on the atlas

As an essential tool in the ongoing shaping of the fictitious Central Asia nation of Grigovia, I drew of it a map. And while adding the final touches to this map, in order to correctly determine its bordering states, I consulted a pre-Unification Diercke Weltatlas (world atlas) from my days at the Gymnasium in Germany. I had forgotten how fascinating it was to look at an atlas, at my leisure to follow the contours of a random chunk of the Siberian landscape, to examine the living conditions in and population data for a township in Apartheid South Africa, to puzzle over a detailed and colorful analysis of the economy of Argentina in the 1989. Only with effort did I remembered my task, flip to the proper page, and write down Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. My task completed, I looked back at the atlas fondly and appreciated it for having no bright display, no DSL uplink, no spyware, no malware, no netbook battery indicator counting down the minutes, no Tumblr feed to scroll through, no email to answer, no hyperlink to follow – that for ten minutes of my life on a Tuesday evening it was just me and a 20-year old book filled with pictures of countries, some of which no longer exist.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