A Love Affair With Maps
From Brian Allnutt charts: a personal history across the changing lines of his home state.
"With a limited knowledge of the world around us, we fall back on empiricism and logic, on maps, to orient ourselves. I may look at the map and think, ‘This is my home, I know this place,’ but in truth I’m only familiar with a fraction of it and that knowledge slips away a little with each day I’m not there to see it change. At some point I have to put it down the map and just drive or walk or stand still and content myself with my own imperfect understanding of where I am. Sometimes it helps to get lost and wander around until I re-emerge in a familiar place. Repeating this process is the only way I can think to orient myself in relation to the real, physical things that surround me, rather than my coordinates. Perhaps by liberating the map from its previous uses I can begin to appreciate it for what it really is: an awkward, unwieldy shape, impossible to decipher."
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4 comments:
Interesting; this is a paradigm shift for you, Moon and could influence how you live your future.
A wonderful thing about getting lost is that you can discover places and people that otherwise you would never have experienced. They are wildflowers. Although, if I recall you found a beautiful orchid map for me once.
Hm, I thought you wrote this Moon and wonder if this is how you are feeling? Are you wandering about Tel Aviv?
it is not my own writings dearest.
but it is very much how i sense things
i'm all lost and yet not lost enough
Oh Moon,
I wish that I could offer you some consolation. Life is so like this at times. "All lost and not enough." I have the flu and not quite making sense of things. My other computer died and I may have lost files and files of my writing. It is in the hands of a retrieval expert and I am resigned to accepting whatever results. I do miss your visits and hope your dark mood improves a little.
Hugs,
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