…people are under the misapprehension that the human brain is situated in the head: nothing could be further from the truth. It is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.

(Gogol, “Diary of a madman”)

Many would consider the map an artwork but as an intuiter, I resisted that temptation; I needed to see it as the tip of an iceberg. I needed to dive and resurface, dive deeper and so on.

I was a highly qualified intuiter, but that did not mean I intuited all maps. There was a procedure to adhere to and we did not attempt intuiting a map unless it had first spoken to us. Some considered that woowoo, but it was not. Intuition was something my profession had learned to trust. Some had described it as similar to reading tarot cards but I can assure you, I was no charlatan.

I believed that anyone, given minimal tuition, could read a map, but only a few of us could intuit. Intuiting was a process requiring deep thought and internal dialogue. For that reason, it was never referred to as interrogation, even when there was obvious cross over in set up techniques. To intuit a map required experience and a very open mind. To unlock a landscape took extreme patience and nerves of steel.

I sat back quietly in the chair, pulled the ashtray close, lit a cigarette. I blew smoke across the map and watched its parts fade in and out of the cloud I’d made. Due to the ongoing nature of intuiting and broader investigations, I cannot name the map.

I had come across it hanging on a wall of our parliament building. I was called in to check over the premises after a number of parliamentarians were found together, in a trance, at a location upriver and inland from the city of Hobart. They had fallen from fatigue and were lying pressed to the ground. The officer who found them said: “It looked like the land was absorbing them.” And the hospital file suggested minor decomposition of limbs had taken place. For the record, the parliamentarians survived and were sent home to recuperate. But the list of missing people continued to grow, with only the occasional pile of clothes being found.

We had suspected for a while that the landscape was using maps to reach into people. Why would the landscape do that? One theory suggested a recycling program. Humans had consumed unsustainably from the landscape and now the landscape wanted something back. 

For the first three days, I sat watching the map on the wall, every-so-often rising from my chair to investigate a segment of it that was suddenly intriguing. But most of the time, I sat, staring. As an intuiter, staring at a map was my job, but it was not without risk — I made a point of being well-rested and eating healthily so as not to be susceptible to suggestion. It was difficult for people to understand though; not every map was a problem and most people would invite maps into their lives, co-habiting happily for many years until they became sick of the map and took it to a tip shop or died of old age. But the map in front of me caused my neck and head to tingle from the moment I saw it hanging in the parliament building.

The intensity of lamp shine was starting to take a toll on the map, giving it a washed out, bleached look. I left the room.

I returned with more coffee and an array of marker pens. Sucking down a mug of strong black, I stood fully charged within striking distance of the map, holding one of the pens. According to some, what I was about to undertake was more woowoo, but those of us in the profession knew woowoo was no more and no less than the sum of worked experience. Woowoo was a badge we wore with pride. The logic we worked on was as follows: once a landscape was given contours it was unable to hide. At that point, all we needed to do was see it.

I concentrated on a tiny piece of the map and let the detail consume me. The map had not spoken for a particular contour during my earlier questioning, so I put the pen on it and traced its line, widening my vision out further and further, across the lay of the land. For those who are not intuiters and have never experienced doing that, it was a highly satisfying feeling, and self-restraint was required so as not to get carried away and obscure rather than highlight. It was a fascinating process to see a contour unravelling, and as it did it brought into question all those around it. Like the guilty person pointing their finger at another person, so too did a contour line implicate its fellow land-describers. And that one was fruitful.

I stood back, but the map had more to give. Another contour was shirking blame onto those alongside it, so I stepped forward and frowning deeply, continued on. My hand trembled. My eyes blurred. The pen froze. A rumbling in my hind brain — follow the river. My jaw slackened. My hand dropped to my side, letting go of the pen, which clattered to the floor. I jumped.

“No, you don’t,” I spoke aloud, shaken.

Turning away from the map, I grabbed the coffee pot from the table and left the room. Outside one of my colleagues came up to me. “Going okay in there? Looks like it’s a tough nut to crack.”

