While I do feel that I can attest honestly to knowing Halifax, that is to say I understand its character, I cannot create a true map of the city in my mind. I can conjure up focal points, a certain street corner for example, but between them are swathes of space where my memory cannot reach. In this way I feel a certain kinship with the geographers upon whom Plutarch commented, early in the biography of Theseus section of his Lives, writing that they:
crowd on to the outer edges of their maps the parts of the earth which elude their knowledge, with explanatory notes that "What lies beyond is sandy desert without water and full of wild beasts," or "blind marsh," or "Scythian cold," or "frozen sea,"
However, unlike Plutarch's geographers, these sandy deserts and blind marshes infest all parts of my mental map. Even more than it is something, my Halifax is nothing: it is scattered with small points I can recreate amid countless stretches that I cannot.
Furthermore, just like Plutarch's geographers, I make a poor navigator. My more practical friends often lament how useless I am at giving street directions to wherever I am in Halifax; and I have similarly lamented how long this has left me standing on street corners on a mid-January evening.
However, as I began to acclimate to living at King's, in a small way this began to change. I walked the streets of the South End every day. I learned their turns and their corners. Just as King's became my home, so too did everything around it become my neighbourhood. It spread to fill what was once a blank expanse on my mental map.