Quixotic Maps: Nowhere via Pleasure
Whenever we want to travel somewhere, we can now go online and use MapQuest. We have GPS. Even our phones point us in the “correct” direction. We put in our point of origin and our intended destination and applications offer us a concise, neatly defined route for our assured arrival. Technology makes us efficient and target-oriented. But, while we arrive at our objectives in tact, what if we want to enjoy the pleasure of meandering–of aimless discovery? What happens if we decide en route that our original objective wasn’t quite right?
This series of Quixotic Maps explores what it means to be directionless – and how that type of exploration might be productive. They “chart” the meandering we do when we don’t really know where we want to go or what we want to do. In that process of indecision, we often feel guilty because people tell us we must have a goal–evidently as some sort of social imperative or responsibility. Yet instead of worrying about the destination, what if we paid attention to the processes by which we arrive at our destinations and decisions? What would these maps of wandering/wondering look like? How could we imagine our messy, counter-intuitive internal positioning systems as (im)practical ways of understanding our selves and our ambitions?
On my circuitous career path, I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Beaver College (now Arcadia) after which I created art professionally for over a decade. I lived in Paris, Naples, Philadelphia, and New York. I then started teaching English and decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Language and Literacy at City College/CUNY, followed by a Ph.D. in English Composition and Rhetoric from the CUNY Graduate Center. I now enjoy teaching undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. students at CUNY. My life decisions did not begin with a defined destination (i.e. “I will go to school because I want to become . . . “) but, instead, through a process of paying attention to what resources I had, what seemed currently meaningful to me, and what gave me pleasure.
I’ve recently been figuring out how to meld all my experiences and abilities. At slightly past mid-life, what does one’s background knowledge and know-how mean and how can one make them more meaningful? These questions aren’t so much a prolonged mid-life crisis but instead a healthy conundrum of ongoing quest. As a strategy of considering what next step to take, these Quixotic Maps—among a series of others–allows me to retrace my past, re-evaluate my present, and potentially better improvise my future.
Mark McBeth
