“There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon,” writes journalist Michael Herr, amidst the disorienting early Seventies swirl of the Vietnam War he was there to cover. “And some nights, coming back late to the city, I'd lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off.
“That map was a marvel,” he says, “especially now that it wasn't real anymore.”
For one, the landscapes it depicted were anachronistic -- the kingdom of Siam to the west, the former territories of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China that colonial machinations had denuded into nothing more than memory. And yet there it hung, its paper edges buckling after years in the wet Saigon heat, “laying a kind of veil over the countries it depicted.”
These words provide the opening for Herr’s masterpiece about the war, Dispatches, a book I loved to teach back in the day. He was just 27 at the time — only slightly older than the men he observed -- which resulted in a narrative that is less about military conflict than it is a kaleidoscopic window into utter, immersive, map-less disorientation.
I’ve been thinking about that passage a lot recently, because so much of my current work has been about maps -- and the ways in which we need them, more than ever, and lack them (also more than ever), leaving us all struggling to navigate our particular contemporary disorientation and psychological swirl.
It has made me ask a new question (for me, at least):
What is the map -- metaphorically, visually, emotionally -- that keeps YOU oriented in your work and life? And what should OUR map(s) be -- the ones that can help us craft a new story for the way we all live and learn?
If that feels like the sort of question you wish to ask, answer and explore with others, I hope you’ll join us TONIGHT, at 8pm EST (via this link), when we’ll talk about maps -- the ones we rely on, the ones that are no longer real, and the ones we must create anew.
This is how we #changethestory . . .
Sam, I’d love to be there.. but I have other commitments calling too….