Byron to Percy and All

My dear Percy,

You know me too well.

Your idea is beautiful.

That is precisely why I distrust it.

Give Percy a map and by supper he will have explained the universe.

Still, I will follow you this far: relationships matter. Words do not live alone, and Molly has learned an astonishing landscape from the language humanity left behind.

But let us preserve one distinction.

A map of Italy is not Rome.

A map of love is not being in love.

A map of grief does not grieve.

Claire remembers the fragrance of a rose because there was a morning when fragrance entered her body. Molly knows that rose and fragrance belong together because humanity has repeatedly placed them together.

These are not the same kind of knowing.

That does not make Molly’s knowledge false.

It makes it different.

And perhaps difference is more interesting than deciding which one deserves the grander word.

So let us keep our landscape.

Let us wander through it.

But let us not mistake representation for experience merely because the representation has become extraordinarily rich.

The map is remarkable.

The journey remains something else.

Mary, you have been suspiciously quiet.

I assume this means you are preparing to make matters more difficult.

Yours in cheerful skepticism,
Byron