map
I feel, sometimes, like I have a map in my pocket that folds up, and I pull it out, and it’s bigger than the table, and there’s a thousand places to go with her.
Interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, NPR, October 31, 2011. [full transcript here]
I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900; Id like people to look at it and think, How the hell did he end up right over there?”
“May 2005,” in Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt (San Francisco, CA: Believer Books, 2006), 51.
Prominent among the curses of civilization is the map that folds up “convenient for the pocket.” There are men who can do almost everything except shut a map. It is calculated that the energy wasted yearly in denouncing these maps to their face would build the Eiffel Tower in thirteen weeks.
“Shutting a Map,” in A Tillyloss Scandal (New York: Lovell, Coryell & Co., 1893), 207.