Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

March 22, 2005

Dear Colleague,

More than most people, professors are obliged to speak coherently, in paragraphs, present a world that makes sense. For this reason, I was critical of geography professors who, in the old days, used many colored slides in the classroom. To my way of thinking, every time they said, "next slide" they skipped a connection. A lecture full of "next slides" is therefore full of holes, and is almost wholly incoherent, although the students, impressed by the composition within each slide, are not aware of being hoodwinked. Now, it suddenly occurs to me that these old-fashioned geography professors were actually--unknown to themselves--forerunners of postmodernism! For, by using slides, they were able to dispense with story-telling and present the world--in postmodernist fashion--as separately framed pictures, each of interest in itself, that have no necessary link to one another.

In old age, perhaps because my body is beginning to be less a whole than a confederation of wayward parts, I am beginning to see the world as far more chaotic, a product of chance, than I thought. Chance, or accident intervenes to disrupt society's best-laid plans and an individual's storyline, for good and ill. Let me illustrate with a piece of trivia. Last week, I had two brushes with "chance" or "luck." I was driving slowly, two blocks from home, feeling comfortable and safe, when a car swiped my back fender and sped on. At home, I examined the ugly scar and said under my breath, "Damn it all, now I have to call my insurance agent, get the car to a body shop, leave it there for God knows how long. Why did it have to happen? Why couldn't my guardian angel intervene?" Two days later, I called a cab to take me to the body shop to pick up the repainted car. The cab driver was a young African-American. We chatted politely about how accidents do happen. Suddenly he perked up and asked, "Do you teach at the U?" I said, yes. "You are Yi-Fu Tuan, aren't you?" I said yes again, surprised. "Well, a friend of mine is an admirer of yours." To hide my embarrassment, I turned the conversation to him. "Are you a student at the U?" "Yes, I am--or rather I was--an art student, three-credits short of graduating. I am trying to save enough to return and finish my degree."

The cab's meter read $10 at the body shop. I gave the driver $40 and still felt that I had shortchanged him. What is the human and emotional worth of that conversation to me? I don't know. And I don't know whether I will see Chris Neal (the cab driver) again. So within a week one accident led to another: two parabolas touched--one unhappily, the other happily--and then swung apart. Isn't this what real life is like, rather than the tidy packages I deliver to students? But of course I exaggerate. Order of incredible intricacy, created by human will and imagination, also exists. My favorite example is the trajectory of my postcard, thrown into a mailbox on North Park Street, Madison, and ending--after handling by dozens of people, machines, and carriers--in a village in Bangladesh.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu