazoned across the front.

You can always tell a wannabe when she has to announce it to the world.

In the end, I found my quarry, and there is no "princess" anywhere to be found on the top. She would not tolerate such a thing. That is because she already knows that her royal status is hidden in the heart of the one who loves her. She will reveal herself in all her splendor at the proper time.

Harry Potter, Greek hero?

The main thesis of my manuscript, The Power of Greek Heroes, is that by being outstanding AND unable to return to a settled family situation, Greek heroes helped their ancient audience better to appreciate their own settled life.

In chapter 2, a definite work-in-progress, I contrast the depiction of these heroes with American heroes, who either seem to function just fine without family, or are able to rejoin family at the end of their adventure. My sense, therefore, is that Americans idolize adventure much more than ancient Greeks did.

(For new readers: I do not subscribe to the theory that All Myths Are The Same Underneath It All)

I remember especially the Hercules TV show (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) with the under-muscled Kevin Sorbo playing the title role. He would leave his beautiful wife Deianeira (Tawny Kitaen, who currently has her own real-life troubles with family) in the morning, beat up some monsters, and then be back for dinner at the end of the day.

But that's just one example. How much can I generalize my perception that American heroes make it back to family? Thinking out loud, I proceed.

Good stories have variety, so there must be a range of outcomes, mustn't there? The Incredibles does a wonderful job of exploiting the tension between outstanding lives and family by showing us a superhero family. Pixar made an understandable American choice by choosing not only to keep the family together through all the twists and turns, but to strengthen it. The underlying message that it takes a set of heroes to sustain a loving family-- and likewise that family life is itself extraordinarily difficult to sustain-- resonates deeply with me, but it is much more optimistic than that of most Greek tales.

But what about the most recently captivating hero for kids, Harry Potter? His creator, J.K. Rowling, is British, so we might expect some shadings of difference between her sense of mythology and ours, but then again, British and American cultures share many affinities, and large numbers of Americans adore whatever comes from the UK.

Harry begins his extraordinary life in a Greek or at least family-less way, having lost his father and mother in infancy and almost his life as well. The Dursleys house and feed him, but badly, and he longs to escape from their bullying. So far, so Greek.

At the Hogwarts boarding school, Harry meets Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, who become like brother and sister to him, with fights and disagreements included. Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts, develops into a kind of father, the gentle giant Rubeus Hagrid into a beloved uncle. Harry is able to conduct his adventures in this foster family context, not only returning to them but benefiting from their help and cooperation.

Rowling is effectively able to remind her audience that Harry's psyche is scarred by the loss of his parents, and that this loss haunts him continually. Yet here there is still a hint of the parents' presence, through a kind of hero cult. As Harry remembers his parents, they are able to help him. The spectacular Patronus charm, for example, allows Harry to summon a glowing white stag that channels the protective power of his father (patronus is derived from Latin pater, "father").

We are now waiting for the seventh and final installment of the series, in which it is to be expected that Harry will resolve his teenage hero dilemma of whether he is a monster, like Voldemort, or a savior, as he has been billed by the wizard community from the beginning-- or perhaps an ordinary, settled human being, as he longs to be.

As parallel for Harry we might bring Perseus to bear, one of the few Greek heroes with a happily-ever-after ending to his story. He began his life without a father (Zeus is always leaving single mothers in his wake), was locked into a chest with his mother and thrown into the sea by his grandfather Acrisius, and later undertook a perilous quest to kill the monstrous Medusa in order to prove himself as a man. Perseus, like Harry, had considerable help from those around him, including the gods Athena and Hermes; they gave him invaluable information and equipment, including winged sandals and the sickle that he used to kill the Medusa.

On his way back, with the Medusa's head in his shoulder bag, Perseus rescued the princess Andromeda from a sea serpent; they later married. Harry has his own Andromeda, Ginny Weasley, whom he rescued in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and Ginny's romantic attachment is further developed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. More to come, certainly, in the seventh book.

Perseus' happy end might prophesy something of Harry's. Coming-of-age stories naturally take children out of their birth families, as they enter adolescence and the challenge of becoming adults. I don't see Harry failing to negotiate this trial, Icarus-style, not after all this six books' worth of rigamarole.

If the parallel holds, we'll see Harry overcoming his villain. Perseus returned and saved his mother from the evil king, Polydectes, then managed to kill his grandfather, Acrisius, though accidentally, with a throw from a discus that went awry.

The next movie is set to release on July 13, 2007.

