why metaphors?

A lot of metaphors have been coming up in conversations with friends-- they seem to elusively creep in without us noticing until all of a sudden we are minutes deep into conversations about floating boats and ocean currents, staircases and tunnels, doors and windows in various states of being opened or closed. Metaphors are about talking about something without actually talking about it. They create the distance between us and what we're talking about essential to understanding it, but they also pull us back in to a place where we realize our loneliness and disconnectedness is very much connected to everything else.


Some definitions:
*A metaphor is the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity or correlation between the two.
*A metaphor is the understanding itself of one concept in terms of another.

Some shapes have been announcing themselves in my work-- a commitment to holes and clusters (wholes?). I continue to be invested in figuring out how to convey the space, shape and passage of memory. The poem I posted yesterday got me thinking again about the shape of time and all of the versions of what that could look like.