Wearing My Heart on My Sleeve

With Michael Harding as he autographed his first book, Staring at Lakes

I love to read. Correction – I love to read books that are engaging. Not too short that all the significant bits are glossed over and not too long where after arriving at page 459, the end is no where near, and I have forgotten who is who in the plot. Certainly at this time of my life I am not going to read a book because I have to (as in book clubs and reading lists) but because I want to.

So having heard the news that ‘Hanging with the Elephant’ by Michael Harding has hit the bookshops, I rushed down to Limerick to get two copies – two because the bookshop was offering a deal of ‘buy the second book at half the price’ . Since I could not resist a good offer and I knew of other like-minded people who would appreciate it as a gift, I made the cashier a happier woman that day.

I enjoy memoirs. Having said that,  any drama, musical or film that is based on a true story will certainly hold my attention. In fact I once thought that Forrest Gump was real because I enjoyed the movie that much.

Harding’s style is fluid and I like it that there is no linear path to follow. This is perfectly logical as the mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of the past, present and future that are intricately intertwined and to trace and speak about them as if they are carefully arranged in an orderly manner is to do them great injustice. We are near enough to see the soul of the man and yet not that near as to rob him of his essence. We can read his thoughts and devour the book but yet we leave him intact at the end

of it.

Some say that writers are the custodians of memories but yet when I think of writing my own memoir, the greatest challenge is: would I dare to wear my heart on my sleeve? Would I dare to call a spade a spade and lay bare the traumas of my soul? Would my readers, especially if they can recognise themselves in the memoir be generous towards my writing or would they take me to court over something that I have written which displeases them? My perception of truth could be totally different from theirs.

Too often memories die with their owner. Our brain cells can only remember that much, so we forget the stories our parents had told us and wish there is some form of record that we can go back to. My father left me a pen and my mother her portrait. Both of which I treasure. But how lovely it would have been if my parents had left me their memoirs.

                                                           Map of South East Asia

My father was just a teenager when he left China in the 1900 for Malaysia. I can imagine how perilous the journey at sea would have been or how hungry he was that he had to sneak into the cargo area to scavenge for anything edible. What was it like when he first felt the scorching heat and the heavy humidity on his skin when he landed in the new country he would call home for the rest of his life?

My parents

In those days marriages were arranged. What was it like for my mother to have married a man she had never met before? How did she survive living in poverty in a wooden shack in the jungle surrounded by tigers and other wild beasts? She did tell me that she saw tiger paw prints surrounding the house. Although they narrated these stories to their children, it is strange how we remember bits and pieces but never the whole. Stranger still when different children remember different bits and pieces. And there is no one to tell us if our memories are fictional or real.

At one stage or another, some of us have toyed with the idea of writing something about ourselves and getting it printed. In the meantime, we keep journal entries that are privy to our eyes alone. We even keep public and private blogs. We write articles, poems and short stories and make someone else the protagonist.

It is always safer to create a character to speak for us, to provide the voice for what we think or feel. We hide behind the security that the stories we write are based on our experiences but we are not the story per se. Another nagging worry is would anyone be interested in our lives and are we not being presumptuous that there is a whole community out there just dying to know our story? After all, we are just living everyday lives and we have neither walked on the moon nor discovered penicillin.

Maybe I would wait until I am 60 to write my memoir. Maybe I never will. But in the meantime, I would wait for Michael Harding to come to the nearest city so I could get my book autographed.

This is as good as it gets.

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/node/53320