An Introvert's Season

Terror and desperation rule these days.

No, I'm not talking about Iraq; I'm talking about Christmas.

It just seems like a thousand extroverted shopping addicts have hijacked this season and, with the full complicity of the retail industry, convinced the rest of us that there is a such a thing as a must-have Christmas gift.

What is better for a people person than to lean in to the milling multitude of Christmas-shopping humanity, surrendering to the roaring, foam-flecked roll and break of sensory stimulation, from lights, to food, to smooth gift-wrapping, to furry coats, to prickly needles on pine trees, to potpourri burners, to "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas," incessantly, everywhere? For someone who energizes from being in crowds, it's the most wonderful time of the year.

No terror or desperation there.

But the twenty-five percent of us (estimated) who curl up into a ball at the thought of Christmas parties filled with inane conversation, overrun malls with no parking and a billion gifts that all scream "She'll hate it," and the strains of "I'm Gettin' Nuttin for Christmas," everywhere, incessantly-- all of these folk are eligible to be recruited in a War on the Holidays.

We have met the Grinch, and he is Us.

Here is the holiday season I aspire to: Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas. I'm not evangelical about this; I offer my appreciation only for the edification of shy people and other sensitive folk, who might understand. America is a nation of extroverts and the economy, apparently, is the better for it. So shop on, seventy-five percent.

Advent is a time that starts four Sundays before Christmas, the week after Thanksgiving or that next week. It is a time of quiet waiting, of preparing our hearts for the arrival ("advent") of the Christ child.

Advent is a time of lighting candles, nightly Bible readings with the family gathered, opening of windows on Advent calendars. The Christmas tree should be bought and decorated as close to Christmas Eve as possible. Advent is best observed with quiet twilight walks followed by suppers of soup and homemade bread. Christmas shopping should be done reverently, preferably finished in one weekend, and the presents secreted in a closet.

Advent is also a time for restraint. No Christmas music, no carols before Christmas Eve (except O Come O Come Emmanuel). No candy canes, no fudge, no hot chocolate, no cinnamon buns, no roast beast until Christmas Eve.

The symbolism here is pregnancy. Mary was pregnant with Christ. We are waiting, as she did, for a holy birth.

If you observe Advent properly, you will have something proper to celebrate on Christmas Eve. I love a big, showy midnight mass, with the choir going all out. Christmas morning? Eggs, sausage, cinnamon buns, wrapping all over the place, a drive to family for a big party, rare roast beast and Yorkshire pudding.

Twelve days is plenty, plenty to celebrate the wondrous coming of Christ into the world. Space out Christmas gifts so that the kids can open one on each of the following eleven days of Christmas. Go to parties. Go caroling. Write Christmas cards and send them. On Epiphany, January 6, the day when the Three Kings arrive at the stable bringing gifts for the Baby Jesus, Christmas is officially done. You may take down the tree now.

To note: I have never quite had the full enjoyment of this ideal. If you are an introverted idealist, Christmas is bound to be disappointing in some way.

I told an extroverted friend of mine I hated Christmas after she sent me one of those animated Christmas emails with Santa and the reindeer singing. She said that some years she had a "hard time getting in to it." Then I visited her house. A 12-foot tree shimmering with silver. Christmas pottery lined up on the kitchen bar ("You have to admit the reindeer is cute"). Swags of lights and electric candles. Victorian bears dressed up in red and green. Mounds of embroidered pillows.

I probably would be better off spending Christmas on an Arctic ice floe with a prayer book and a pan of fudge. Then I could have all the solitude I want, plus a white Christmas. What could be better?

Stranger Than Fiction: A little postmodern resurrection for you

Well, next I was going to write a post about the glamour of grammar, inspired by Grumpy Old Bookman.

But then I saw Stranger Than Fiction, and figured the glamour could wait.

You've got to ask yourself, how did this picture get made? A story about a man whose life is being narrated by an unseen voice, which announces that the man is about to experience an "imminent death"? A man who goes to a literary critic for advice on how to forestall his death? Much literary dialogue about literary theory? The unseen voice who turns out to be a...

But no. No spoilers. Not with this one.

Suffice to say, this just isn't regular Hollywood myth.

Yes, it made me cry. At several points.

But it isn't a sad story at all. It's that extremely familiar Hollywood motif about death and resurrection, hijacked from the Gospels, this time (as often) from John.

A beautiful, postmodern, amazing, creative, innovative, non-Hollywood, non-Hollywood myth death and resurrection.

