I think I have a learning disability

And I don't say that lightly.

A friend had pointed out a kind of inverse similarity between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. I think he meant they were equally trashy in opposite ways. The latter dripping lavish sin while the former gives off the stench of pseudo-ornate piety. This reminded me of a SciFi novel I'd read and set me about the usual web searching I do when something interests me.

In my search I ran into SLC on Mapquest. I zoomed out to get some geographic perspective.

Then I got really confused.

Then I went and double-checked it on Yahoo maps.

Then the pieces kind of fell into place on a lot of the disparate elements of my life.

For some reason, I never realized that Utah bordered Idaho. I can't really express in words how hugely this changes the way I see this part of the world. It's unbelievable that I've never noticed it before. I grew up 15 minutes from the Idaho border, albeit a different one.

I feel a little dissoriented. I thought I had a pretty good relational idea of where all the states were.

Now all of a sudden the localized map I have in my mind looks like the work of an Enlightenment cartographer, all guilded and utterly distorted. I'm probably giving myself too much credit. My brain map is probably more Ptolemaic. Incidently I wonder if that cartographer, Johan Scotus, is the same John the Scot, or Duns Scotus this jolly abbott forced me to read in Medieval Philosophy. I think the time periods are wrong. Seems like my chronology is screwed up too, completing the spacio-temporal bifecta. That makes me a huge idiot.

This is really digressing, but I would have enjoyed that class much more if I'd read A Confederacy of Dunces before taking it. I would have laughed at the fantastical absurdity of the book initially, then spent twelve weeks slackjawed, watching Kennedy's ridiculous character perfectly enfleshed in this medieval scholar. I have a certain respect to anyone who can devote his whole life--because medieval studies seems to be that kind of thing: a life choice--to studying worldviews no one else has cared about for hundreds of years.

Back to the point. It never fails to amaze me just how important relational geography is to the understanding I have of the context surrounding my life. Hopefully I'm not alone in this.

The next closest example was when I moved to Seattle. I'd been to Redmond previously via several routes: From the west into the Redmond Town Center, from the east to the place I work, and from the south heading to breakfast via a surface street. It always seemed like a sprawling mess. Huge, with each intersection fanning out in 6 directions, the way all roads in Western Washington do. Then one day I came in from Highway 202, the Northwest I think. Along the way I passed some familiar landmarks, the Town Center, the breakfast place, and eventually came to my office. each of these places was within a half-mile of the other. I had a feeling of intense vertigo, kind of like I do now, and everything quietly shifted into place, the map in my mind redrew itself. I felt more complete somehow.

This Idaho-Utah connection clears up a lot, and goes even farther than figuring out Redmond. I had a good friend who went to Ricks College in Rexburg, now known as BYU-Idaho.

I never figured out why there was such a large Mormon population there. Turns out it's closer to Salt Lake City than Spokane is to Seattle. Go Figure. So my mind-map is redrawing itself. More than that though, I also feel a little bit closer to the kid who went to BYU-I, then to Mongolia, then dropped off the radar three years ago--like I understand him better because I have the geography of the situation worked out. I don't know if anyone is going to share this sentiment.

This blog is probably the most indulgent crap I've ever written. I can't expect anyone to enjoy reading this, I just felt like I had to write this feeling down somewhere.