Personal geographies

Every organic creature is acting in patterns and in an organized order, even if it is out of impulses, it is routed through lines of information processing and it is supervised by brain, nerves, and other control systems in the body. Every organic creature is made of organized and patterned structure. What is not organic is put into order, pattern and being structured, even if not physically moved, by an organic creature.

Mapping or "orientating" (as the author named it) is, in my opinion, the connection of facts, known or imaginative facts,(like in books)that form together a way of expression and description of what is out of sight or understanding and needs to be taught.
To use a map is to "read" the invisible; it is a guide that is supposed to be trustful and to show the possibilities towards the unknown. But like everything in life, it is not a clear cut of black and white, and the grays between the extremes are the variety of uses and types of maps. Whatever someone does in order to document is actually creating a map, either for personal or public use. The user of those maps is the reason and the cause of the symbols in the key of the map, also called a "legend of a map" – therefore can be understood as the object we need in order to discover what is beyond a closed door, or as the need for someone to tell us the story of what we see in the map. If it is a self use map, drawn by an individual for his own use, no additional key or explanation needed, and usually the map wouldn't be totally defined, it would rely mostly on author's memory and self coding. On the other hand if the user is the public, a map drawn for "outsiders", the key of the map plays an important role in order for the map to act like one and to be read.

A map is the only story told that doesn't have a beginning or an end, and not even a plot. The reader can start in every point he chooses, and to choose any direction he desired. According to the user's needs the story would guide him towards his goal.
We are most of the time using our memory to perform as our map, but it is not always reliable or up to date, therefore the illustrated map is the more common and reliable one, and reliability is the key word, because the use of a map is in some way a cry for help – "I am lost, help me to find my way", as the author described it – "we are at sea". The use of the sea as a metaphor for perdition is because we cannot map the sea, we can create an invisible grid over it and use machines to help us navigate, but there is no way to mark or remember, no order and no patterns that we so strongly need in order to orient our self.
"You are here" actually means "you are at home", now you know where you are, now you are in a familiar territory and you can go on and select your path.

Human beings need to put pieces of information into familiar patterns and frames in order to participate connect and translate them; a map is a visual (in most cases) way of doing it, so one can use the information for himself or for the use of others.