Metaphors Are Like Rocks

“Won't you take me to Funkytown?”—Lipps, Inc.

There are places that seem to disappear once you leave them. Large expanses tend to be that way. Deserts are a prime example, or oceans. Any land traveled through by rail.

This phenomenon isn't confined to places. States of mind can vanish just as easily with the blink of an eye or the snap of a finger. Contentment and despair are forgotten when gone.

It's troubling to think that signposts are so movable. What we imagine to be anchors, moored to something stationary and immutable, are more like fallen tree branches that drift in a swiftly moving river.

Although the metaphor is pleasant enough, it also defies hopes and expectations. Where is the firma in terra firma?

Gaps in knowledge, gaps in space. We spend our days trying to fill them all, like so many prisoners filling countless holes with an equally irksome number of rocks. Hop on the chain gang, ladies and gentlemen, this promises to be a funky ride.

That's a limitation of metaphor. It represents the thing but is not itself the thing. It is a signpost or, as we have recently declared, a fallen tree branch drifting in a river. It moves, as we move despite our best efforts to remain still.

But stillness remains attainable. Some rare individuals can find that place in life, though most of us must wait until later, when our atoms return to the larger universe. Even then, those atoms remain in motion and our metaphor breaks again, like tree branches smashed against rocks in that river.

To overextend things, we might also suggest that those rocks get worn down by the moving water and are eventually small enough that prisoners can use them to fill holes.

Metaphors are like rocks. They break down.