I have always loved geography. I have always loved to look at maps and learn things about other countries, states and regions and often thought about doing that for a living. I recently saw a show on HGTV where maps were used as a decorating option in an old house. I have often used maps as decorations in places I have lived as well, so I have found the same "Aha" moment in my own life. I am now, perhaps, closer than ever to pinpointing exactly what it is that constitutes mental health in a geographer. One clue came to me awhile back in the form of a painting.
Johannes Vermeer was a 17th century Dutch artist most known for his painting "The Girl With A Pearl Earring." Another one of his paintings that I first saw on display at Smithsonian Museum's National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is entitled "The Geographer."
In the painting, Vermeer depicts a scholar bent at the waist over an open chart. But he has captured his geographer at a strategic moment - the moment when the cartographer's compass has been lifted from the paper and now lies limp in the man's hand, the moment when his eyes have raised and drifted from the artist's representation before him. At the very moment when, with thought-tilted head and a vacuous stare, the geographer seems to have apprehended with his inner eye the reality beyond the map.
The painting brings up a question: What constitutes mental health in the geographic profession? Vermeer's painting speaks clearly. A geographer is at the peak of mental health, his inner life absolutely robust, at the very moment when the map to which he has devoted such time and attention to no longer satisfies. At the moment when he looks past the two-dimensional representation to the reality beyond.
The painting spoke again. A map, Vermeer seemed to say, has performed one of its highest functions when it cultivates within us, not an appetite for more map reading, but an appetite for that exotic, tropical, spice-laden land, only inadequately depicted in the cartographer's chart.
The painting spoke a much-needed truth. Because we have all known geographers, I suspect, whose mental health was questionable. The same goes for book collectors, and writers, as well. But, that is the subject for another post. We have all known geographers who seemed so enamored of map reading itself that they showed no serious desire to travel. They have seemed to lift their eyes from the chart to stare with heart-sick longing at something to which the map could never do justice.
From appearances, at least, geography had become an end in itself for those unhealthy individuals: an arena for demonstrating one's technical expertise, a stage upon which to display one's intellectual prowess. But Vermeer is saying that it is when those things do not matter anymore, when the map reader's eyes have drifted dreamily to the window, that we are witnessing the apex of the geographical experience.
Let us guard against a misunderstanding. There is nothing wrong or abnormal about loving a map. On the contrary, it is natural, is it not? When you have fallen in love with a foreign country or some distant city and you know you will likely never get to actually visit it, it is natural to fall in love with the map as a surrogate of sorts.
Knowledge is not to be despised. There is something natural and laudable and beautiful in the devotion one feels to a map when he knows that, more than likely, he will never set foot in that distant city of his dreams.
Another misunderstanding must be avoided. It is not surprising in the least that a person should come to reverence a map - the physical artifact itself - when that map has rescued him from dangerous disorientation.
If you have ever taken a wrong exit ramp off the Interstate in a strange city at night and found yourself in the wrong part of town, you know how it feels to snatch up the road atlas or open Google maps on your phone and flip desperately to the appropriate page, or listen to the familiar voice of Google maps saying, "Looking for the best route." And if there, you discover an enlarged street grid of the very neighborhood you are lost in you know how natural it is to fall in love with that map and have it bound in leather and marked with a ribbon.
I once found myself in a small neighborhood in Boston after taking a wrong turn off the Interstate and, in panic mode, started looking for something to indicate where I was and how to get back to something I could recognize.
Who could blame such a response? There is something natural and laudable and yes, beautiful, in treating the source of one's rescue with due reverence. Just like many people do with the Bible, which is a road map, in one sense of the word.
But a map is a map.
Its beauty and inspired artistry may tempt us to make it a wall hanging. Its vision and uncanny accuracy may prompt us to decorate it in reverential awe. But a map is, ultimately, a map. And maps are made for travelers.
So, a map lover had best ask himself, on occasion, if he is in earnest about traveling. He would do well to ask himself regularly, in fact, if he would fold the compass, push aside the parchment, drape the globe and actually go there.
I, on occasion, have asked myself these very questions.
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