The world feels like it is overflowing with humanity. Perhaps we humans are too much for the world to bear. I’ve noticed something in my daily scrollings: I am struck by the ubiquitous cartographic visualizations that the media deploy to organize and communicate information, to somehow fix – if only for an instant – in time and space the bewildering complexity of our human experiences. We draw maps to contextualize our actions and impact on the planet and each other, as if to contain the immensity our unbridled power, to keep us rooted in place.

Look closely, and within the abstraction of these maps you find the emotional geography of how we live together, apart, in community, in conflict, belonging together and othering each other. The mapmakers spatialize the human condition, establishing a lexicon of cartographies. The cartography of... (take your pick) ...love, hope, terror, resistance, extraction, destruction, collectivism, loneliness, migration, desolation, joy, escapism, transformation...

I draw a map. I draw a spiral in pencil and project myself into it. I imagine walking the graphite line, but where do I begin?

At the interior point, I am compressed and claustrophobic. The density quickens my breath, pressing against my chest. My heart rate quickens. There doesn’t seem to be a way out, although there is a path to follow. To stay still feels untenable, but to move forward feels equally fraught without knowing where the path leads. I might be trapped in a labyrinth of indeterminate size with no clear way out. Here it’s black as pitch. I wonder if there is a journey to begin, or even a destination to aim for. I feel stuck, unable to decide.

Outside the spiral, I see the beginning of a gently curving pathway. I am curious, wondering what lies beyond the bend. It’s easy to begin, to follow the path from the safety of my certainty, to dabble in the unknown of a reasonable adventure. On the outskirts of the spiral, the light, if I can describe it as such, is bright; the air is crisp and fresh. But how far I will I go along the path? After a few minutes, the light behind me dims, painting vague shapes in grays and blacks in front of me. I question the point of my journey. To turn back feels reassuring, yet also disappointing. To continue forward feels dangerous and exciting. I feel stuck, unable to decide.

Hovering above the page where the spiral is drawn, I focus my attention to the warmth of the mug in my hands, to the scene framed by the window – the snow falling in sifted sheets upon the birds and the chipmunk at the feeder. I turn the page and write*:

In the March middle, winter

hangs like a used rag on a nail, stiff and soiled. I oscillate from freeze to thaw to freeze,

wonder when I’ll crack open.

The chickadees have begun to sing out their prototypes for spring,

instructions on how to live

other than I am. With sun inching higher by degrees, arms stretching up and over the hills round this hollow, my face

tracks solar to sky.

I stand still my head still tucked back until night unfolds its dark cloak to

show a point by point map

for how to love life’s eddy. Up there, the big dipper or the back of the bear, I climb in and on

and ride to joyous black.

Again and again, thank you for reading.

In anticipation of the thaw,

Jeremy

* And then revised a half dozen times before committing to this post 🙂