You are here. Trust the dot.

I’ve been studying a lot of those “You Are Here” maps lately. At malls and transit centers, on school campuses, in the middle of parks, tall buildings, and parking garages. And the pulsing blue circle on my phone, me in the Google Map universe: I look at that a lot. I appreciate that these dots are trying gamely to reassure me and provide bearings. Theoretically, it shouldn’t be too difficult to synch my geographically fuzzy brain with a finite plot of ground. These are, after all, real places and agreed upon coordinates. But it can be tough. One diagonal road too many, one street that’s become a staircase, and my internal compass becomes unmoored. Look for the sun, try to site a landmark. West is the ocean, check; east is the mountains, at least the ones not surrounded by salt water. How hard is it? Get a grip.

Well, I’m trying. But having just moved back to Seattle after 21 years away, my mental maps are a little rusty. The other day on Queen Anne, I realized I had the avenue flipped in my memory, with the Five Spot to the north by the Fremont Cut and the Safeway on the west, not east side of the avenue. I had it all backwards. It was exhilarating, though, to remap the neighborhood in the present. Being lost in a new place — and figuring it out — is a real-time accomplishment. Sometimes my memory has to be junked completely. Capitol Hill has shifted — at least the commercial heart —  from Broadway to Pike and Pine. I had the new Elliott Bay Book Company way too close in my head to Volunteer Park. But now, after repeated wanderings, detours, and phone gazing, I’m beginning to construct a refreshed layout for Capitol Hill and mesh together new mental maps that better knit in the Central District and Madison Valley, Madrona and Leschi. It’s a process. How many years does it take to know a city? To rebuild a reliable picture? To blow away the cobwebs of misremembering? I hope it takes a long time. I like turning the corner to find something new and something out of place and then do the hard (for me, at least) thinking that it takes to relate the remembered with the actual. I’m here for the adventure, and it’s happening from the block up.