A Study in the Intersection of Cartography and Ontology

I used to love maps as a kid. My bedroom had maps on every wall - mostly from National Geographic Magazines - and I was always excited when I received a new one from my grandparents. It didn't matter the location the map depicted, it just mattered that it was a map of something, somewhere, a place I might never have been. I used to put pins in the map of places I'd visited, places I wanted to go.

I'm looking at a map right now - it's titled "Orbis Terrarum Nova Et Accuratissima Tabula". I received an "Antiques Maps" calendar for Christmas and I'm staring at a partially completed map of the world. The west coast of North America is a blank, as if the Pacific Ocean were swallowing the land. I see only half of Australia. There is no Antarctica, just a line where the ice shelf begins.

Maps order the world. They allow us to codify, organize, and link unrelated concepts. A place, a name, co-ordinates on a globe, a time, a population, elevation, environment. Red or Blue. A superpower. A third world nation.

And then I hear the words "map of the human heart", and it all gets confused. What does the map of a human heart look like? Not the physician's textbook diagram, but the codification of our loves, our hates, our longings, our regrets [see "Weight and Measure of Memory"].

We "journey" through life [denoting a beginning, a middle, and an end place]. We do things the "right way" and the "wrong way" [denoting direction]. We map our progress through life.

I want to see the map of a human heart. My heart. Dots on a map, lines between points - we could do it on the web [a site map] - have information pop up when the pointer hovers over an object:

[Darlene Van Hook, redhead, mother of the gifted blond-haird boy, smelled of honeysuckle and the South, dried flowers pressed in glass, the sweetest kiss on the cheek.]

[Rue Mandar, Paris, Repare du Bachus, the Catacomb Gardens, L'Oeuf Cube, nutella and banana crepes]

[Clearlake, ghosts, margaritas, hotsprings in the water, a private motorboat, Dr. Pepper, smoking amongst the redwoods]

And those roads would lead to other maps of other people. And what would happen if a line were drawn between myself and someone I didn't know, someone who was dead, something unreal. Would the world fall apart? Or would it became something glorious and new?

I can see the map in my head - I just need to get it out.