Map my brain

I have this fantasy about what I call "mapping my brain." In other words: pouring my thoughts out to an illustrator so that he or she can translate the recurring contents of my mind into a drawing. 

A constellation of thoughts is how I imagine it. 

Headlines, warnings, prayers, snippets of songs that have remained impressed and the layouts of the family homes I’ve visited so often that the furniture arrangements have been internalized -- I have them on 'speed dial,' is how I put it. Ten East (my grandfather's house in Bayonne). Peach Lake (my grandparents' house in what we called 'Upstate,' a.k.a. Westchester). 

Why do I remember that moment when one of my Italian students in Florence said to me, "Ma se non tu lo sai?" (Is it because it's slightly ungrammatical?)

Why do I picture myself, again and again, as a toddler, pouring the bottle of Prell shampoo on the brown, linoleum floor outside of the upstairs bathroom in Hicksville? I can see the blue green gel spreading out into a large puddle by the linen closet. 

Or the songs on permanent rotation. That French one, "Du Nord au Sud," for example, which is sung in Spanish, too. Or "Bus to Baton Rouge," by Lucinda Williams where she's moved to return to a childhood home with some rooms kept locked because they contain precious things that she could never touch. The first words of the Aeneid, chanted like a mantra: Arma virumque cano. I sing of arms and the man...

The headline I saw on the newsstand in Siena the day after the 1993 Italian referendum was held, during my study abroad program: "Italia E' Desta." (Translation: Italy is awake).

The map of my brain also includes -- ahem -- actual roads (mainly from Florence). Indeed, I find the video camera in my head is frequently livestreaming various viuzze, vicoli and strade from my beloved city (so many hours spent wandering the centro storico and climbing the hills outside the city walls, clearly my brain was absorbing every cobblestone even while my thoughts were elsewhere). 

Such that it mitigates the distance; in my head, I am often in Italy so what of it if my body remains stubbornly in Atlanta?

I jot ideas down now and again, in the hopes I somehow meet an artist with whom I could partner.

Map my brain. Who can help me? What will I find when we map my brain?

But better yet, why do I want to map my brain? Just another form of intellectual narcissism?