April 17, 2004:

My initials are "MAP".

In childhood that led more or less inevitably to a fascination with cartography. Using graph paper and pencils I mapped my apartment, the corridors of my school including the locations of all the drinking fountains, and the contents of the aisles of my local supermarket. Eventually I organized the neighborhood kids to systematically explore our canyon, naming trails for each other and noting the exact positions of all the best pollywog ponds along the course of the greenish little stream at bottom. I mapped our bowling alley, and the sidewalks through the neighborhood park and recreation center, collecting these products in a three-ring binder which grew remarkably fat for a grammar schooler.

In middle school I began collecting real maps, covering my walls with National Geographic topological charts of my state, and with Michelin road maps of European countries I hoped to visit one day.

Eventually the maps became inadequate. I wanted to systematically visit the places they depicted. Within the means of a child I began doing exactly that, exploring my home city street by street on bicycle, usually with my closest friend. Using a standard gas station street map we'd investigate neighborhoods all over town, marking the routes we'd taken in black felt pen. The goal was to ride every street within the city limits. In three years we'd largely succeeded, venturing as far as fifty miles a day to cruise outlying suburbs, filling-in our wall-mounted city maps with dense networks of blacked-over veins spreading ever outward from our home streets. Every so often we found it was necessary to buy up-to-date maps, as new neighborhoods of tract houses appeared.

Is unfulfilled childhood narcissism a component of my intense adult wanderlust?