Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
a geographic territory but as something a little more holistic—a library, say? Or a buffet?
( Pilgrim's Potluck !) What would Western civilization be like in that alternate universe?
Would we value different things, set different goals for ourselves, if the governing geo-
graphicmetaphorofourculturewerereplacedbysomethingelse—recipesinsteadofmaps,
cookbooksinsteadofatlases?Wouldshallowcelebritiesstilltellinterviewerstheywere“in
a good place right now”? Or would they say things like “I'm at the waffle bar right now,
Oprah”? (“You eat, girl!” Respectful audience applause.)
Maybe,butIthinktherewouldstillbepeoplelikemewhowouldseeeverythingthrough
the filter of geography, because of the spatial way our brains are wired. The sense of place
isjusttooimportanttous.Whenpeopletalkabouttheirexperienceswiththedefiningnews
stories of their generation (the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, the Berlin Wall,
9/11), they always frame them as where-we-were-when-we-heard. I was in the kitchen, I
was in gym class, I was driving to work. It's not relevant to the Challenger explosion in
any way that I was in my elementary school cafeteria when I heard about it, but that's still
how I remember the event and tell it to others. Naming the place makes us feel connected,
situated in the story.
And maps are just too convenient and too tempting a way to understand place. There's a
tension in them. Almost every map, whether of a shopping mall, a city, or a continent, will
show us two kinds of places: places where we've been and places we've never been. The
nearby and the faraway exist together in the same frame, our world undeniably connected
to the new and unexpected. We can understand, at a glance, our place in the universe, our
potential to go and see new things, and the way to get back home afterward.
When my family moved overseas in 1982 so my dad could work at a Korean law firm,
I missed my imprinted habitat of western Washington State. In many ways, South Korea
was the polar opposite of Seattle: hot in the summer, dry in the winter, crunchy cicadas
underfoot instead of slimy slugs. The Seoul air was so polluted that I developed a convin-
cing smoker's hack at the tender age of eight. Before the end of World War II, Korea had
been a Japanese colony, and the peninsula had been stripped of forests to help fuel Japan's
massive industrial and military expansion. The neat rows of spindly pine trees assiduously
replanted by the Korean government seemed like soulless counterfeits when compared to
the dense, majestic forests of the Pacific Northwest.
I loved it anyway, but I felt very keenly that I had been transplanted; it's hard not to
feel like a stranger in a strange land when you're the only American kid in a vast Korean
apartmentcomplex.Expatriatesthriveonthissenseofboldoutsiderness,anditbondsthem
into tightly knit communities. But it isolates them from their homeland as well. My family
would spend a month or so every summer on home leave in the States, just long enough
to be reminded of what we were missing, before we had to hop wistfully on a plane back .
. . where? Home? For the next decade, when people asked me where I was from, I would
Search WWH ::




Custom Search