allie | cartography

not much to report out here.

I feel like a compass at a magnetic pole, alternating between freezing in place and drowsily indicating nothing at all.

Vague entry is vague, but less emo than it sounds. I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm sorry I haven't been online for chatting or rp, but I'm not in any kind of mortal peril or painful emotional turmoil.

Many of you know how I feel about the slow loss of the ability to read maps in our culture, how I feel that it's dying art that's not just a hobby of mine but an almost symbolic act, which isn't the word I want to use but I can't find a better one. I'm far from a Luddite, obviously, and I've used google maps and, very very very rarely, GPS systems. But pulling over and unfolding a piece of paper almost too large to fit in my car, wrestling with it, finding the name of a city or town and tracing colored lines while I decide my course, makes me feel like I'm in control of my destiny yet also faithfully relying on the often countless and nameless people who first dreamed those lines, the people who built them and the people who charted them, who spread them before me on poorly refolded paper. Hours and years to give me the ability to choose which route to take to a particular destination, or the ability to find my way home.

You saw this coming from the first sentence of that paragraph, I'm sure, but I feel like I've pulled to the side of an empty road and opened a blank map.