Let the Delete Key Fall a Little Later

I once deleted the sentence “clouds are like ocean waves.” I did it without hesitation, even with a little satisfaction: the sentence was shorter, and there was one less thing in it that might be laughed at. Only later did I feel that this moment of ease might not deserve to be called clarity. It was more like a swift act of self-protection: as long as I was not carried away by the metaphor, I could believe in advance that I was seeing more clearly.

But there is a kind of cloud that makes that hand stop. Two layers of air moving at different speeds rub past each other; the cloud top is curled up, its edges folding over layer by layer. Waves on the surface of water, too, often begin from a similar instability. The sentence “like ocean waves” is not precise enough, but it is not empty. If I rush to delete it, what gets deleted is not only a figure of speech, but perhaps also a clue that has not yet had time to harden. It is not yet sturdy enough to explain the sky for me directly; but it is also not so empty that it only deserves to be cleared away. Some resemblances first appear in a rough form, like a needle still bent; the place it pricks is not necessarily wrong.

This does not mean every “like” should be rescued. Just as the cloud made me regret deleting too quickly, brain waves on a screen make that regret impure again. That line is also like a wave, even more orderly, so orderly that it seems already to have been arranged on someone’s behalf. But it is not a wave rising in the brain just as it is; it comes from large amounts of synchronized electrical activity, and only through the body, electrodes, and conventions of display does it become a line the human eye can read. It is not a lie; that is exactly where the problem lies. If this “like” is believed too quickly, then how the shape was delivered before the eyes is erased instead. The clearer that line is, the easier it is to forget that clarity itself has also been made.

So the real difficulty is neither to rehabilitate metaphor nor to delete them all cleanly. Delete too quickly, and the force that draws two shapes near each other has not yet had time to show itself. Believe too quickly, and how the shape was delivered before the eyes is erased again. The next time that “like” reaches my fingertip, I will neither defend it nor delete it at once; the pad of my finger will first hover over the key, letting the delete key fall a little later.