How to wear Literature

Those of you who know me well know that for nearly the last 10 years I have been talking about the same idea. For those of you who don't know me well, please know that I am not a one-note wonder. I have talked about other things the last 10 years as well!

I suppose the idea has been steadily growing ever since my first reading of Wuthering Heights. I remember where Cathy tries to explain her dreams to a skeptical Nellie:

"I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind."

Such a stunning image--that our minds are a canvas and our dreams and experiences transform the canvas with all the colours of living. As always, hats off to Emily Bronte. But to go all English major on you, presenting the mind as a canvas sets the mind (soul, heart, character, the It of a person) as something tangible. I suppose I should say 'as opposed to nebulous' and 'necessarily indefinable'. This something tangible can be known and understood and maybe even shared. Where someone close to you can look to the canvas and have an ah-ha moment: 'That--there you are! I see it now' And cue instant harmony of souls. Or so the young romantic in me imagines it'll go. It's pretty to think so, isn't it? Maybe it's just me, but there is something divine in being truly seen in one glance. Others may like to pick through the clues and put together an understanding of One. Not me. One soul-searing glance is the ideal. That or handing a new acquaintance findingmoxie's very own cultural lexicon made up of all the bits that are integral to findingmoxie. A real 'Here's What I Love: Go home and come back, knowing it all, ready to commune with this Awesomeness.'

Ahem.

Well, you know the why. Let's go on with the what.

Years later, it took Michael Ondaatje to take this seed of an idea and run with it. The English Patient has weaving through the centre of its story Almasy's desire for a world with no maps. And for a time, living and working in the desert, Almasy can perceive an existence with no borders, no nationalities while the rest of the world around them explodes into opposing countries and armies. I confess that as a twice displaced individual, I found very seductive this dream of saying NO to maps and all their accompanying divisions. Beyond the political and geographical indicators, we're still who we are and always will be. Maps just break up happy homes, peoples!

Although rejecting maps and borders, Almasy does believe in the body:

"We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience."

Yes. That's it exactly. I want to be marked. Marked by all that I have loved, sweated, survived and been moved by. I think it's a hauntingly beautiful idea to essentially honour all the people and things who have passed through your life. Lord knows, I haven't stayed in once place and in the course of my wanderings, I've encountered so many amazing people and though some of these relationships have been transitory in nature, their effect on me has been no less obvious and no less visceral than my staples in family and friends. It's nothing new really that each person carries these experiences with us; but rather than just memories rattling around in your mind, unseen and intangible, Ondaatje gets physical. These markings don't have the softness of memories, these are freaking MARKINGS, carved into your body. You've been lived in, friend. And housekeeping hasn't been in to refresh.

It took the supremely talented Anthony Minghella to give this idea of mine a stunning visual. He had me in the opening credits, for goodness' sake:

(Apologies for the handheld action--you now know where my strengths don't lie.)

In this Ondaatjeverse, others plunge into and swim up our bodies as they mark us, remaining part of us. The film opens with a hand gracefully painting these stick figure swimmers onto rock, while Hungarian folk singer Márta Sebestyén mesmerises you, and suddenly it's shadows on sand dunes, that last ever flight through the desert.

BAM--it hit me like a freight train.

That's how I'm going to be marked by everyone and everything I've known. Little stick figures will be painted unto my foot and will swim up my body. So, when you see the little dudes on my foot, forever embarking on their journey, you'll understand what it means to me.

And that's how to wear literature, folks.