Memory Map

I’ve used a tool here at work called the Visual Thesaurus, an online and interactive dictionary and thesaurus. The sell copy says, “If you have a meaning in mind, say, ‘happy,’ the VT helps you find related words from 'blissful' to 'bright.' The best part is the VT works like your brain, not a paper-bound book. Word maps blossom with meanings and branch to related words. You'll want to explore just to see what might happen. You'll discover--and learn--naturally and intuitively. You'll find the right word, write more descriptively, free associate--and gain a more precise understanding of the English language.”

Well, it’s sorta cool. I like the assembly-time feel of it, like the electronic shuffling of online poker or the “wait while we search” bullets of Orbitz travel.

But lately, a better word-and-writing map for me is this blogsphere. Here’s why. I remember reading a column by Garrison Keillor and his take on the people locked into their laptops at Nina’s, a local café. Then I saw a Sex and the City rerun where Carie escapes to a coffee shop to escape the claustrophobia of her small apartment with live-in boyfriend. Later, I made a few visits to some of my favorite coffee houses. Stay with me: the word "cafe" mapped, from Keillor column to TV show to more cafe visits (as in that web on Visual Thesaurus. Thinking, thinking all the time.) I almost always write in those places, unless I’m meeting someone. I have this small University of Toronto Press reporter’s notebook and I pull it out and make notes on my day or the people around me. A recent entry reads, “Feb. 2: Grandma Teubert’s birthday. Groundhog did not see his shadow. Spring will come early.”

I decided to write a blog post on the coffee house as refuge. I wrote it at one of those cafes, then posted it. And then I browsed a few other blogs, which I normally do after my own postings, and there it was: a visual map of my mind’s wanderings--on someone else's post (reading, thinking, doing, blogging, reading, thinking, following that yellow brick road). Another blogger had seen Keillor’s column; he’d written a nice entry on the doings of that same coffee shop and what he himself found there. And that made me think about the last time I was at Nina’s with my friend Beth, who had taken me on my first Boundary Waters canoe trip last fall. It had been a glorious week of paddling and camping and friendship. Coincidences and blossoming, indeed.

I have this picture of myself from that trip and I keep it posted on the wall near my desk. I have a canoe on my shoulders and I look strong and happy. It is a nice antidote for the times at work when I feel weak and wimpy and all Emily Dickinson-like.

Today that picture reminded me of another time I had a canoe over my head (oh, that visual mapping again). I was in high school and my girlfriends and I had snuck out of our houses long after midnight to cruise the alleys of that small river town. We were rebels, as rebellious as we could get while still living under the care of our concerned parents. Angie Bowman would tap on my screen window and then I’d pull on my pants, step on the desk, and pop out the screen so I could fall over the first-floor ledge to meet her. We’d work our way down River Drive, tapping and picking up our girlfriends along the way.

One night we were walking in the alley along the Shepard Road dike and an old pick-up truck pulled into the alley behind us, lights bright, pace very slow. “Robideaux!” we yelled. Robideaux was this thick-necked, slow-witted guy who liked to tail high-school girls after school or on Friday nights. He must have been in his twenties; the kind of guy who barely graduates high school and never leaves his podunk hometown. He’d sometimes drive really slow behind me when I walked home from track practice and I could feel his creepy eyes on my back, my swaying hips. I tried to walk like a boy when that happened.

Anyway, we knew it was him that night so we bolted, splitting up every which way. Not a good plan. I was fast and ran hard to the next block. But it was a dead end and I couldn’t find a way further out. I saw an over-turned canoe resting on a homemade rack and I crawled underneath it and hid in the cove between the canoe and the two-by-fours.

I don’t know if Robideaux saw me in his headlights and recognized me from those afternoon walks home but he sped to the end of that alley, too, stopped his truck, and pushed out his door, leaving it open in the dark. I could hear my hushed breathing echo softly in the belly of that aluminum canoe. I could feel my chest rise up and down while he stepped over the lawns, crunching old oak and maple leaves as he went. I could hear his breathing and it was much louder and raspier than mine. When he paused, I would breathe as shallow as I could. A candle wouldn’t even have flickered with that little bit of breath of mine.

Of course, he didn’t find me that night. Otherwise, I’d be a different person today. I’m not sure how to map that memory. It goes from quiet strength to power to fear to quiet strength again, I guess. I can read plenty between my own lines.