Space is a Puzzle

I like maps.  I like street grids.  I like getting a little lost.  I like knowing a place.  I like getting from here to there.

I’ve noticed this before.  Whenever I come to a new city, space is like a puzzle.  To begin with, I see only fragments – individual pieces.  I can discern the color of each, it overall shape, and the contours of its edges.  I get to know that individual piece, but it is small and partial.

Soon I pickup, hold, and visit other individual pieces.  Somehow I get from one to the other.  And they can be totally distinct, and somewhat mysterious.  But there always comes a first, magical moment  --when I see how two pieces fit together.  The contours mesh and interlock.  I see a connection between spaces.  This may be from simply walking, riding, or driving a little farther than I had before, and seeing how one neighborhood opens up to another -- how crossing from  this street in Jangpura takes you to Lajpat Nagar, or how going under those railroad tracks takes you to Defense Colony.  Suddenly a string of puzzle pieces have been strung together.

At some point, large swathes of the picture emerge.  My string of known puzzle pieces here, connect with those there, and form a larger patch of the underlying city logic.  I put a map on my wall at this point, and gaze at the places I know. Re-tracing my steps and puzzle discoveries.  I can begin to fill in the missing pieces, and make note of new places I should visit.  In this way the puzzle is solved, and I bring the map into my intuitive mind.  I then follow the contours as I travel the city, and begin to make the place my own.