To the Wedding John Berger

To the Wedding by John Berger is decisively one of those rare books to be digested at least once in your life. Artfully written, often stream of consciousness, ever poetic, it is to see through a blind man's mind, capturing the essence of life on a variety of intersecting, often connected, voices. To really know the profound pleasure & misery we all share in this human condition, one must be reminded of it & are in this work. This novel is a piece of literary art, one that could be laid on a pedestal in a gallery, there for pedestrians to witness & for readers to fall in love with. I now know why the author, Michael Ondaatje, has declared, “Wherever I live in the world, I know I will have this book with me.”

At times, too beautiful, my mind was unable to take it all in. That is the sadness I suffered when ending it. Although, this suggests it is merely the beginning of our relationship as I know I will reopen its pages in later years. Maybe when this migrainer’s mind is less prone to distracting
flight.

It is a love story between Ninon and Gino, a Greek myth connecting past to present, the travelogue of a signalman on his motorcycle riding through paradise to arrive at his daughter’s wedding, & very much more. Yes, there is the story-teller, blind, but not always that way & the mother, Zdena, who has been faraway, in previously occupied lands of the Eastern Bloc before the fall of the Soviet Union. There are prayers, yes, & tama talismans, protecting even the reader from harm along with the power of nature upon one’s soul.

Sounding overly trite, this tale is a celebration of the extraordinary in common, daily actions. A fusion of light & whispers against the supposedly doomed state of HIV, making betrayals, fate’s bitter bites, less than the worth of headlights cast upon boulders in the night. One can admit there is always hope because there is always the next moment. We can’t surrender just because we have contracted a disease or emotional blight or even loss of body parts; we must acknowledge the brilliance of surrendering to each unique moment.

That is what I found in To The Wedding. It is a signal light warning me not to forget where I am, who I am, & when I am.


3:30 am, 10/15/11
4 ½ stars out of 5