“It’s fine,” I said, unwilling to change intuiter at this point in the proceedings.

Glugging down a plunger of coffee, I refilled the pot, took it back into the room and placed it on the table. Not wanting to get too close to the map, I sat in the chair, pretended to be lost in thought, and observed it from beneath my brow. It called to me.

What about that contour?

I acted as if I didn’t hear.

Come close, look at infinity.

I poured more coffee, uncrossed my legs and stretched.

How blue is the river? So blue, as blue as the waters of every river and every lake on every map. For the blue extends everywhere. Look into the blue…

Jerking up and out of the chair, I shook myself. Walking up to the map, I flattened my outstretched hands onto it, leaned into it with my body weight. I brought my mouth towards it until I felt the paper brushing my lips.

“Are you trying to hypnotise me?”

There was silence in my head; the map-speak was gone.

Pulling the pen from my pocket, I continued defacing it. I found things it didn’t want me to see, but I was unable to interpret them yet. Like an artist, I stood back from the map every-so-often to see what my markings would unveil. The map was holding its secrets close. It resisted my every move.

Agitated, I paced about the room. When I reached the spot furthest from the map, I spun on my heel, intending to throw the pen at it, but as I turned, I caught a glimpse.

As an intuiter, I was a deft hand at engaging my inner camera-shutter: snap. I had caught the map in all its landscape lies.

My mouth fell open, because what I had drawn, what I had extracted from the confusion of contours, was a brain. And from its size it looked as if it could very well extend onto and perhaps beyond the surrounding map sheets. The river leading from the city centre and up into the brain’s heartland, I concluded, was the brainstem.

Dropping the pen, I ran from the room. I tried to process what it meant. I thought of the decomposing parliamentarians; brains were hungry things. The landscape was not only hiding a brain — it was feeding it.

***

I sat in my green recliner chair; it rocked gently.

I had not been employed, as an intuiter, for over a decade now. The brain in the landscape was my biggest discovery and the pinnacle of my career, but also my downfall. Rather than providing answers, all I had were more and more questions, spiralling out of control. I became increasingly unable to meet key performance indicators, the required progress, and I was released from duty. My position was handed over to a younger, more gung-ho intuiter. I flagged his inexperience as a problem; no-one listened. It was suspected he went the way of the parliamentarians and then further…

Being an intuiter, even one who wasn’t working, continued to be a dangerous business. Every once in a while, when feeling tired, I still heard the map-speak in my head. It echoed my own thoughts over and over.

Whose brain? Follow the river and I’ll show you. Whose brain?

Keeping in touch with my ex-work colleagues, I still had my finger on the pulse. There had been much work done to uncover the brain, both in the map and in the landscape. But overall, I saw little progress.

Suggestible people still went missing. Piles of clothes were still found. Sometimes a gaggle of children disappeared and for a while everyone was depressed.

The authorities were still trying to close off the area containing the brain. But the brain was malleable and capable of rewiring and so it continued growing and changing and expanding beyond wherever it was known. It continued hiding in the map contours, using the infinity loops to create landscape uncertainty and pushing out its edges and throwing its tendrils from one map sheet to another. One of my ex-work colleagues described it as like a willow. The smallest bit of it could be spread by any creek, stream, or river. It was likely there were many, many brains out there. We thought there was only one because that was all we could see. But if we thought logically on the fact that we found a brain outside of the backwater city of Hobart, why would we not think there were brains near other bigger places: Melbourne, New York, Mumbai, Berlin… Our arrogance in our own ability kept us blind. My colleagues were still refusing to turn their gaze beyond the earth. And I went on and on at them, until I was escorted, once again, from the place where I used to work. But I stuck to my guns — until we knew whose brain it was, our hands were tied, our efforts futile.

In summary: the brain carries on.

There is nothing further to report at this time. And I remain forever, haunted by maps.

Image: Janek Valdsalu