A few months ago, I saw a map of a woman’s heart from the 1800s. The map seemed inadequate to me in what it carried, if still lovely and interesting in its way. It also had me thinking about a project I made a few years ago about mapping body parts in relation to memory. As in: what memories does the body contain, can it hold? The drawings were large and sort of essay-like in their associative sprawl. I am wondering now again about body parts and if they can be mapped in any real way. So I started yesterday with a heart, updated now, specific and moving toward reality. It feels like the beginning of something. [If you click on it, it links to a larger version.]

[I'll stop here. But know that I wanted to continue for a very long time.]

…but the labyrinth of each thought twisted into something unreadable, terminals unknown. Instead: I’ve drawn out certain objectives of mine for the forthcoming year, which may or may not be interesting and so I’ve placed little stories, or fragments of stories within as small treasures for you. To see a larger version of things, click on the picture. Happy new year. [Heart.]

I’ve recently picked up a copy of Robert Bruce’s biography, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude and, oh my, the love letters sent from Bell to Mabel Hubbard have left me breathless. (Chapter 15, if like me you wish to skip ahead.) Bell spent years giving elocution lessons to Mabel, left deaf after a bout of scarlet fever. Amidst his private lessons and experiments with the telephone, he began to write Mabel of his feelings for her. It’s a longish story, and one I’ll let you discover for yourself, but I’ve found some of his handwritten letters to her in the national archive.

A few particularly delicious excerpts: “You do not know–you cannot guess–how much I love you…I wish to amend my life for you.” And, upon learning of her reservations: “I shall not trouble you any more…if you still think of me as you do now, I shall try to be happy in my work.” And again: “Nature has made me what I am and it is not my fault that I have such strong feelings. I can restrain them but I cannot prevent them from arising.” And then, after marriage: “I am afraid of the distance between us — for something tells me that you care less for me…when I am far away…You have grown into my heart my darling…” Oh my, oh my.

I recommend viewing the archive yourself (Library of Congress), where the letters have been typed up and are thus easier to read. Though they are indeed pretty just to see: where the ink fell thick; the way in which the script leans forward suggesting speed; how Bell signs off, your own; the way he rotates the page and fills space. There is something immediate about a handwritten letter: the way the body of the writer cannot be extracted from what it written: the letter, an extension of a self: a self in the fire of a moment, reaching and thinking and forlorn and still somehow hopeful.