Monday, March 8, 2010

The Lay Of The Land

I have a fairly healthy interest in maps. I wouldn't call it purely an academic one, you understand. It's the real implications of them that draws my attention. Those which represent fictional places are of use only to the extent that they illuminate the fiction, and I wish nonetheless that the author had managed to craft his prose in such a way that no supplementary material were necessary. Maps which depict reality elicit from me no such caveats. I pored over maps of Chicago for months before I went there for school. The same is true for any place that interests me in any such way.


I sought out this map upon making many recent trips to a church on the east end of LA County where a couple of my improv program's workshops are held. The church happens to lie right near the confluence of several municipal boundaries. The street it's on divides South Pasadena from San Marino. The nearest major east-west crossroad to the south divides the latter community from Alhambra. The nearest such road to the north marks the boundary of Pasadena. It's made all the more confusing when one observes the meandering of the city lines as one traces them just a little further.

The consequences, in my mind, come from the surely diverging nature of local laws (not to mention the manner in which they are enforced), as well as the divergence of general nature, character and energy. Watch out, LA County motorists!

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