• People travel the world with
  the help of a map.
  But, do they explore the word with a map?
  Maybe. Maybe not.
  Back in school,
  Every year with a set of new books
  I got an Atlas.
  To gawk at it was my
  favourite pastime:
  India, Congo, Plateau of Tibet,
  Labrador Sea, Himor Sea, Magellan Strait
  It still is, especially when
  the world and its people
  don't make much sense.
  I look at the lines, latitudes and longitudes:
  they measure the distance between east and west, my teacher said
  They are the alphabets of the map,
  and spoke its language, I thought.
  But then, I was a kid with so many doubts!
  Why do all those lines never measure the
  distance between absence and presence?
  or between what is said and what is meant?
  or between that which is lost and found?
  The kid grew into a person with many doubts!
  Do the people under the cemetery
  have a map, too?
  Do souls need a map?
  Do storytellers need a map?
  Do writers need a map to
  navigate through words?
  Hence, the question always stayed:
  Does exploring need a map?
  How do you pinpoint things on a map that you actually loved about a place:
  how do you find that silver leaf shimmering after a snowfall under the sombre sun on a map?
  how do you find the message in a bottle washed up on some remote island?
  how do you exactly find that place, where some kind of realization had once drawn upon you?

Maybe not in maps. Maybe you find them in words: poems, essays,
stories, autobiographies
People with doubts find their answers in words or
they try to write them down
for others to find them.
To write is to explore
the questions and seek answers.
If maps and the art of drawing lines and travelling is the language of "questions"
words and the art of writing and exploring is the language in which "answers" are enunciated.

PC: Pinterest