e all create maps in our minds. Though our topographies vary, the inner calibration of the hippocampus perpetually swings like a compass needle, reading the signals that bring us our bearings. Some Manhattanites I met when I lived there couldn’t point north or south, but they were still guided up- and downtown by trains, the spire of the Empire State Building, the open skies over the water bodies that bound the edges of the island. Heading to Brooklyn, brain synapses fire as the R train screeches in its underground bend
