As I said the other day, when it comes to being a travelling companion, my GPS/SatNav, whom I call GyPSy Rose, is a bit unfulfilling. However I have to say that, as a servant, she is nothing short of incredible.

Most of us live in a society where servants are a theoretical or fictional entity. Few of us have grown up under the situation whereby servants are present to permit the masters of the house simply to live life as they choose, unhindered by the need to shop and cook and keep the place tidy enough that one does not have to wade through heaps of uncleared possessions.

The servant is there to permit the masters to put their minds on higher things, such as producing multi-volumed works of important historical research or playing endless games of bridge or drinking oneself into a nightly stupor.

Or Gypsy Rose, whose greatest pleasure in life is freeing her owner of the tyranny of the printed map.

On Saturday, my plane was in on time, my car rental quickly accomplished, the road between LaGuardia and Westport clear. I came into the town with more than an hour to spare before I needed to arrive at the library. So I overrode Gypsy Rose’s well-meaning instructions, and turned her off.

This, too, is the prerogative of a master of servants, to send them away and order silence.

I drove through town, past one group of shops after another. I seemed to be following the sea, although without a map, or converting Gypsy’s screen so I lay higher above the countryside, I could not be certain. When another village grew up around me, I turned away from the main road, and set off into uncharted territory.
And discovered dogwoods.

I knew the tree of course, although dogwoods do not thrive in my part of California. I have seen white and pink dogwoods, and once had an enormous white one growing past the window of my second story bedroom.

Or shall I say, I thought I knew the tree. As I drove, the revelation grew up around me—literally. White? Yes. Also off-white, and creamy white, and WHITE-WHITE! and ivory and pinky-white and green-white and nearly yellow, all of them in the peculiarly intense colors of the dogwood’s thick blossoms.

And pink: pale pink, the color of a cat’s tongue. And a lacey pink that results when each flower is slightly variegated. Also rose and brick-pink and hot pink.

One after another, planted in gardens, lining the winding road, along mill-ponds, reflected in the rills of streams. An entire spectrum of the rainbow that runs from white-white to hot pink, filling the vision and the mind.

Now, if I had been depending on maps to re-trace my steps, I would never have wandered so far from the path, and certainly never have felt free to open my mind to the sight without concern for where I was and how I would get back. The only reason I discovered the colors of dogwood was because I could trust Gypsy to be there when I woke her, depend on her to cast out her invisible lines of inquiry, like a bee turned loose in open countryside, and aim unerringly for the address that she had been closing in on nearly an hour before.

Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Thank you to everyone who came out to the Cleveland Park library on a rainy afternoon yesterday and made it such a grand success. And I hope to see more of you at the SW Anchor library in Baltimore this afternoon.
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As I mentioned, I have a travelling companion. She is small and dark, a little square, and hard, if delicate. Her name is GyPSy Rose.

Gypsy is a most patient companion, always willing to compensate for my quirks and mistakes by a nearly inaudible sigh and the comment, “Recalculating.” When I fail, despite her increasingly urgent entreaties, to Turn Right at the correct place, she neither criticizes nor comments, merely summoning her thoughts to provide me with an alternative.

Not that Gypsy Rose is without quirks of her own. I learned quickly that if she says nothing, for miles at a time, she is neither sulking nor broken, but merely wishes me to drive on the same road that she has provided, endlessly. This is one companion who only speaks when she has something to say, and her conversation is always to the point.

“In point two miles, turn right,” she suggests, then more urgently, “Turn right!” And if I fail to fling the car across four crowded lanes to obey, she gives her little sigh, recalculates, and restores me to order.

Nonetheless—and I say this out of her earshot—I am not fully appreciative of the skills of the GPS. I am a lover of maps. Maps speak to me in a wider vocabulary than that of my small square friend. I look at a piece of green against an uneven border of blue, decorated with a tracery of red and black lines, and I know that this is a stretch of coastland, and see that I am following the route of traders through the towns of fishermen and sea-side dwellers. A map gives a sense of the journey, shows a chunk of countryside, suggests the terrain by its relative straightness or windings, speaks of unseen obstacles or attractions in the circuitous nature of its detours. A map is a thing to be unfolded and draped across the top of a car hood, a picnic table, a horse’s pack, a log. A map tells me when I draw near towns with names that roll off the tongue:Mamaroneck and Stamford, New Rochelle and Chappaqua.

Gypsy is not good with the big picture. Her voice, her palm-sized screen, and her limited mentality present the world in tiny, unrelated segments. “In five point five miles, exit right” followed by “turn left, then right” tells me nothing about how near I am to the shore, how the highway skirts a river with historical echoes to its name. I get from there to here with no sense of where I have actually travelled, what sort of land or history lay within those miles.

I get there, but her companionship is unfulfilling.