I was now one of those adventurers seeking the source of the Nile, or a native transporting a pack alongside a team of geographical scholars.

MARES AND PETALS
What is it that impelled me to draw fake maps of unknown realms? These maps, in which I incorporated all the geological formations—maps abounding with straits, isthmuses, peninsulas, islands, lagoons, mountain ranges, lakes and rivers that traced wild bends—were an amusing child’s game for me. Nevertheless, it didn’t surprise me to learn that adults also play this game, which centers around maps, one of the most creative reflections of the world in which we live. Maps perhaps are fragments of poetic images. Without them we would have difficulty forming a picture of the locale to which we are so passionately attached. Without them, how would Neruda have described as an ‘elongated petal,’ his beloved country Chile that runs the length of the western coast of South America?