The Road

I have spent years trying to explain this project to myself.

The closest comparison I have found comes from archaeology.

Imagine uncovering several disconnected sections of an ancient Roman road.

Each section is interesting, but incomplete.

With enough fragments you begin estimating where the missing portions once existed.

You are not inventing the road.

You are reconstructing it.

That is how I believed this index functioned.

Each new document merely extended a path I was slowly piecing back together.

It never occurred to me that roads exist because they lead somewhere.

That realization arrived much later.

When it did, I found myself asking a question that has remained unanswered ever since.

How do you distinguish between a map you have created and a landscape you have merely uncovered?

I no longer believe I know the answer.

Perhaps I never did.

For now I continue walking.

Not because I expect certainty at the end of the road.

Because every additional fragment makes it increasingly difficult to pretend the road was never there.