palette: atlas
palette: atlas
by Cherry (ink_stain)
Viggo; gen; G
628 words
Disclaimer
A/N: I may or may not have a strange fascination with maps and atlases. You've no proof. (no comments from the peanut gallery)
Viggo has an odd dislike of being asked, "Where are you from?"
An innocuous enough question, but not so easy to answer when the world is your hometown, though he never says that. There are limits to how much one can say without sounding pretentious, and Viggo's wary of pushing those boundaries. Easier to simply say he was born in New York, and grew up in Argentina and Denmark. Not a lie, but not exactly the truth, either.
"A child of the world," his mother used to call him. Viggo remembers it best in Spanish, hijo del mundo, the smell of honey and lemon. She gave him a world map that year for Christmas and they tacked it to the wall behind his bed. The sun bleached it to nothingness, faded the blue of the oceans and the vibrant pinks and oranges and yellows of all the countries; Viggo's mother kissed the top of his head and claimed he was dreaming all the colors out of it.
"I'll give them back," he said. "I just want to borrow them for a while."
He has an atlas, now, a World Book he found in a used bookstore nearly twenty years ago, pale blue hardcover frayed at the edges and held on only by a long strip of dull gray duct tape. On the back of the front cover, two sentences in greyed ink, carefully lettered on the yellowed paper:
When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.*
Inside, there's a thick black line tracing the route from New York to Orlando, Florida; someone had driven to Disney World, I-95 all the way and nothing to break the monotony of treetops except the South of the Border resort, which was even more of an abomination than Disney itself.
He writes over the oceans and mountains, snatches of memory he doesn't want to lose
(followed a carnival caravan to Lord's Valley, PA, and ate a candied apple for dinner. Rode the ferris wheel six times and got stuck at the top twice -- rising, falling, rising, falling, and the stars looked close enough to touch. A cold breeze from the east, and I left my jacket in the car)
and adopts a color-coded system of marking the pages. Places he'd lived -- New York, California, Idaho, Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand -- were circled in red; places he'd filmed or vacationed, anywhere he'd ever stopped for the night while roadtripping, in blue. Places he wants to go are highlighted in bright yellow; when he gets there, he circles them in black.
The two-page spread of New Zealand is completely covered with his notes; things he was afraid he would forget and things he knew he wouldn't. Pressed between the pages, a map of Middle Earth, nearly obscured by his jagged scrawl.
It is both wish list and scrapbook, like yearly measurements penciled on kitchen doorways, marked in highway divider lines and the accumulation of frequent-flier miles. He takes the atlas with him everywhere, makes sure it fits in all his suitcases.
A travel diary, but more than that. His memoirs of a sort, though it feels more like design than confession, something like creation. The vaguely junkyard feeling of found art -- something new from something old. His fingerprints across Spain like smudgy blue ghosts, a coffee stain along the Andes, red clay dust in the crease of New Mexico. Pouring the colors back in, the ones he dreamed away, but they're not the same colors as before. Some are deeper, richer, brighter, sharper, and some are paler, duller, tucked away and hidden and not even real anymore. More Viggo's now, than the world's.
* Willam Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
by Cherry (ink_stain)
Viggo; gen; G
628 words
Disclaimer
A/N: I may or may not have a strange fascination with maps and atlases. You've no proof. (no comments from the peanut gallery)
Viggo has an odd dislike of being asked, "Where are you from?"
An innocuous enough question, but not so easy to answer when the world is your hometown, though he never says that. There are limits to how much one can say without sounding pretentious, and Viggo's wary of pushing those boundaries. Easier to simply say he was born in New York, and grew up in Argentina and Denmark. Not a lie, but not exactly the truth, either.
"A child of the world," his mother used to call him. Viggo remembers it best in Spanish, hijo del mundo, the smell of honey and lemon. She gave him a world map that year for Christmas and they tacked it to the wall behind his bed. The sun bleached it to nothingness, faded the blue of the oceans and the vibrant pinks and oranges and yellows of all the countries; Viggo's mother kissed the top of his head and claimed he was dreaming all the colors out of it.
"I'll give them back," he said. "I just want to borrow them for a while."
He has an atlas, now, a World Book he found in a used bookstore nearly twenty years ago, pale blue hardcover frayed at the edges and held on only by a long strip of dull gray duct tape. On the back of the front cover, two sentences in greyed ink, carefully lettered on the yellowed paper:
When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.*
Inside, there's a thick black line tracing the route from New York to Orlando, Florida; someone had driven to Disney World, I-95 all the way and nothing to break the monotony of treetops except the South of the Border resort, which was even more of an abomination than Disney itself.
He writes over the oceans and mountains, snatches of memory he doesn't want to lose
(followed a carnival caravan to Lord's Valley, PA, and ate a candied apple for dinner. Rode the ferris wheel six times and got stuck at the top twice -- rising, falling, rising, falling, and the stars looked close enough to touch. A cold breeze from the east, and I left my jacket in the car)
and adopts a color-coded system of marking the pages. Places he'd lived -- New York, California, Idaho, Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand -- were circled in red; places he'd filmed or vacationed, anywhere he'd ever stopped for the night while roadtripping, in blue. Places he wants to go are highlighted in bright yellow; when he gets there, he circles them in black.
The two-page spread of New Zealand is completely covered with his notes; things he was afraid he would forget and things he knew he wouldn't. Pressed between the pages, a map of Middle Earth, nearly obscured by his jagged scrawl.
It is both wish list and scrapbook, like yearly measurements penciled on kitchen doorways, marked in highway divider lines and the accumulation of frequent-flier miles. He takes the atlas with him everywhere, makes sure it fits in all his suitcases.
A travel diary, but more than that. His memoirs of a sort, though it feels more like design than confession, something like creation. The vaguely junkyard feeling of found art -- something new from something old. His fingerprints across Spain like smudgy blue ghosts, a coffee stain along the Andes, red clay dust in the crease of New Mexico. Pouring the colors back in, the ones he dreamed away, but they're not the same colors as before. Some are deeper, richer, brighter, sharper, and some are paler, duller, tucked away and hidden and not even real anymore. More Viggo's now, than the world's.
* Willam Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways