Bernard Cooper's Maps To Anywhere

      Maps to Anywhere is a compilation of short essays that I believe revolve around the ideas of reality and life. He discusses and illustrates different scenarios of experiences throughout his childhood into his adulthood that have sculpted his life. I think it's the more personal stories that seem to make the story more meaningful to the reader.
    For example, one of the first sections that stood out to me was: The Biggest, Most Beautiful Balcony in the Wind. In this section Cooper explains how he and his niece would play a game in which she would have to say what the most ugly, pretty, saddest, funniest, loudest, ect., thing in the world would be. he describes how she would strain to branch her mind out to think of all the recesses of the world to discover what could be the single aspect of their topic.  Cooper then tells us of how she soon out-grows the game to think of almost materialistic ideals. In a way, I think it's sad because she lost the idea of not being caged in thought. He mentions a scene he comes upon. "But yesterday I saw the saddest balcony in the world, a lone balcony jutting out from a stucco apartment building. It overlooked an alley and parking lot, the pavement potholed, lumpy and littered, flanked by trash bins painted a flaking industrial green and caution orange, like large abandoned barges. People wandered through the lot, argued, kissed, talked, and gestured unabashedly among themselves, as if only the immediate mattered: a sharp word or a hungry wink." The most I get out of this paragraph is the reality of life. It's not always pretty, but there is always movement. He paints a harsh picture, a scene unwanted; however, people are still somehow able to love and experience reality.
    As it is nearly the summer season (only a couple of weeks away!) it only makes sense that Under Water would be the next section I discuss. Here, Cooper describes a playful scene where he and his parents are playing a game of who can't laugh first while acting silly under water. I remember doing something similar quite often years ago. Well, who am I kidding? I still do that now! The passage that I thought most comical reads as follows: "Sure, Father looked plenty funny. A formidable man on dry land, he paled to baby blue, his swim trunks puffed like diapers. And mother's hair came undone. Strands meandered like seaweed." He goes on to  say, " It hurt to see their big bodies flail, wrestling with pressure, using up oxygen running out of time." Sure, it's possible Cooper is trying to get a bigger message across here but I just see a happy scene between a family. Why make it more complex? Why would it hurt to see them flail if he knows they are playing a game? We can't breath underwater? Duh! I feel like he's trying to get us to reach into some branched out ideal of thinking when I just don't get it.
    The End of Manners was one of the other sections that caught my fancy. My gathering of what Cooper is discussing is the idea of growing up too quickly, hence the mention of Peter Pan. If someone doesn't recall, Peter Pan was a play written by J. M. Barrie. Peter Pan was a boy who lived in Neverland and never grew up. He led the lost boys into many adventures against the evil Captain Hook! Of course this is every child's dream right? But, there are those children that have to grow up sooner than they should. Take for example the boy Cooper describes - "... a boy sent to bed for playing with his food...". As he dreams of no longer being stuck in a life of what the proper child/adult should be, he is "lifted from the dinner table toward the ceiling by some mysterious force... No more the mandatory 'May I,' the folded hands, the Thank You notes. He'll eat with his fingers, never bathe or behave. Rebel joy, loud as a fly, escalates within him. High and higher. He owns the air."  It would be nice to not have to have to have to always follow the rules, and be carefree. What Cooper forgets to mention is that in the end we all miss the stability rules bring to our lives. If only we could have that moment to fly, and not have terrible repercussions. It's a nice idea, just not realistic. Or, maybe that's the pessimist within me - I don't know.
     Overall, Bernard Cooper has many short essays that evoke different emotions through the use of imagery. He definitely masters a skill to paint a picture through the use of words to tell a story. I enjoyed most of his writings.