LIT2930 Final Project: A Map of My Head

Are You Here?: An impressionistic map of the inside of my head

Let me start by saying that this is one of the most interesting and creative assignments I've had outside of an art class. I loved the idea behind this essay--until I had to make it personal. Then it was not so fun. Both I and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator consider me an introspective person. I like to think, to get lost in thoughts big and wide; I traverse the corridors of my mind with all the alacrity of a child on her favorite playground. But while I've always considered my headspace as a more-directly-than-metaphors-usually-are place, I never before tried or even thought to map it out as a place (partly because of the constant changing of the terrain, partly because of its intangible nature, and partly because I get slightly dyslexic when trying to navigate maps). The idea of mapping something so intangible, while intriguing, seemed a daunting task.

But what is life without a little challenge every once in a while?

I like things to make sense. Even as a child, I was quick to dismiss many of the typical myths fed to me by adults on the simple grounds of illogic, and have always been intrusively and irritatingly fond of the 'why' of things. (This might just explain the odd, objective fascination I have with people as a whole. In a world that requires order and patterns and cycles, we stick out like the sorest of left thumbs. I have always been astounded and confused and bewildered by people.) While I had the misfortune of going through puberty, and the awakening to self and society that goes with the coming of age, I tried to make people--and their inevitable social interactions--make sense. As with all queries, I turned first to books. I came across the book Men are like Waffles, Women are like Spaghetti, (Bill & Pam Farrel. I don't recommend it unles you're one of those people who derive pleasure/amusement from rampant sexism supported by Westernized Christianity. Which I don't suppose you would.) which claims that the key to making relationships across the gender-lines work is understanding that each sex has a distinct way of thinking and organizing thoughts: that men are prone to compartmentalize thoughts into "boxes," like waffles; and that women tend to preserve the organic, interconnected-ness of their thoughts, the way spaghetti noodles all twine together. At first, this simple classification seemed to work. Everyone knows that women are more emotional than men, and more apt to express those emotions in all aspects of their life, right? Isn't this something we're conditioned to Know from childhood, that girls can cry over playground politics but boys have to "keep a stiff upper lip, suck it up, and run along"? So the book was right. Right?

And then--heaven help me--I started to think. What about me? I'm a woman--definitely. I am an emotional being--of course. My emotions affect every area of my life--hang on a second. That's not quite true. I'm a fairly well-contained individual. I've been told often enough (usually by some irate would-be love interest) that I'm incredibly difficult to read, to connect with emotionally when I don't want to. If I'm so obviously, uncontrollably emotional as the Farrels' book suggests, how can so many of my peers call me "closed-off" and "unreadable"? And how often have I gone to work right after some horrible argument and carried on, with my customers and coworkers none the wiser? More than enough to discredit this as a viable theory, for sure. And so out the window it went. But the image was one that has stayed with me, enough for me to rework it into the physical 'map' required for this project.

The entirety of the actual 'map' of my head would be contained in a cardboard box. You can't see through cardboard, but it can be broken through or, over time, worn thin enough to get into. Cardboard isn't fancy or showy, but it's still pretty durable; it also changes, when you get it wet or kick it or leave it in te sun too long. The bottom of the box would be taped tightly shut, but the top would be folded closed. Inside would be a piece of chicken wire, cut square to fit through the middle of the box, parallel to the ground, symbolizzing the way I (try to) make sense of my self and my thoughts. (I also have a healthy respect for chicken wire after spending most of a semester of an art class trying to bend it into the shape I wanted without tearing my hands to pieces. Chicken wire  holds its shape well, but getting it to move is by no means an easy operation. I still have scars.)  Threaded through thewire grid in no particular pattern would be one long, continuous loop of paper; printed on it would be the thoughts I'd recorded from a particular day, representing the stream of consciousness that follows its own rganic pattern, sometimes defying the rigid logic I try to impose on it but not always.

No matter how much you try to understand and predict them, people make little quantifiable sense. Even the most logical people are affected by their emotions. This balance of reason and emotion, of control and uncontrollable, of defying expectations and conforming, is a big part of what makes us human, and what separates us from every other living thing. It's how I interpret myself.