map symbols
Nyima gave me a little map of the Manhattan subway system the size of a business card right after I moved to New York. I don't really need it anymore. I have long since memorized the routes that I generally take and have a basic idea of all the rest. Not only that, the routes have changed, some of them more than once in the time that I have been carrying this map with me, and the map itself--made of plastic--is cracked along its sides and are sharp and painful to the touch should my fingers accidentally graze their broken edge.
Recently I thought that I had lost this map by handing it to a pouting Norbu while navigating boarding a bus, answering the phone, and nursing a migraine. For several days I kept opening my wallet to see it missing and my heart would skip a beat because although it is, on the one hand, just a stupid map it symbolizes something about my life that I can't even grasp the meaning of. It is both a symbol of what my world looked like when those two tall buildings dominated the skyline, now nothing more than a large yellow shape crossed with lines of blue and red and black, and a symbol of the life I used to live with all but a handful of my closest friends. That map is a symbol of how it is possible to rearrange our lives so that they can overlap, the sum being greater than its various parts, and it is a glaring reminder of how nothing lasts forever. Not even those things that you never really thought would last forever but you certainly thought would outlast you.
Some maps show you where you're going, but others show you where you've been. My map shows me summer mornings laced with sunshine and puffy white clouds and the joy of sharing vanilla lattés as slowly as possible to savor our time together before we went our separate ways for the day.
What does your map show you?
Comments
Oh that map, oh our mornings. How could all this not break my heart? To think of much time we had together then...
I don't even carry a map with me now. I use my car and long history of living in my home town to navigate me. I can't say that it is much of an improvement.
Posted by: gabrielle | April 14, 2005 12:43 PM
sometimes i ask myself, did i romanticize all of this wonderfulness about living with my friends? and then i answer no. Sometimes it really sucked. Profoundly, and i am fully aware of what sucked. We were all dealing with life and growing up in our own ways and that's what happens. I don't know if i will ever experience anything quite like it again, and i have so many treasured experiences and relationships born from all these different people living under one roof. you all really did become a family for me - everyone is so special to me, and will always be so.
Posted by: annalisa | April 14, 2005 02:51 PM
I agree that we were all dealing with life and growing up in our own ways, and that sometimes it really sucked. But I don't think that the things that sucked were sucky because we lived together. That's just my experience/memory of it, though. ;)
Posted by: the girl | April 14, 2005 03:05 PM
oh, i just think it was suckier than it had to be sometimes because we were all together and that occasionally created a living drama machine (oy vey! no escape!), which we would not have to deal with otherwise. in that respect, in my opinion, things were sucky because we lived together. ;0)
Posted by: annalisa | April 14, 2005 05:26 PM
My map shows me that I have come to a dead end. There is no left. There is no right. There is no forward. In fact, there is no backward even, as the bridges, roads and passages have all been destroyed.
There is one direction left unhindered--that is up. Up out of this miserable life of struggle, arrogance and turmoil. A life that I have created out of my own necessity to be important and successful.
The map I was using up until recently has become obsolete. I am now in the process of drawing a new one for myself. One that will be something to be proud of and to cherish. Who knows how that one will look when I am done, but one thing is for sure, it probably won’t include politics. ~Amadeus
Posted by: Amadeus | April 16, 2005 03:32 AM