WEBVTT

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When we talk, sometimes
we say things directly.

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"I'm going to the store,
I'll be back in five minutes."

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Other times though, we talk in a way
that conjures up a small scene.

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"It's raining cats and dogs out," we say,

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or "I was waiting
for the other shoe to drop."

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Metaphors are a way
to talk about one thing

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by describing something else.

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That may seem roundabout, but it's not.

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Seeing and hearing and tasting
are how we know anything first.

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The philosopher William James
described the world of newborn infants

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as a "buzzing and blooming confusion."

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Abstract ideas are pale things

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compared to those first bees and blossoms.

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Metaphors think
with the imagination and the senses.

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The hot chili peppers in them
explode in the mouth and the mind.

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They're also precise.

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We don't really stop
to think about a raindrop

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the size of an actual cat or dog,

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but as soon as I do,

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I realize that I'm quite certain
the dog has to be a small one --

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a cocker spaniel, or a dachshund --

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and not a golden Lab or Newfoundland.

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I think a beagle might be about right.

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A metaphor isn't true or untrue
in any ordinary sense.

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Metaphors are art, not science,

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but they can still feel right or wrong.

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A metaphor that isn't good
leaves you confused.

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You know what it means
to feel like a square wheel,

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but not what it's like
to be tired as a whale.

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There's a paradox to metaphors.

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They almost always
say things that aren't true.

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If you say, "there's
an elephant in the room,"

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there isn't an actual one,

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looking for the peanut dish on the table.

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Metaphors get under your skin
by ghosting right past the logical mind.

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Plus, we're used to thinking in images.

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Every night we dream impossible things.

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And when we wake up,
that way of thinking's still in us.

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We take off our dream shoes,

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and button ourselves into our lives.

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Some metaphors
include the words "like" or "as."

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"Sweet as honey," "strong as a tree."

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Those are called similes.

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A simile is a metaphor
that admits it's making a comparison.

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Similes tend to make you think.

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Metaphors let you feel things directly.

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Take Shakespeare's famous metaphor,

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"All the world's a stage."

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"The world is like a stage"
just seems thinner, and more boring.

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Metaphors can also live in verbs.

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Emily Dickinson begins a poem,

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"I saw no way --
the heavens were stitched --"

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and we know instantly

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what it would feel like
if the sky were a fabric sewn shut.

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They can live in adjectives, too.

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"Still waters run deep,"
we say of someone quiet and thoughtful.

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And the deep matters
as much as the stillness and the water do.

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One of the clearest places
to find good metaphors is in poems.

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Take this haiku by the 18th-century
Japanese poet Issa.

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"On a branch floating downriver,
a cricket singing."

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The first way to meet a metaphor
is just to see the world through its eyes:

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an insect sings from a branch
passing by in the middle of the river.

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Even as you see that though,

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some part of you recognizes in the image

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a small portrait of what it's like
to live in this world of change and time,

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our human fate is to vanish,
as surely as that small cricket will,

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and still, we do what it does.

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We live, we sing.

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Sometimes a poem
takes a metaphor and extends it,

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building on one idea in many ways.

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Here's the beginning
of Langston Hughes' famous poem

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"Mother to Son."

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"Well, son, I'll tell you.

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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

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It's had tacks in it, and splinters,

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and boards torn up,

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and places with no carpet on the floor."

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Langston Hughes is making
a metaphor that compares

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a hard life to a wrecked house
you still have to live in.

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Those splinters and tacks feel real,

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they hurt your own feet
and your own heart,

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but the mother
is describing her life here,

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not her actual house.

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And hunger, and cold,
exhausting work and poverty

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are what's also inside those splinters.

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Metaphors aren't always
about our human lives and feelings.

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The Chicago poet Carl Sandburg wrote,

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"The fog comes on little cat feet.

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It sits looking over harbor
and city on silent haunches,

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and then moves on."

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The comparison here is simple.

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Fog is being described as a cat.

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But a good metaphor isn't a puzzle,

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or a way to convey hidden meanings,

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it's a way to let you feel
and know something differently.

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No one who's heard this poem forgets it.

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You see fog,

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and there's a small grey cat nearby.

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Metaphors give words a way
to go beyond their own meaning.

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They're handles on the door
of what we can know,

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and of what we can imagine.

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Each door leads to some new house,

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and some new world
that only that one handle can open.

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What's amazing is this:

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by making a handle,

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you can make a world.