My Map Analysis

I found a map of Cedar Falls on Google Maps. It's a standard map of the pygmy sized city, if it can even be considered a city at all. Of the approximated 39,000 people who live there, 16,000 are affiliated with the university as a student or faculty member. This generic map lead to all of the major attractions, such as city parks and the university. It showed me my street, but not my house. It showed me my park, but not the bonfires that we had there; the fire ablaze in the grill, so inappropriate for the restrained city limits. It showed me my school, but not me, being lost on the first day. The map recognized the UNI-dome, but not the cigarettes that my best friend and I smoked in its parking lot. Campus street was indicated, but not "the hill", or Mojo's, or Sharky's, or the tattoo parlor that aided my best friend in her first act of rebellion. This map shows main street, but not C.J. and I running down it, madly, trying to avoid the merciless rain and the inescapable lighting and thunder. When I zoom in I can see the library, and Panera. But I can't see the textbooks that I left carelessly on my table, while my hands and my mind were occupied with a fashion magazine. This map shows how to enter the town, and how to leave it. But it doesn't show one how to live it. It doesn't make memories, or reveal them to the inexperienced. But it renders those that were already made, and builds anticipation for those to come.