Maps
We never realize how much we use/think about maps and until we're confronted with them, like I am for the second time this year. In my writing class, we had to write paper over a place and look at maps about it. I can now tell you the majority of Lawrence, Kansas' history and involvement with the Civil War, being so pivotal and involved with the start.
This time, it's more artistic, in a way, since we're making our own maps and are doing something big with the idea of maps for our final, in my studio/Foundations class. In Jorge Luis Borges: Of Exactitude in Science, the quote talks about how the Empire is so caught up in mapping everything so perfectly, they make everything to scale and the map ends up cover the place and becoming useless because it's so big. It's silly to think that people in the fictional story were so caught up in perfection that they didn't see how it was destroying the city's favorite hobby of cartography that they left it to basically be destroyed naturally and then going back to their lives.
The article after that really got me thinking because it's about memories and maps and how we give other people directions based on them. I do this all the time when I'm getting dropped off at my mom's or my dad's since they live by neighborhood signs, sometimes decorated by lights or holiday decor. Once this guy got lost on his way simply because the sign was blocked by a police car (an accident had occurred since it was snowing) and caused him to drive all the way to the state line (which isn't too far away, but a fifteen minute drive with traffic).
You have to be careful when you're giving directions to give them objectively since the person trying to navigate doesn't know that you have to drive by the big skeleton billboard that this one Latin church put up every year around Halloween that scared me every time, to get to my grandma's house (the church moved to a bigger one and a new church moved in). It's so easy to get caught up in the little details and slip them in, but that can confuse someone who hadn't experienced the same moment with you. In the article, she blames the local she asked for directions for why she missed her meeting in the beginning since the tree was gone, but not from her memory.
She later recants with herself knowing that the old post office and fur shop are stuck with her mind and heart, but she must move on for objectivity.
0 comments:
Post a Comment