at the center of the map.
I couldn’t see the hole in the map because for me there was no hole: the gap closed when I looked at it, or else the most important part of the map was invisible to anyone but myself.
And that made sense. What I had failed to understand was that paracartography must necessarily be a private matter. My map isn’t your map. The ideal paracartographical map charts not a territory but a mind, or at least it merges the two: the inner inner city.
Michelle took the prize. She seemed less pleased with the money than with John Carver’s obvious approval.
Deirdre took me aside as the evening ended. “Jeremy.”
“Mm?”
“Are you blind or just stupid?”
“Do I get another choice?”
“I’m serious.” She sighed. “There’s something in you, Jeremy, something a little lost and obsessive, and he found that—he dug it out of you like digging a stone out of the ground. He used it, and he’s still using it. It amuses him to watch us screw around with these scary ideas like little kids playing with blasting caps.”
“Deirdre, I don’t need a lecture.”
“What you need is a wake-up call. Ah, hell, Jeremy…. This is not the kind of news I love to deliver, but it’s obvious she’s sleeping with him. Please think about it.”
I stared at her. Then I said, “Time to leave, Deirdre.”
“It matters to me what happens to you guys.”
“Just go.”
Michelle went wordlessly to bed.
I couldn’t sleep.
I sat on the balcony under a duvet, watching the city. At half-past three, the peak (or valley) of the night, I thought I saw the city itself in all its luminous grids begin subtly to shift, to movewithout moving, to part and make a passage where none had been.
I closed my aching eyes and went inside. The map was waiting for me.
My department head suggested a sabbatical. She also suggested I consult a mental health specialist.
I took the time off, gratefully. It was convenient to be able to sleep during the day.
There is a city inside the city, but the road there is tortuous and strange.
I glimpsed that city for the first time in December, late on a cold night.
I was tired. I’d come a long way. The lost city was not, at first sight, distinctly different. It possessed, if anything, a haunting familiarity, and only gradually did I wake to its strangeness and charm.
I found myself on an empty street of two- or three-story brick buildings. The buildings looked at least sixty or seventy years old, though the capstones had no dates. The brick was gray and ancient, the upper-story windows shuttered and dark. Remnants of Depression era advertising clung to the walls like scabs.
The storefronts weren’t barred. Cracks laced the window glass. The goods dimly visible behind the panes were generic, neglected, carelessly heaped together: pyramids of patent leather shoes or racks of paperback books in various languages. The businesses were marginal, tobacco shops or junk shops or shops that sold back-issue magazines or canned food without labels. Their tattered awnings rattled in the wind.
It sounds dreary, but it wasn’t, at least not in my eyes; it was a small magic, this inexplicable neighborhood glazed with December moonlight, chill and perfect as a black pearl. It should not have existed. Didn’t exist. I couldn’t place it in any customary part of the city nor could I discern any obvious landmarks (the CN Tower, the bank buildings). Streets parted and met again like the meanders of a slow river, and the horizon was perpetually hidden.
The only light brighter than the winter moon came from an all-hours coffee shop at a corner bereft of street signs. The air inside was moist but still cold. Two men in dowdy overcoats sat huddled over a faded Formica tabletop. Behind the cash counter, a middle-aged woman in a hairnet looked at me blankly.
“Coffee,” I said, and she poured a cup, and I took it. It didn’t occur to me to pay, and she didn’t ask.
Things work differently at the
I couldn’t see the hole in the map because for me there was no hole: the gap closed when I looked at it, or else the most important part of the map was invisible to anyone but myself.
And that made sense. What I had failed to understand was that paracartography must necessarily be a private matter. My map isn’t your map. The ideal paracartographical map charts not a territory but a mind, or at least it merges the two: the inner inner city.
Michelle took the prize. She seemed less pleased with the money than with John Carver’s obvious approval.
Deirdre took me aside as the evening ended. “Jeremy.”
“Mm?”
“Are you blind or just stupid?”
“Do I get another choice?”
“I’m serious.” She sighed. “There’s something in you, Jeremy, something a little lost and obsessive, and he found that—he dug it out of you like digging a stone out of the ground. He used it, and he’s still using it. It amuses him to watch us screw around with these scary ideas like little kids playing with blasting caps.”
“Deirdre, I don’t need a lecture.”
“What you need is a wake-up call. Ah, hell, Jeremy…. This is not the kind of news I love to deliver, but it’s obvious she’s sleeping with him. Please think about it.”
I stared at her. Then I said, “Time to leave, Deirdre.”
“It matters to me what happens to you guys.”
“Just go.”
Michelle went wordlessly to bed.
I couldn’t sleep.
I sat on the balcony under a duvet, watching the city. At half-past three, the peak (or valley) of the night, I thought I saw the city itself in all its luminous grids begin subtly to shift, to movewithout moving, to part and make a passage where none had been.
I closed my aching eyes and went inside. The map was waiting for me.
My department head suggested a sabbatical. She also suggested I consult a mental health specialist.
I took the time off, gratefully. It was convenient to be able to sleep during the day.
There is a city inside the city, but the road there is tortuous and strange.
I glimpsed that city for the first time in December, late on a cold night.
I was tired. I’d come a long way. The lost city was not, at first sight, distinctly different. It possessed, if anything, a haunting familiarity, and only gradually did I wake to its strangeness and charm.
I found myself on an empty street of two- or three-story brick buildings. The buildings looked at least sixty or seventy years old, though the capstones had no dates. The brick was gray and ancient, the upper-story windows shuttered and dark. Remnants of Depression era advertising clung to the walls like scabs.
The storefronts weren’t barred. Cracks laced the window glass. The goods dimly visible behind the panes were generic, neglected, carelessly heaped together: pyramids of patent leather shoes or racks of paperback books in various languages. The businesses were marginal, tobacco shops or junk shops or shops that sold back-issue magazines or canned food without labels. Their tattered awnings rattled in the wind.
It sounds dreary, but it wasn’t, at least not in my eyes; it was a small magic, this inexplicable neighborhood glazed with December moonlight, chill and perfect as a black pearl. It should not have existed. Didn’t exist. I couldn’t place it in any customary part of the city nor could I discern any obvious landmarks (the CN Tower, the bank buildings). Streets parted and met again like the meanders of a slow river, and the horizon was perpetually hidden.
The only light brighter than the winter moon came from an all-hours coffee shop at a corner bereft of street signs. The air inside was moist but still cold. Two men in dowdy overcoats sat huddled over a faded Formica tabletop. Behind the cash counter, a middle-aged woman in a hairnet looked at me blankly.
“Coffee,” I said, and she poured a cup, and I took it. It didn’t occur to me to pay, and she didn’t ask.
Things work differently at the
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