20 March 2008

OHIO IS FURTHER FROM NEW YORK

I subscribe to, and read, the New Yorker. My relationship to this fact is complicated and continually in flux. (I used to, all-to-frequently begin conversations with the almost ritual disclaimer: "I don't want to be one of those people who always asks 'did you read the thing in the new New Yorker' but... did you read the thing in the new New Yorker?")

In any case. In New York City, and thus in the universe of internet discourse, the new issue of the New Yorker appears each Monday. When I lived in California, i always received my copy on the following Wednesday. In Cleveland, I receive my copy on either Friday or Saturday. Thus I have two days to read the entire issue before the universe of internet discourse, and my NYC acquaintances, begin discussing the contents of the next issue.

I know, in my rational brain, that each copy of the magazine is not sent out from Lower Manhattan on Monday, moving at a constant rate, arriving in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Texas on Thursday, and Alaska by the weekend. I know it doesn't work like that. But I can't help but feel that the New Yorker delivery schedule reveals a secret truth about geography that the map obscures. San Francisco is two days closer to New York City than Cleveland is.