We Found a Map

I’ve been reading “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker. It’s a marvel she can switch between character voices and dialogues so convincingly. I find that my characters always sound like myself. So I took a stab at writing like what I imagine a disgruntled out-of-touch American boomer would sound like. Maybe best read in a Bostonian accent. Based on a map that’s hanging on my bedroom wall. Still sounds like me. This was a bit uncomfortable.

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I got this little thing in New York. Ah, New York. Something about those dirty streets just pulls you in and sucks you dry. A magnetic force of gum wrappers and leftover crusts from dollar slices. Delicious. Pretty much like Newark, but Newark’s a war zone. It’s like Newark if Newark was shrouded with a thin sheet of glitz and shine. Them New Yorkers like the glitter, I know. But they’re angry all the time, permascowls on their faces as their footsteps thud loudly on the pavement with a quickening pace. Except for the ones that hassle you with a tired smile at 7th and 42nd. Take a trip on the big red bus.

America is a really curious country, ain’t it? Especially these days. Land of the free, home of the brave. See how well that’s going?

I went to visit the New York Public Library, magnificent place. Damn high walls, with pretty arches and things, looks like it’s from Ancient Greece, maybe Rome. What’s the fucking difference, I don’t know. Wonder who scrubs that place clean every day. The white of the marble columns are yellowed, but maybe that’s the intention of the place. Warm mahogany fixtures and furniture. Is this a real library? It looks like a library. But it’s too goddamn nice to be a real library.

The map stood out to me with its yellowed and frayed edges, simulated of course. Looks vintage, quacks vintage, not a duck. Am I sucker for buying things that look old and I have no use for other than how it looks on my empty walls? It was just sitting in the gift shop. Didn’t beckon to me, didn’t call either. Maybe a coarse whisper. I just told myself I needed to get something to hold on to this memory. Buying a trinket from the gift shop like every other lazy tourist dragging their heels sloppily across the city. Buying some plastic and paper because those define my memories.

I think I wanted it because it matched these light blue lights I haggled aggressively (not that aggressively) for in Chiang Mai. The little girl selling them told me they were handmade, but they were not. I liked to believe that they were though. I like to believe what the People say.

The blue is a pale robin’s egg blue, a little bit dated and yellow shades peeking through, intentionally or not. Why do things yellow with age? Am I yellowing out or mellowing out? Both, probably. I’ve always been a little bit yellow. A paler yellow, not the bright and peppy kind that jumps out at you from behind a swift curve of a corner. The blue of the sea. It’s different from the modern maps that you see these days.

The map is called Bacon’s Standard Map of the World on Mercators’ Projection. It’s an old map. It’s not even right, doesn’t tell me shit all about the world today. It reminds me of times where everyone was ass backwards and no one was the wiser. A bunch of old wise white men in top hats hollering at each other telling each other to fuck their cousins and beating their horses with a carrot stick. Can’t find Russia on the map. It’s listed as Siberia and the mass is huge. The Chinese Republic has swallowed up Mongolia and Manchuria. Alaska is still there though. When did Russia give Alaska over, I swear it was later than them being called Siberia. How dumb was I to buy this map and I look at all them places and they’re in them wrong spots. The borders are all a mess. Borders aren’t something you can see in real life anyway, all these hypothetical dotted lines that exist on maps and create fights amongst our imaginary tribes. That’s all we are, we’re like monkeys. Little tribes that like fighting with our stones and our sticks. Our guns, our butter, us filthy old animals.

I don’t even like geography. I get my rights mixed up with my lefts, get them mixed up with my ass crack. I just stare at this map and look at what might have been. Guess this map might be able to teach me a few tricks after all.