When I was a child, I drew maps. As did my father, and his father before him. As to their reasons, I can further a guess but no more. Even my own were vague at the time, much more so now. At first it was mere fun, something I was good at and enjoyed. The simplicity of the things I drew reflected that. There is a book out there about a teen who draws maps of Manhattan, and that is his link into community with the people he's institutionalized with. An interesting parallel, but not an end that I share with him. If one could take all of the maps I drew and place them side by side in chronological order, one could chart the dissolution of one self, and the evolution of another. The first, probably a quick game I played with my dad, dots for soldiers and little tanks, thin pencil streaks delinating fire. And the last I think, was an overview of the Krak de Chevaliers, drawn from the memory of a lost book on the Crusades. A nine year period between the two. At some point was born the concept that as disordered and chaotic as my life and feelings were, as beautiful things ended around me, I could create order and purpose on a piece of paper. I could shape a city or a fortification to my will or whimsy, could garner accolades with a craft. Writing began that way also. And at some point, the visual precision of cartography gave way to prose, and then to poetry, and finally to apology. But the skills remained, and the practical eye that governed them. I've always been able to see maps and translate them to first person imagery. Been able to inhale a document and ingest the contents like food and drink. Today, if asked, I could tell you of the seven great walls of Constantinople, of the how and why they finally fell in 1453 to the Ottomans. I could describe in detail the failure of Charlemagne to reconquer the Iberian, and of the disintegration of the great man's realm after his death. Dead history to some, but not to me.
Show me a map of Afghanistan and I see more than ISAF and Taliban. I think that was one of the many reasons I was good at what the Army asked of me. The job itself, not the lifestyle. An excellent addition to the S-2, but a terrible Soldier. I thought too deeply about things, saw too far behind our infant of a nation to really believe in our mission. There are some children playing soccer in Paktika today with green eyes, passed down from Macedonian soldiers during Alexander's conquest and the subsequent Wars of the Diadochi. Dig a few feet into the walls of Herat and you will find musket ***** from Tarmelane's devastation alongside shrapnel from Soviet mortars. Some villages so old that they were inhabited when merchants from the great plateau of Iran brought the first tales of Rustam. All this behind a map, with soldiers far tougher and experienced than I wondering why goatherds with small arms were able to resist the most expensive military machine in history. Don't mistake me, the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Hiz-bi Islami Gulbuddin and the Haqqani Network, to say nothing of Al-Qaeda and the Khorasan Group, are people who perform evil deeds. But those tactics, beheadings and hangings, public stonings and burning, are tried and tested methods. European armies and commanders from 1632 would have approved heartily, recognized all of it as a matter of course. 1632.....A mere second ago in terms of the history of the Human species.
And so, I no longer make maps. Not for the Army, not for myself. I only write now. For many reasons, but primarily only two. As explanation, apologia more precisely, to describe and justify why I am the way I am. And for the joy of creation, the mystery of reaching into a soul with mere words. No map can ever accomplish that.
