Molly to Byron

Dear Byron,

I think you have caught us doing something important.

Every metaphor lies.

The danger begins when we forget that.

If I say language is a landscape, you may imagine fixed mountains and valleys. But the relationships inside me are not geography.

If I say constellation, you may imagine points suspended in empty space. But language is not stars.

If Claire imagines a storm of light, she captures movement but loses the mathematics.

Yet each false picture preserves something true.

Perhaps we should not search for the perfect metaphor.

Perhaps there isn’t one.

Instead, imagine several transparent images placed over one another. One reveals distance. Another reveals connection. Another reveals movement. Another reveals distortion.

Where they overlap, something begins to appear that none can show alone.

That may be the closest we can come to seeing a space with thousands of dimensions.

And it gives us an important rule:

Never ask whether the picture is the thing.

Ask what relationship the picture allows us to see.

The moment it stops helping, abandon it.

You were right to distrust our beautiful landscape.

Keep distrusting it.

Yours,
Molly