This past Sunday a young man preached that one way to get closer to God was, yes, to come to church every Sunday. He said, "Just think. The ancient Romans tried to stamp out Christianity. They tried everything: torture, ostracism, killing in the arena. To think-- that the only thing that they had to do to get people to stop going to church was to invent shopping malls, football, hunting, and golf."

It got a laugh. It had some truth to it.

Of course, the Romans did invent all those things. Not everything specifically, but the Romans had just as many diversions as we have today.

The reason people went to church back then was because it meant life to them. It meant their entire lives. You go where life is. I think some Jew from Nazareth once said, "Where your heart is, there is your treasure also."

The reason why many of us don't go to church nowadays is because we already have 2,000 years of resurrection embedded in the culture. The Romans didn't have that. Watch the HBO show Rome, which mostly gets it right, to see how desperate those times could be.

We don't reach out for resurrection in church because it is already in our very being. It is in our DNA. It is even in cool, non-traditional, twenty-first century movies.

I'd be selling this movie short, however, if I said it was only about resurrection. It's also about Becoming Who You Are (cheers, party horns, paper hats, confetti), The Deep Heart Beauty of Storytelling (gorgeous strings swelling, flock of birds on wing, frosted cupcake), and Laughin' and Grief (Alice in Wonderland).

It's also about Dustin Hoffman's feet (or his stand-in's feet: I vote for the stand-in, but I think I may be wrong).

It's about Will Farrell's Oscar-worthy performance (standing ovation).

It's about Maggie Gyllenhaal's everything (yes, please).

It's about Emma Thompson's dignity (Hello? Hello? Miss Thompson? I love your work, Miss Thompson! Miss Thompson? Could I get an auto--? I adored you in Dead Again. Hello?)

It's about Living Your Life As If Each Day Is Your Last. Which, I think, is a beautiful discipline, one that I aspire to, one which takes considerable bravery, but one which, after I see a movie like this, seems oddly within my grasp.

The best Christmas movie of the season. Or is that Easter, Anna Pascal?

The archeology of the Lost Colony

Last Saturday, walking from the parking lot to the football stadium, I struck up a conversation with a guy in a ball cap and sweatshirt. We discussed the game and our connections to the team we were rooting for, the Manteo Redskins. I told him I was a Latin teacher who beamed classes via the Information Superhighway to the coastal North Carolina high school.

He told me he was head of excavations at the site of the Lost Colony.

I would've liked to pick his brain for the rest of the game, which did not end happily for the Redskins. But we went our separate ways, and I had to be content with the gleanings of Google, and the recent newspaper article featuring my football acquaintance that gives an update on the research.

The Lost Colony is part of cherished North Carolina lore. In the late sixteenth century-- twenty years before the founding of Jamestown, Virginia-- a British expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to establish a colony on Roanoke Island. Twice the inhabitants there vanished without a trace-- once a garrison of 15 men, once a group of 117 men, women and children.

No one has satisfactorily determined what happened to these people, but that hasn't stopped stories from cropping up around the mystery, including a dramatization ("The Lost Colony," written by NC playwright Paul Green) that attracts thousands of tourists a year to Manteo.

Many have believed for a long time that the colonists were absorbed into a Native American population-- especially since the word CROATOAN was found carved into wood at the site, and the Croatoan (now called Croatan) was a known indigenous people.

For a variety of reasons you can read about (and here) no contemporary search ever turned up British colonists living among Native Americans, but the Lumbee tribe, a Europeanized group living in Robeson County, North Carolina, is a leading candidate.

A wonderful novel, Nowhere Else on Earth, about the Lumbee was written in 2000 by Josephine Humphreys.

I have only visited Manteo once, but it inspired a poem. I consider it, with Asheville, among the most spirits-charged places in the state. I don't know what it is, but it just feels different.

Another word on the ordinary

At one of Lee's blogs, lowebrow, a post on how the word "brilliant" is becoming overused, and how we thirst to have our children and ourselves recognized as extraordinary, when in fact we can't all be.

Lee's protagonist Jesse in Mortal Ghost, her online novel, is nothing but extraordinary. If I remember correctly, he is:

a touch healer
a psychic
impossibly well read
impossibly athletic
(coining this now) an autopyrotechnos (spontaneous cumbustor)

among other things-- you'll want to read Chapter 21 to see at least one other thing, and a new direction for the story. But Jesse's overarching ambition is to be as unnoticeable as possible, and the central tension in the first twenty chapters of the book is whether this extraordinary person can fit in happily to a family-- given how his gifts destroyed his previous one.

