Maps and Margins

I’ve got this thing where I always know which way is north.

Walk me through a building I’ve never been in, and I’ll still know where the parking lot is. Come up from the subway, I’m already oriented to the street grid. Some wiring in my hippocampus just works that way.

The real map I carry, though, is my reporter’s notebook. Beat up, ink-smudged, crammed with scribbles in the margins. While part of my brain tracks physical space without effort, these pages map something messier: what people actually said, the detail that explains everything, the question I forgot to ask.

I never get lost finding my way around a city. But the notebook—that’s where the real navigation happens. The margins hold the stories that matter, the ones you can’t find with any compass.