Difference

The jellyfish float in the bay shallows like schools of clouds, a dozen identical — is it right to call them creatures, these elaborate sacks of nothing? All they seem is shape, and shifting, and though a whole troop of undulant cousins go about their business within a single wave's span, every one does something unlike: this one a balloon open on both ends but swollen to its full expanse, this one a breathing heart, this a pulsing flower. This one a rolled condom, or a plastic purse swallowing itself, that one a Tiffany shade, this a troubled parasol. This submarine opera's all subterfuge and disguise, its plot a fabulous tangle of hiding and recognition: nothing but trope, nothing but something forming itself into figures then refiguring, sheer ectoplasm recognizable only as the stuff of metaphor. What can words do but link what we know to what we don't, and so form a shape? Which shrinks or swells, configures or collapses, blooms even as it is described into some unlikely marine chiffon: a gown for Isadora? Nothing but style. What binds one shape to another also sets them apart — but what's lovelier than the shapeshifting transparence of like and as: clear, undulant words? We look at alien grace, unfettered by any determined form, and we say: balloon, flower, heart, condom, opera, lampshade, parasol, ballet. Hear how the mouth, so full of longing for the world, changes its shape?