I have a very serious confession. A short time ago, on a visit to Ottawa, I decided to go to the Canadian museum of civilization – a quite horrid place indeed, but interesting, on a kind of kitschy level. It’s rather like the sweeping over-generalization of every ethnicity and region of Canada, under one surreal rooftop. I went more for the architecture, the maze-like, Ikea-on-acid-induced layout, and not least, to get out of the blazing afternoon sun. The place was crawling with school-aged children, and this was beginning to get trying, as I desperately wanted some isolation. To me, part of the magic of museums is that luxurious feeling of being alone in such a vast, expansive, labyrinthine structure. It’s much like wandering the unbounded corridors of one’s own mind. And the degree of bizarreness of this museum in particular was like traveling through the twisted cultural memory of this country, which I love so very dearly.
Finally, inside the Saskatchewan exhibit, I found myself alone, and could hear only the vague, undecipherable sounds of children’s voices echoing from a distance. They must have been at least two rooms away, and so I settled down inside this cool, light brown chamber. In it, there is a life-sized recreation of the ground floor of an ‘old’ grain elevator – something that many people have likely never seen. But being from Alberta – and my grandfather, a farmer, later working for the Alberta Crop and Hail Insurance Company – meant that I was well acquainted with the innards of this particular building. I felt at home there, with the (real) old truck’s box tilted, allowing the (fake) grain to pour down into the chute below. I walked around slowly; enjoying my solitude, and the reverberations of children’s voices which, thankfully, were now getting further away. I was truly alone.
I walked behind the truck to soak in the three-dimensionality of the exhibit, and there, sitting on a glass display case, like a gleaming jewel, was a letter. It seemed to be written by a child, with scribbled green script, and a heart melted in red wax, sealing the backside. The inscription read: “Joanne and Janice, Love Jamie”. Was this part of the exhibit? Certainly not, that I could ascertain. My paranoid mind asked: “Was it bait”? No, of course not. This was obviously a legitimate document, with an intended recipient – and it was written and placed there with a very specific purpose. My heart surged with excitement. Finally, a real cultural artifact in this ‘wax museum’ of social stereotype. Perhaps impishly, I was presented with a moral dilemma: I could choose to simply leave the letter there; or I could snatch it up as a genuine archaeological souvenir. You can’t buy this in the gift shop. I looked around again. No one.
My heart raced even faster. I weighed the odds. Likelihood of the letter reaching it’s target: slim; likelihood of it reaching the trash by some custodial services technician: probable; likelihood of getting caught in the act: none; value of letter: priceless. Like a Marcel Duchamp piece, the epistle – and decision – was read-made. I whirled around, and whisked it into my bag. Waves of exhilaration flowed over me, with the sheer joy of finding something so authentic in a museum, as well as the thrill of being a bit of a shoplifter. “It wasn’t exactly stealing”: I told myself. It was more like, at worst, communicative hijacking.
Immediately, I began planning the immanent future of this letter. I would open it at some significant occasion. Yes. I would tell my friends about it, and make it an event. We could have dinner, drink wine, postulate, and at the witching hour, crack the red wax seal. My mind ran the gamut with questions. Who was Jamie anyway, and what did he have to say to Janice and Joanne? (For that matter, who named their daughters ‘Joanne’ and ‘Janice’ these days – aren’t girls of that age named ‘Brianna’ and ‘Madison’?) What was so special about them that possessed young Jamie to write this puppy-love letter, and leave it so precariously on a glass display case in the Saskatchewan exhibit of the museum of civilization?
After leaving the museum, I walked home, with the bliss of secret contraband possession. But slowly, I began feeling the old pangs of guilt. Jamie had put such effort into writing that letter, and placed his hopes so high that the girls would surely come across it. What ecstasy they would feel having found it; how they would undoubtedly love him eternally having read the thoughtful and romantic and poignant prose contained therein. How could I have been so callous and selfish to have taken that most noteworthy piece of someone’s life, and put it carelessly in my bag, alongside the pamphlets and Polaroids and gum-wrappers and water bottles of my travels?
Before long, I had drastically altered my plans. My friends shall never hear of this letter. No. There shall be no dinner party, no anticipatory unveiling of the famed and much-mythologized ‘Jamie-scrolls’. I was determined to help this letter find its rightful heiresses. I have since put the letter in a very safe location, unopened, and there it shall remain.
So, in hopes of absolution, if you believe that your child is Joanne or Janice or Jamie, please contact me for prompt delivery of the aforementioned document, and a most sincere (and decidedly not red wax-hearted) apology.
