THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY


It is one of the great joys of walking and getting to know a city when, one day out on a wander, a ‘new’ space makes an impromptu connection with an ‘old’ space, and we see a familiar setting from a not so familiar angle. There is a fleeting vision of something whole; the cognition of a connection. Escorting this is a feeling of continuity and fluency, not of time (since we are, in accordance with the moment, extemporaneous), but of space. Within this 'being-in-space' there is a feeling of what is best described as an 'ineluctable inextricability' (that governs all things and non-things).

The territory of thought, much like that of land, needs to be mapped, needs to be ‘thought out’, and the best way to do this is to move right through it.

When wandering open-mindedly (released from any pressing details of 'life'), we cannot help but be provoked by the universe.

Reality may well be subjective in the words of Kierkegaard, but it is also an activity. You need to work at it, travel it, travail it. Thus, the event of 'Warsaw' itself becomes an activity. Left to its own devices Warsaw, as any other place, is merely a dictionarily defined 'city' - on the move, however, it shapeshifts with one's consciousness. Thus, when I'm in Glasgow I am glasgow; when I'm in Warsaw I am warsaw. The map is not the territory - I am.