A map can tell me how to find a place I have not seen but have often
imagined. When I get there, following the map faithfully, the place
is not the place of my imagination. Maps, growing ever more real, are
much less true.
And now, swarming over the earth with our tiny insect bodies and putting
up flags and houses, it seems that all of the journeys are done.
Not so. Fold up the maps and put away the globe. If someone else has
charted it, let them. Start another drawing with whales at the bottom
and cormorants at the top, and in between identify, if you can, the
places you have not found yet on those other maps, the connections obvious
only to you. Round and flat, only a very little has been discovered.
(Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, p. 88)