Where am I?

I love maps. I'm not sure why. It may have something to do with the phenomenon wherein seeing a picture of something makes it seems more real. A map isn't exactly a picture, but it's a graphic represen-tation of where you are, the place you're trying to get to, some place you may be reading about.

Whenever I'm reading and places are mentioned, I want to know where exactly they are, in relation to other places. If we're talking Paris or London, o.k., fine, I have those locations firmly fixed in my mind. But, as an example, I just started a mystery by Kathy Reichs, called Bare Bones. The heroine of Reichs' series of books is a forensic anthropologist who specializes in, surprise, bones. She works part-time in Montreal and part-time in Charlotte, North Carolina (as she says in this book: "North Carolina and Quebec? Long story.")

Well, I know where Montreal is, but where in North Carolina is Charlotte? I'm thinking it's on the coast, but then wonder if that's Charleston, South Carolina I'm thinking of? So I get up and go look at the map. I have a large map of the United States hanging on my bedroom wall. Likewise a large map of the world hanging on the wall of my study. A map of Africa hangs on the door of the study – because I can never remember where the various countries of that continent are located, am always confusing Sudan (the place that's been brutalizing so many of its citizens, whose President has just been indicted by the International Court for genocide – and which is located on the Red Sea) and Somalia (the place that specializes in piracy off its long coastline on the Arabian Sea.) I also have a map of Britain on my bedroom door. One of the frustrations of my little tiny house is that there is not enough wall space for all of my maps. When Micheal and I lived in the big, beautiful brick house out in the country south of Abbeville, in southern Louisiana, we had lots of wall space, and I was able to put up my street maps of London and Paris as well, so that when I was reading a book set in the former place and a character turned and started up Cheapside, I could go remind myself of where that was.

I also miss being able to see at a glance my map of Greece, the one of France. Those are all, along with many others, in a drawer, but I have to go dig them out.

At any rate, I now see that it was Charleston I was thinking of, the city where the first shot of the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, as my dyed-in-the-wool Rebel friend Clifford insists it should rightly be called) was fired at Ft. Sumter. Charlotte, North Carolina is located well inland, right at the border with South Carolina. So now I have a clear picture of where the action of this story is taking place, and I can read on.

Some of my love of maps may spring from the same impulse that enables me to enjoy library reference work which, as I've mentioned previously (see Note of Aug. 14, 2008), can be a kind of detective work. My friend Fae, electronically-oriented as she is, swears by her GSI, but me, I don't want something to tell me where I am, how to get to my destination, I want the challenge of figuring it out. Figur-ing out the best route, seeing where I might want to stop on the way from point A to point B, seeing what interesting place names the map has to offer up for my perusal. A map is like a book, it takes you out of yourself; it, quite literally, opens up the world to you. And shows you all the connecting lines.