Remember that the source of strife is that from the Canadian perspective the convexity was an unwanted "gift" from Gentle, so territory is annexed from the U.S. to Canada, which means it's like someone stood in Canada and took a bite into U.S. territory. On the new map, Canada has a bulging convexity (into what used to be U.S. territory) and the U.S. a receding concavity. The ascending and descending line means that Tine is describing the map from the Canadian, from Luria's, perspective.
from Elegant Complexity:
Jim’s funeral was “held on 5 or 6 April [it “was twice delayed by annular hyperfloration cycles” (p. 65), cf. n. 160.a] in St. Adalbert [“in the Mondragon-family-plot” (n. 160.a); cf. Orin’s misnaming Avril’s home town, which was “wiped off the map. Bad ecocycles, real machete-country” (p. 1041)], a small town built around spud-storage facilities fewer than five clicks west of the Great Concavity.” Recall that “three-quarters of the Concavity’s northern border runs contiguous to Quebec” (p. 1017). The northern border runs from Ontario northeast into western New Brunswick (p. 1017), presumably in a relatively straight line and south of major cities like Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec. The spud-storage facilities are just west of (outside) this line; Jim’s grave is just east of (inside) it. The curve of the Concavity runs in a jagged line (if the representation in Mario’s film is accurate, p. 403) from Ontario through what used to be upper New York (making a near-right-angle at Ticonderoga, p. 403), Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (which was lost altogether (n. 318), is no longer represented on the “49-star U.S.A. flag” (p. 761), and is now the heart of the Concavity (p. 1041)), meeting the northern border in western New Brunswick, the eastern coast of which is apparently in bad shape, given that it “was a mercy” cloud-cover prevented Hal from seeing it on the way to Jim’s funeral.
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