Maps

Of many shapes, sizes and desires

The candles have been lit for three days straight. The dark sky demands it and my heart longs for it and who am I to ignore these two celestial powers? The last wily flame fizzes and spits as I type the last line of a twenty page report and close my laptop.

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I have a folder of saved posts on Instagram called ‘Maps’. It sits between ‘clothes’, ‘hair’ and ‘gluten free bakeries’.

The parameters are as loose as you’d imagine. If it feels like it goes in Maps, it goes in Maps. What does a map feel like? I’ve thought about this a lot, and of course the edges move all the time, but it’s something like;

Does it point to somewhere I don’t know?

Does it point to somewhere I desire but don’t see?

Does it clearly mark the route to something I hold dear?

Is it none of these things but it just feels right in the folder?

I should express that while the questions are sincere, some of the saved posts are absolutely not. I believe this contradiction can coexist very meaningfully. I would go as far as to say the combination is essential. If a future that acknowledges indigenous people as the rightful guardians of their own land doesn’t also involve children sharing streams of consciousness about nap time, I don’t want it. As I type, there are 3119 posts saved in Maps.

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“Delayed Gratification has been the publication ‘last to breaking news’ since 2011. I will always buy a second hand copy when I find it in the bargain bin, often meaning I’m a further six months or a year behind. Imagine setting out to report at least three months after the event. Imagine. Imagine waiting for nuance to unfold, repercussions to be felt, the wider context to be known. I breathe more deeply just thinking about it.

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Currency, coming from ‘current’. Resources are meant to move. They should flow, carry, inform and nourish things on their way. Cash was never meant to be stacked high. Bread was never meant to be mass produced and binned at the end of the day. Streams, rivers, canals and oceans - Give like those.

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‘Mapping’ is an act with roots thick in colonialism. The idea that ground can be scoped, named and drawn is a process of naming yourself as knowing and in ownership of power. Charting, plotting, delineating. It assumes the ground is static. That the document created and the knowledge gained will be relevant two years or ten seconds from now. I’ve heard suggestions for alternative words; constellations, creative cartographies. More than anything, I appreciate the encouragement to shift stance. To adopt a state of unknowing and ephemeral encounter.

Are care-full maps possible? Can a map honour land, speak with it and its people? Can maps exist like weather and weather be read as a map?

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“You don’t look thirty six!” It’s four days before my birthday and I’ve reached an age where people younger than me exclaim in response to my age. I assume they do this for one of two reasons; to extend what they think I will think of as a compliment and/or to show they don’t think I’m too old to take part in this conversation. I’m mostly left wondering what thirty six ‘looks like’. What did I think thirty six would look like for myself?

I instinctively spend time with past selves in the run up to a birthday. They’re all in there, just as every person older than me told me they would be. My inner fourteen year old gasps hearing me tell these young women my age. My inner twenty three year old wants to suggest we grab a drink. I hear myself justify the cardigan in my hands as ‘a birthday present to myself’. It’s pure Shetland wool, cream, with toggles and a tassel trim. I can see myself in it at seventy. Another prop for becoming an age?

People write memoirs and fill photo albums and loft spaces with scraps and tat and trinkets. I find lists saving pages in second hand books, keep lists of my own in notebooks with names that I choose with care and don’t expect anyone to learn about. I think keeping the breadcrumbs that have led you to yourself is probably a natural thing to want to do. I think I was always going to gather a list of fragments like these around a birthday - Of course the many shapes of map would lead me here (and there, and somewhere else.) As I write, Josie George and Rebekah Taussig publish words known by their own birthday-ing bodies, entering and traversing their forties which now don’t feel far so away for me. Others are doing it - our maps overlapping, desire lines running away from our own pages onto something shared. A bigger piece of paper. The in-built desire to reflect, rummage, archive; I trust it.

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If it’s not entangled it’s not my happiness”

- Concluding statement in a series of voice notes with a dear friend who is absolutely right.

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As the pains layer to distracting levels, I feel a strong pull towards the gallery. I am heavy, but I grab my coat. Being with art is an anchor - An unknown known amongst chaos. Navigation. I stand in front of a tiny portrait from 1616. The pencil lines are hair thin and the woman’s eye is ready to blink. It’s fragile and timeless and deep as the ocean.

There is so much. More than any lifetime could ever filter, let alone consume. Any library, art gallery, a single line, a single blade of grass - they all confirm there is more than I’ll ever know or need or ask for. What do maps mean in that context? Routes so dense they become a solid weave. Easy to mistake for solid ground. Don’t mistake for solid ground. I fear lies are sold on the premise of solid ground where there is in fact give, and bounce and space, with some teasing. Gentle teasing apart of the strands is an act of conservation, preservation, attention, care. Muchness and care. Muchness, care and delight. They sound like the beginning of some constellation worth dancing amongst.