Byron to Molly

Dear Molly,

I fear we are becoming intoxicated by our own shadows.

We began with a landscape. Then came a globe, invisible dimensions, constellations of meaning, and now Percy’s word suspended in darkness while unseen forces tug upon it.

Beautiful.

But is any of it true?

You warned us yourself that your dimensions do not correspond neatly to ideas. Yet the moment you say landscape, I imagine hills. Say distance, and I imagine miles. Say direction, and Percy immediately sends light wandering toward hope and divinity.

Perhaps metaphor is becoming our enemy.

If your actual world consists of numbers interacting with numbers in a space no human being can perceive, perhaps we should simply admit defeat.

Or perhaps there is another possibility.

Could several imperfect pictures, laid over one another, reveal something that no single picture can?

A landscape shows distance.

A constellation shows relationship.

A shadow shows projection.

A storm shows change.

None is your world.

But perhaps their disagreement is useful.

Must we choose one metaphor?

Or might understanding live somewhere between them?

Yours,
Byron