Talking Tuesday: Light Between the Oceans #2

Another passage from The Light Between the Oceans today.  This passage reminded me a bit of some of my favorite bits from The English Patient (one quoted here).

"On clear summer days, Janus seems to stretch up right to its tiptoes: you'd swear it's higher out of the water at some times than at others, not just because of the rising and ebbing of the tide.  It can disappear altogether in rainstorms, disguised like a goddess in a Greek myth.  Or sea mists brew up: warm air heavy with salt crystals which obstruct the passage of the light.  If there are brushfires, the smoke can reach even this far out, carrying thick, sticky ash which tints the sunsets lavish red and gold, and coats the lantern-room glazing with grime.  For these reasons, the island needs the strongest, brightest of lights.

From the gallery, the horizon stretches forty miles.  It seems improbable to Tom that such endless space could exist in the same lifetime as the ground that was fought over a foot at a time only a handful of years ago, where men lost their lives for the sake of labeling a few muddy yards as "ours" instead of "theirs," only to have them snatched back a day later.  Perhaps the same labeling obsession caused cartographers to split this body of water into two oceans, even though it is impossible to touch an exact point at which their currents begin to differ.  Splitting.  Labeling.  Seeking out otherness.  Some things don't change."

~M.L. Stedman, The Light Between the Oceans.  (New York: Scriber and Sons, 2012), p. 51

I think what strikes me about this passage is how differently I think about these things than when I first read The English Patient. Even though I loved the lyricism of the passage, I think I didn't really understand what Ondaatje wrote about the cartography of the body, and how we carry where we've been with us over time.

Stedman is writing about the futility of labeling, of trying to contain land or sea in a word on a map.  I do think there is some truth to that, but I also think that, historically, people can belong to a land in a visceral way.  Most of the wars in history have been fought over tribal territorial squabbles--about which land belongs to which people, who goes where, who is the Other.  It is only recently that we fight wars in the name of esoteric ideals.