GET LOST

I changed my walls up a bit. 

I had been intending to put some kind of slogan above my map and postcards; I considered "Where to next?", "Let's get lost," or maybe a reference to this video (because I could totally be an international nasty girl). After getting a set of letters to make a DIY banner, I realized that both of those wouldn't fit across the top of the setup like I wanted it to. So I shortened it to simply "Get lost." 

Yeah, I totally realize that in English, when you tell somebody to "get lost," it's very rude. Looking at it from a linguistic perspective, pragmatically, I probably shouldn't string up G-E-T-★-L-O-S-T all friendly-inspirational like that, but semantically, it makes complete sense. 

Flashback to my first week at Harvard, during arts camp. For introductions, we were supposed to bring an item that represented us. Mine was a compass. Besides the whole cliché "I love to travel" shit I already overuse, I added that I chose a compass because, quite frankly, I enjoy getting lost. Not just getting lost in a new city far away, but also getting lost in a piece of art, in an intriguing poem, in a Saint-Saëns concerto, in my lover-that-has-yet-to-exist's eyes, or in my thoughts. "Get lost" is a reminder. It's not only a reminder of all the places I could potentially wander around in, but it's also a reminder to find something that excites me so much I lose myself in it. I suppose as I continue exploring potential academic interests this year, I'll keep that in mind.

Oh, and I changed my calendar to the New York one my roommates got me! So the section of wall to the left of my window is the New York wall, and across it on the right is the France/Paris wall. a.k.a. when I look out the window I am also looking at two places I'm going to live in in my future. How's that for motivational?

Anyway, to get to the main point of this post, let me tell you about a little place that might just have become my favorite place to visit in the USA.

I first heard about the Mapparium when I was reading a short story ("Sexy" by Jhumpa Lahiri, I recommend it) set in Boston for my expository writing class. The story describes it as "a room made of glowing stained-glass panels, which was shaped like the inside of a globe, but looked like the outside of one. In the middle of the room was a transparent bridge, so that they felt as if they were standing in the center of the world." 

I knew right then and there that I had to visit it.

It wasn't until December 5th that I was able to find the time to go downtown and visit it. It's in the Mary Eddy Baker library, and it can only be accessed with a tour guide during tours that run throughout the day. While waiting for the 10:20 am tour, I took some pictures.

The hallway leading to the Mapparium

The fancy bathroom

The library itself had this fantastic aura about it; it was an awe-inspiring place to be. But that pales to how being in the Mapparium itself was like. 

I was the only one on the tour next to the tour guide, which I feel made the experience more moving. Upon taking one step into the Mapparium, it immediately took my breath away. It was just how the story described it. 

People are sadly not allowed to take pictures inside.

It was a lot bigger than I had imagined. Everything was constructed to scale, and everything felt so close yet so distant at once. Not to mention the acoustics of that place; because of the spherical construction, a whisper spoken into one end can be heard all the way in the other, and if you stand at the very center just beneath the north pole and speak, your voice becomes amplified and reverberates literally throughout the entire world. It's hard to describe, but it's magical. 

I asked to see the demo video about the place, and shortly before it played, the entire place turned dark. Then certain individual countries lit up as "hello" in their language was spoken, all over the globe, loud and echoey. The show gave me chills. The actual video was about the construction of the Mapparium and how it's representative of the world in 1935. It was striking to see how much the world had changed in terms of its political borders. 

As I stood on the bridge connecting two sides of the world, I looked all around me at each massive continent, and then at the tiny dot that was Boston, where I was at that moment. In my mind I revisited the places I had seen as I looked at their panels, impressed with the vast distances I had covered. And I gazed longingly at the places I have yet to see. 

I left feeling a renewed sense of motivation and a strong impulse to buy things at the gift shop (which was actually having a clearance sale). I bought the last plush globe they had.

I also bought a new journal, since the one I had been using before then already ran out of pages. 

My journals are another story, though there'll surely be another blog entry about them! 

In the meantime, I'll certainly visit the Mapparium again whenever I need to get away from campus and remember the whole big world out there to explore and get lost in.