My T-Shirt Map

I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of telling the story of where I journeyed for an entire week on a t-shirt. Because I have a background of ambiguity in writing, I found it fitting to use this saqme technique in the creation of my t-shirt map. I used very simple, but strong characters to tell my story. My t-shirt consisted of a large, blackface symbol surrounded by tracklines that led to Temple University, Sally's Beauty Store, Victoria's Secret, The Queen Memorial Library, Rite Aid, my teaching job at the John Gloucester House and Commerce Bank.

The odd thing about my t-shirt is that it caught everyone off guard and made people think, "Why would she choose that symbol? What does it have to do with anything?" What no one understood is that the blackface on my shirt was simply a way for me to document a specific course that I am enrolled in at Temple University. This technique could be likened to that of GPS zoom.

The irony that lies in interpretation is that I laid the symbol out on my map one way and in one place; It went in so many different directions. I even felt the pain of that symbol, after seeing the outcome of my t-shirt and it became something that I decided to distance myself from. Although the symbol was the largest, and the most crudely constructed, it was not the most important aspect of the map. Everyone probably felt that way. The relation to all of the symbols and the track marks told the real story. The explanation that I gave was part of my story, because no one would have otherwise known why the blackface was there in the beginning.

Also, like world maps, my map contained history. For one to fulkly understand what the map referred to, he/she must know that I am taking two course which I decided to overlap. At this point in history, when I created my map, this is the influence that I had.