Maps of Memory: Looking Out
Looking out or looking in. Which will it be today?
Yesterday is looking back and tomorrow is looking forward, but those never got me anywhere. Well, not necessarily, I’ll check them in the morning like I check my mirrors on the highway, just to keep tabs on the place.
This morning is a bit chilly, but not chilly enough to wear sweats, so here I sit in my coral shorts and a T-shirt trying to figure out what I ought to do with myself for the next three hours before I have to pull on my jeans and head to work for the evening.
Perhaps I will look out today. I’ll let my gaze rest upon the curves of the Earth, the hills, rocks, grasses and trees, the hawk gliding silently over the canopy, the meadow.
I will focus on little sections at a time, concentrating, closing my eyes, opening them again. I build a model of the space in my head, never taking any pictures, so that I can revisit it in my head wherever I am without anybody knowing.
I will make repeat visits to the ridge, the valley, to carve in more details.
This time I’ll focus more on the South-Eastern quadrant, where the ridge cascades westward like a slow moving liquid, knolls and ripples racing each other to the bottom.
Here, one of the knolls has sped out ahead of her sisters and rests, out of breath, just above the tree line. Her wake leads us to two sisters on either side, each making their way down, protecting the little one. The fourth, the eldest, stands still atop the ridge, disapproving of her siblings behavior yet quietly accepting that she, too, was once young and reckless.
I spend nearly an hour tattooing this piece into my mind, but it’s cold now and I didn’t have the foresight to bring anything warmer, so I decide it is time to leave. I close my eyes once more, double check my version, open them, check the real thing. Then I turn West and begin the walk back the way I came, gravel lightly crunching beneath every footfall.
So, today I will be looking out, it seems, but should that stop me from superimposing my own projections onto what I see? While maps of memory, composed of gathered knowledge of beauty, social connections, past forms and states can be useful in how we make new connections, I think today will be about taking everything at face value.
Today will be about seeing only what is there right now, without a history, without assumptions, without guesses. Today we will go without lenses and casings, sugars and spices. Today we will be living in the shared reality of our physical spaces. Today, I will be looking out.
