Psychonavigation

I’ve been away. Not far, but certainly ‘out of normal range’. And I’ve been wandering without a map again…in a rental car. Reading the signs and wondering. The rental car was a much smaller car than I’m used to driving so I read the space differently and parked all wonky the first few times but then revelled in parallel parking which is so much easier with a small car. I did it enthusiastically…all the time. I didn’t realize that the car had a CD player until after I’d left home, after I’d picked up the car so I hurriedly burned 2 CDs in my office before I left town. As I did a lot of driving, I listened to these 2 CDs repeatedly over the four days I was away. I’m still humming those tunes and singing those songs and seeing the ballet and the play in my head. Does intense musical repetition create a kind of muscle memory in the brain and the mouth and the heart and the hands? I listened to Anita O’Day everyday and a sweet and simple California-sound jazz song “I Want to Sing a Song” became my theme song:


Sometimes when I get blue
I want to sing a song
So I do

And sometimes when I feel gay
Another song I sing
That’s my way

There are those who fret over things that have passed
I forget

If I’m found without friends
A song is what my heart recommends

And if I’m lost in a crowd
I want to sing a song

Long and loud

Loud and long to show that I love someone too

I want to sing a song
Just for you

I want to sing a song
Just for you

I was out for the evening one of the evenings I was away and at the end of it, I gave a ride to a couple of guys who were going my way and on the way back we talked for the ½ hour drive about driving without a map. One of the guys told me that this was called psychonavigation and that the Bugis of Indonesia (fishers and traders) have perfected this skill. What I was really interested in was how they read their environment and in reading up on this later, I found that they not only read wind, weather, clouds, all the stuff you’d guess but they read the phosphorescence on the water and the lightning on the horizon. They memorize algorithms that predict tide activities, know the stars, bless the voyage with coins and an egg in the centre of a basket of uncooked rice and “Captains will also engage in "meditative visualization" of their journey, literally willing their ships (through the power of their thought) the ability to reach their destination.”



Is this what I do? Is this ‘ranging’ like a dog, like I do, banking on memories and feelings to get me (in this case) from North York to Waterloo without a map and without resorting to the 401? And why, why do I do it? I swear, this time, I revisited/passed childhood-haunts-I'd-forgotten-about almost instinctively - "Oh, yes, it's there I think", I thought and it was there. Where do I think I’m going? For what am I fishing?