Dislocation, Relocation

“Going from...toward; it is the history of every one of us.”

-Henry David Thoreau, The Journal 

Geopolitical futurist Parag Khanna, in his TEDTalk, references a statistic that startles: 90% of the world's population will never leave the place where they were born. The implication for his larger thesis is that geopolitical problems are a result of geography and people, of people determining "how to distribute themselves around the world" when borders are intent on keeping them confined (Khanna). A soon-to-be expat, I recognize that my presence abroad results in local displacement, but if Khanna's theory holds, borders are mutable, pliable, disintegrating "suspiciously straight lines" and reforming a defined populace into discrete people.

And I, an American wayfarer, undertake the ancient pattern of travel narrative: "departure, adventure, and return" (Blanton 2). I am my own hero in search of a grail of experience, memory, understanding, but to navigate this journey, I look to maps to establish an initial familiarity. Maps orient my perspective and allow me a temporarily "privileged point of view” that will disintegrate on-site when unknown languages and street-level confusion warp the tidy perspective that I, as traveler, create while situated in the familiar (Spurr 19). Nevertheless, this desire for orientation is a time-honored concern that served countless adventurers. I pull up a map to discern the lay of the land.

Belgium is unlike Wyoming, where I was born and raised. In Wyoming, the land is a vast expanse of desert highlands punctuated by even higher mountains. The omnipotent wind and sun shape and sear the landscape, leaving much uninhabitable to the civilized. And much of it is uninhabited. On the empty miles of highway or deep in the mountains, one's knowledge of the landscape can save a life. Distance and resources are the two variables I'm compelled to know as I explore a map of Belgium. Where will it locate me in the context of the European continent? What cultural, geographical, and political boundaries will define my existence?

Entering the border constitutes entering a "contact zone," where travelers and locals relate through "co-presence" (Pratt 7). I'm not convinced that my presence will inspire this cooperative potential until I can do more than enter the culture physically; I must learn language and cultural mores to be invited to cross other borders. As an outsider, I will do as Blanton describes: attempt to both "familiarize and distance the foreign" (Blanton 5). Contact zones are exciting and transformative but also demanding and fatiguing. At times, I will retreat, find the exit and return to a space that is secure.

“The freedom of the gaze depends on the security of the position from which it is directed,” and without that freedom, one's relationship to place is insecure (Spurr 23). To feel content and find psychological comfort within this new clime, I will create paths that navigate the everyday practicalities. I will find direct routes to work and learn to navigate the culture of the commute, speaking the languages of signals and signposts. I will establish familiar paths to buy groceries, mail letters, and recreate. And I will train my eye to follow the mapped schedule of local trains and buses, allowing others to navigate the terrain while I train my eye on the landscape to see what remains undiscovered. As these habits confer security, as the maps become imprinted on my mind's eye, I will wander more, risk more, take roads untraveled, overcoming "the inherent difficulty of faithfully rendering the foreign into familiar terms" (Blanton 1). Life will regain its spontaneity.

That will be a rite of passage, when I know that I can become lost and find my way home. This new facility in navigation will allow me to indulge a secondary desire--to explore the places and have the experiences that I've placed on a bucket list. Waterloo, Bruges, Amsterdam, Calais--each is a souvenir of historicity, creating memories that map my personal connection to humanity and extend my cultural understanding within a sphere of influence. And this sphere grows larger with each venture out, ever widening as I expand my knowledge of regions, natural areas, historical areas. Now, I will be a traveler, a tour guide, a participant in a larger culture.

Maps, then, are the tools to forge relationships with places and fulfill the narrative journey: departure, adventure, return. They allow one to venture abroad and not lose oneself in the process by lending the initial directions one needs to create a life in a new place. They are essential to a journey that will take me to a destination and not just on a trip.

Sources:

Blanton, Casey. Travel Writing: The Self and the World. Twayne Publishers, New York, 1997.

Khanna, Parag. "Mapping the Future of Countries." TEDTalk, July 2009.

Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge, London, 1992.

Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Duke University Press, Durham, 1993.