True North

Image courtesy of Natalie Rhea on unsplash.com

My good friend Bryan Kam was telling me about Lera Boroditsky’s fascinating research the other day. During the course of the conversation he mentioned that Boroditsky has observed that certain cultures always use cardinal as opposed to indexical directions (‘you are South East of me’ cf. ‘you are in front of me’). Apparently these cultures have a phenomenal sense of direction and are superlative navigators. In reality this ‘sense’ of theirs is likely inferred from the position of the Sun or something like that, but I love the idea of a more ‘magical’ explanation of certain peoples being able to tune in to the Earth’s magnetic field. The idea stayed with me and re-emerged a few days later as this little poem:

There are some peoples who always know where North is

I like to think they can feel
Earth
pulling
the iron in their blood

I like to think that I
could feel it too
If I just
listened.