Maps Maps Maps

I used to have a maps subdomain at sorabji.com, where I posted clickable maps of my travels. I gave up on it, probably because of the laboriousness of dealing with so many individual KML files. Must find efficiencies.

I’ve come to take a certain pride in my maps, and in the fact that I’ve inspired others to map their own daily journeys. I look at some of my maps and ask What was I walking off? What am I walking to, or from?

Some days you could say I was walking off the whiskey, except I don’t drink whiskey. “Walking off the whiskey” is a bit of barfly vernacular I picked up from a bartender on Ditmars. I think it rolls off the tongue more eloquently than valking off the vokda, although the latter slurred discombobulation perhaps better captures the delirium of intoxication.

But then, whilst schvaltzing off the vodak one is no longer strictly intoxicated, more like hung over and hating life.

My maps document directionless energies, my sometimes nomadic flâneur-esque saunterings in which the greatest satisfaction comes from finding at least one new-to-me road, one stretch of boulevard or avenue on which I’d never before set foot.

I don’t have a plan but once formulated my intent to do something new with my maps will involve more than just screenshots, such as the ones at the end of this post.

The map I remember most is the one I cannot seem to find. I think it approached 20 miles of walking, from Astoria through Calvary, Middle Village, Maspeth, all points in between to Forest Hills then down through Elmhurst and almost all the way back home. I made payphone calls all along the way, calls that would probably pain me to hear now, as I was walking off the burn of a toxic, abusive relationship

In the end, outside a place called Blackthorn in Elmhurst, just off Queens Boulevard, I decided enough was enough. I had to hop a bus or get a car or a unicycle or a pogo stick or just start walking on my hands… Anything to stop walking on my bloodied, blistered feet. I ended up on a Q60 the Queens Plaza, but I don’t remember how I got all the way home. That’s why I need that damned map, to consult the document of that walk.

That was the day I took a toy to Calvary Cemetery.