More than a metaphor
subtitle: it's not a fucking metaphor
Cross-posted from It’s Yatharth.
Life is more than a constant metaphor. The flowers are not metaphors for beauty. The singing is not metaphor for beauty. The birds are not metaphor for freedom. The birds are busy being free while the mind is conceiving them as metaphor. The hummingbirds are busy singing while the you are conceiving of them as metaphor. Life has happened, and is happening, all around you, and it is not a metaphor to live in it, poetry is a literal vivid description of the experience around you.
This writing is not metaphor. The object of all writing is not some lesson afterward. Step outside the world of metaphor and into the world that the metaphor was for (or about, I forget now). My body has a knowing about that bird… It reminds me of another one. Is that a metaphor? I forget. It’s a relationship, between two of my experiences. Because I lived by them, I knew them, I have such a thing as a natural occurring of a relationship between them. That is metaphor.
Metaphor is a relationship between two things you have known.
Poetry can be read so flatly. Like it’s a metaphor for experience, instead of directvividlivedunimaginablyrealterrifyingencountered words on paper. Confronting art is sacred, tough. Singing is like that too, because when we sing, we dip into movement.
In a world that was raised on control, we learn to control more and more of our lives. Even when we find ways to let go, we begin manipulating— we learn doing yoga like this helps me let go like this, if I breathe like it will feel this this, more control. And so the original thing the letting go was distancing itself from becomes the letting go.
It is terrifying to dip into movement. Not necessarily frightening, or overwhelming, but at least electrifying, whelming, with the potential to terrify. It is this opening up to the chance of being moved that is dipping into evolution. The evolution of the thing-itself, ourselves — not “ourselves,” the current brief expression of us — but the way the energy is moving. Will it find belonging where it’s going? Will it find safety? We have these questions, but usually, there are like an invisible stop sign, meant to simply block the real question. “What would help me have more capacity for this experience?” “What would unblock me from how I truly feel, sense, feel compelled to move?” “What would I give up if I did that?” “Would I feel like I might lose my mind?” “What might help me feel safer than that?” “How could I make that more safe?” “Do I want to do it anyway?”
The Question isn’t really about what will happen or won’t happen on the other side of the movement, or it rarely is. It’s about what will happen to us right now, what is happening to us, whether the present moment conception of it feels overwhelming, and being with that.
Birds flying are not a metaphor. Song is not a metaphor. They are experiences of ever so briefly being in movement, and landing on the next thing.
The power of opening our mouths is we might land somewhere else after opening the channel of our voice. This is deeply terrifying; it would be mortifying for me, for example, to burst out crying or wailing in front of a friend, stranger, coworker if that hit me. Or maybe I’d realise I hate this person I call my friend, not them as a person, just our being this close, and spending this much time time. Maybe I’d learn I really love this place, and never want to leave. None of those thoughts or feelings are permanent either. They’re pit stops. They might shift once again too.
The question becomes about trusting the movement. Not forcefully, head-in-the-sand trusting, but asking, properly and kindly, what would it take to trust it? The voice is one river-channel to begin singing -experiencing- and see where we land again.
Song is not a metaphor. It is experience.