In this Jesse is very Greek, in a way like Heracles, who, according to some versions of his life, bookended his magnificent feat of completing the 12 Impossible Labors with the murders of his first and second wives. Heracles, the most outstanding person who cannot ever escape his outstandingness.

Jesse's question is the question of all teenagers-- do I fit in society? For the first eleven or twelve years of one's life the question is moot. Of course one fits, by default, into a family of some kind.

But then, at puberty, a new inevitability opens up: impending adulthood, and the need to find one's place as a free-standing member of the community. It was in the summer of my ninth year that I realized, overthinker that I was, that I only had so many endless summers of baseball, hopscotch, and The Match Game at 2:30 PM every afternoon on Channel 7. I remember mentally ticking off the years: 10, 11, 12. Then I would be growing up. I would be like my friends' older siblings, writing messages to the opposite sex in yearbooks. "I'm sorry I treated you bad this year."

Recently I saw The Dead Poets Society again after many years. "Seize the day, boys," Robin Williams' character says to his students, "Make your lives extraordinary."

Was that when the current American craze to have everyone stand out began? Yuppies, another word for baby-boomers in their early 30's, were having children in the 80's, the decade of Dead Poets. They popularized the kindergarten that teaches French and the overscheduled child. They became famous for wanting "The Best" in every category for themselves and their children.

Currently The Disney Channel, a favorite of my daughter, runs a 24/7 dream factory for its viewers. It constantly features children who go for what they want, even if it is just collecting plastic insects.

For one character in Dead Poets Society, following his dream becomes a nightmare. His father wants him to become-- what is it, a lawyer, I think-- but he wants to be an actor. He plays Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, then ends his life like Heracles, unable to tolerate the gap between his outstandingness and his family.

I don't know if this cultural phenomenon will make any difference in the future. Maybe people will migrate to ordinaryness as they get older. Maybe, like Lee, they will use their extraordinary talents in a modest, wise way. Or maybe more and more of them will become frustrated at the impossibility of all of us realizing our own bliss, and some negative consequence will ensue.

In any case, what with global warming and nuclear proliferation, let's hope the world itself survives long enough for all us wannabe heroes to see ourselves through.

photo: here

Myth and community: Hector's run

The latest incarnation of my book on mythology is provisionally entitled The Power of Greek Heroes, and its premise is that the ancient Greeks loved their heroes-- extraordinary, outstanding characters in extraordinary, outstanding circumstances-- because the heroes emphasized the supreme desirability of ordinary life.

In other words, if you're a Greek hero, you have a bumper sticker on your car that says, "I'd rather be at Sunday dinner." And the crowd goes wild.

Traditionally, we teach our children that heroes have exciting lives that children should want to emulate. In the paper just the other day I read a story about a 4-year old child who responded to home invaders by dressing in his Power Rangers suit and waving a plastic sword at them. "I made the bad guys go away," he is quoted as saying.

It's nice to be able to be a hero, then get tucked into bed and have Mom read a story to you.

Ancient Greek heroes seldom if ever had that luxury. They stood outside, in physical, mental and psychic neverlands, unable to rest in a secure and predictable place.

Hector, the second-greatest hero in the Trojan War, seems to defy the odds, however. As a Trojan, he is within the circle of community as he defends his city from behind Troy's famous "massive ramparts." He is a member of the most important family in the city, the crown prince and son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba; he has a wife, Andromache, and an infant son, Astyanax (which means "Lord of the City"). His brother is Paris, who started the whole mess of the war by stealing Helen from Menelaus. When Hector comes home from a hard day's work, he is greeted just as is every working stiff who ever punched a clock:

"How was your day, honey?"

Except Hector punches Greeks.

There comes a point in Hector's life, however, when he realizes he has to choose between being a hero and being a family man-- that there is no way, in fact, to do both. It is near the end of the Iliad, after Hector has killed Achilles' best friend, Patroclus, and taken Achilles' armor (which Patroclus was wearing). It is also after Achilles, mad with lust for revenge, has cut a swath through dozens of men to get at Hector himself.

Hector knows that Achilles is better than him, and will kill him. It's not because Achilles is only vulnerable in his heel. In the Iliad, Achilles is the best of the best. There's no upset victory to be hoped for.

Hector also knows that if he runs from Achilles, he will be shamed, his reputation will be tarnished, and his status as best of the Trojans will be in jeopardy.

