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At the end of every week when I am in town, I buy fresh flowers for my home. I love the ritual of walking to the flower shop, poking around, watching the elderly shop owner trim the stems, snip off leaves and wrap my vibrant selection in paper that she hands to me like a gift. And each time I remind her to please not tape shut the parcel because I like to look at the bright flower heads as I walk home. I have carried flowers in the sunshine and in the rain. And no matter my mood before leaving the house, carrying them home always makes me feel light-spirited, grateful and generally optimistic.
Last week I was having a particularly rough go of things, so while at the shop I splurged a bit and bought two paper parcels of coral and pink peonies. As I cradled the packages in my arms walking home, I started thinking about things we carry through our days, both literally and symbolically, and how what we carry can tell so many different stories about the complexities of our lives.
One of the most poignant and memorable short-story collections I’ve ever read is The Things They Carried (1990) by American writer Tim O’Brien. It’s about a platoon of US soldiers trudging their way almost aimlessly across landscapes and villages in Vietnam during the war there. The stories reveal details and narratives about the characters by listing the things each of them carries. Some are necessary for survival, or are indicators of rank. But they also carry things that bring comfort or a sense of safety: “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.” One man carries foot powder, another comics, another an illustrated New Testament given to him by his father. O’Brien repeatedly specifies the actual weight of the items, so we sense both the physical burden and the emotional necessity that makes the men willing to bear the extra weight.
At its heart, the collection is a reflection on the unnecessary, violent and arbitrary losses that happen in war. The tragedy is that even among those who make it out alive, there are never really any survivors: the experience kills something in everyone. Part of the poignancy of the story is how it invites readers to think about the meaning we try to make of our individual lives. The objects are symbolic of each man’s attempts to have some semblance of control over their lives, even in the direst and most unpredictable circumstances.
The first time I read these stories I was in college, and I didn’t really understand why this was such a lauded literary work. Reading it again decades later, after my own short lifetime of experiences, it strikes me as overwhelmingly sad. And I find myself musing about what the things I carry — the contents of my bag or pockets, the jewellery I wear — might say about who I am. These may sound like trivial items to interrogate, but the objects in our lives speak to what’s important to us and bear the weight of the emotions we carry. If we considered that our things say something about our personalities — the values we hold dear, our fears and longings, our efforts towards growth and healing — would we make any changes?
In Russian painter Illia Repin’s 1884 portrait of Vsevolod Garshin, the writer is painted sitting at a wooden desk with an open book in his hands. Piles of books are stacked on either side of him as he turns to give a melancholic stare to the viewer. When I saw the painting I was immediately arrested by the intensity of his gaze. The bare wall behind him makes his dark eyes all the more penetrating. His look suggests an interior weight, a mind and heart full of things we are not yet privy to. Perhaps, through his work, we might learn what they are.
The painting reminded me how so often we forget that the people we meet are carrying things internally that we know nothing about. The writer’s eyes give him away here, but in our own lives we rarely wear our hearts on our sleeves. Instead, we keep our burdens to ourselves. Which is not to say we should all go out and lay our souls bare to everyone we meet. But perhaps we could remember this truth by offering small acts of kindness or warmth to those we encounter.
I was also drawn to this work because the sitter is depicted among the products of his trade. Sometimes the burdens we carry can find a release in the work we give back to the world. Tim O’Brien based his stories partly on his own experiences in Vietnam. If we find the courage to share our burdens, perhaps they will end up being of value to others who also carry their own weights.
I have long loved the work of Diego Rivera, especially those of Mexican campesinos bearing flowers. In this example, “The Flower Carrier” (1935), a man wearing sandals is on his hands and knees, letting a woman load a huge basket of flowers on to his back. The sombrero on his head suggests the heat of the day, soon to bear down on him as he labours.
With the bright bushel of pink flowers and pleasing palette of soft colours, the painting seems to offer a romanticised vision of early 20th-century Mexican labour. But the longer one looks at the work, the more one sees the irony of it — the way the gift of beauty for one person can simultaneously be a burden on the back of another. The man cannot even see the loveliness he carries into the world.
Many of us fail to see the gifts and beauty that our work and our commitments make possible in the world. But our labours do matter and have value, even if we may struggle to see or believe it.
There is something else beautiful in this painting: the woman helping the man to bear his load, telling of a community accustomed to sharing the burdens that must be borne. The things we carry, even in their weightedness, can also be invitations for others to walk alongside us.
enuma.okoro@ft.com
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