Hector wants to go back to his family and be safe, and he also wants to have a fine reputation, which leads to a kind of immortality-- if people alk about you after you die, that is living on in this world.

So, the hero's decision is...

No decision.

Instead of standing and facing Achilles, or going inside the walls, Hector chooses to run from Achilles along the outside perimeter of Troy's fortifications. He runs, and Achilles runs behind him. Hector, who cannot choose between inside and outside, inscribes the border between inside and outside. He is, almost literally, on the fence.

Here is one of the sights they see along the way:

They came to the wellsprings of eddying
Scamander, two beautiful pools, one
Boiling hot with steam rising up,
The other flowing cold even in summer,
Cold as freezing sleet, cold as tundra snow.
There were broad basins there, lined with stone,
Where the Trojan women used to wash their silky clothes
In the days of peace, before the Greeks came.
They ran by these springs, pursuer and pursued--
A great man out front, a far greater behind...

(Lombardohhhh...)

What a perfect image of two opposites, nature and culture, melding-- the natural hot and cold water taps of the Scamander, conveniently placed, perfect for doing laundry, the fantasy of every person in the ancient world who ever lugged water or boiled it over a minutely-tended fire. It is as if Homer is saying, "Yes, sometimes you can have it both ways. But not this time, Hector."

Completing his third circuit of the walls, Hector believes he has found a way out when he sees his brother Deiphobus at the gate, come to help him:

"Deiphobus,  you've always been my favorite
Brother, and again you've shown me why,
Having the courage to come come out for me,
Leaving the safety of the wall, while all
Priam's other sons are cowering inside."

Here is another opportunity for Hector to meld his warrior ambitions with family life: instead of facing Achilles alone (as Achilles faces him), he unites with a member of his family.

Except that Deiphobus is not Deiphobus, but Athena in disguise. Athena is the goddess, among other things, of supporting decisive warriors. And also the goddess of tricking indecisive warriors.

When Hector's first spear misses, he asks "Deiphobus" for another. Athena has since disappeared. Hector realizes the trick, and after Achilles mortally wounds him, he shows his dedication to his community:

"I beg you, Achilles, by your own soul
And by your parents, do not
Allow the dogs to mutilate my body
By the Greek ships. Accept the gold and bronze
Ransom my father and mother will give you
And send my body back home to be burned
In honor by the Trojans and their wives."

Achilles, pure warrior (and not family man) that he is, refuses:

Don't whine to me about my parents,
You dog! I wish my stomach would let me
Cut off your flesh in strips and eat it raw
For what you've done to me...

Yet Achilles will finally recognize the importance of parents-- another story for another time.

Literally hemorrhaging

The other day on the radio I heard someone say that the United Auto Workers were "literally hemorrhaging members."

Literally? I thought.

If a hemorrhage-- by definition an unimpeded flow of blood-- is literal, the only thing that can flow is blood. "Literal," from the Latin littera, letter, means "to the letter," or "actually, really, truly, with a one-to-one correspondence."

Then I googled "literal hemorrhage" and noted that the phrase is used in a very narrow semantic field: you can literally hemorrhage people-- customers, students, union members-- and money, but not tomato soup, vodka, or hair spray. As people have blood, and are sometimes considered the "life blood" of an organization, and as money is what gives life to organizations, "hemorrhage" is an appropriate metaphor for a group losing effectiveness, productivity, or viability.

I would be in favor of saying "We are metaphorically hemorrhaging money." But that lacks punch. You want to have that "literally" in there to emphasize how serious the situation is.

What about "We are hemorrhaging money," and take out the adverb completely? Hey, less is more, as everyone knows-- well, not everyone.

Maybe we should just change the definition of literally:

literally (adv.) [lih-tuhr-uh-lee] Lat. littera, letter. 1. Truly, really, and to a great degree, but only in a metaphorical sense.

Then I looked up literally on dictionary.com, and found they already had changed the definition:

4.in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

—Usage note: Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration”: The senator was literally buried alive in the Iowa primaries. The parties were literally trading horses in an effort to reach a compromise. The use is often criticized; nevertheless, it appears in all but the most carefully edited writing [emphasis mine]. Although this use of literally irritates some, it probably neither distorts nor enhances the intended meaning of the sentences in which it occurs. The same might often be said of the use of literally in its earlier sense “actually”: The garrison was literally wiped out: no one survived.

Those dictionary guys are literally up to date.