The Write Thing

Apoptosis is a form of programmed cell death essential to guaranteeing our existence as healthy human beings. The lack of apoptosis (death, so to speak) or its excess can trigger cancer or ischemic processes that can lead to our physical death. In short, cells must die in a programmed or orderly way so that we can go on living.

These days I have been reading a very interesting book written by an Argentine neuroscientist, Iván Izquierdo. The book is called El Arte de Olvidar and, far from being a romantic novel, it is a very well written essay that illustrates part of the enigma surrounding the human brain and, particularly, the way in which our brain constructs, fabricates and destroys memories. Forgetting or losing our memories is necessary for life. It appears that oblivion is part of the deal because life would be impossible if we were able to remember every single thing that happens to us in a normal day (think of Funes, el memorioso for example). We have what Izquierdo calls a “working memory” that enables us to perform our daily tasks and completely obliterate everything that would be considered superficial, or would obstruct such performance. Short-term and long-term memories, that is, the ones that “stay” are more capriciously retained or forgotten. It is possible that some of them are lost forever on account of the death of brain cells — apoptosis, for example, is responsible for helping us “lose” our crawling abilities as babies so that we can become bipeds — whereas other memories are simply stored somewhere else and sometimes replaced with new acquisitions (I am thinking here of our computer hard drive when we delete something; it soon fills up the space we freed with the new information we feed into it — I wonder what memories will go down the drain for me now that I have taken up Swedish lessons?).

But perhaps the most interesting section of this book is when the author speaks about the memories we fabricate. Indeed, sometimes what we remember is distorted by our own desires, frustrations and emotions into something that may have never happened — at least not as we remember it. However, we then subconsciously proceed to convince ourselves of our “new” memory, and live happily in that conviction. Why would we fabricate memories? Because of our emotionality.

Memories are emotions. What stays with us, the smells, the sounds, the tactile impressions we recall, fabricated or not, have a strong emotional component. Therefore, if a reader retains a line in a book, it is an emotional action. Years ago, when I first read Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body I was struck by the first line in that novel…Why is the measure of love loss? I only read the line once, but it stayed with me ever since, without having read the book again. My emotions at that time were possibly linked to what Winterson wrote. I remember the line today, but I could not really speak about the novel at length if you asked me.

Despite our emotional strength, sooner or later some memories fade and vanish, whether their root was emotional or not. It is part of the process. Again, a necessary fact.

At some point, everything dies. Still, we are what we remember, each of us unique in our recollections. We are made of memories, and live the present tense on those. It is here that the idea of apoptosis comes back. Our own apoptotic work with our memories is not arbitrary or fanciful. We must be extra careful not to kill the memories that enable us to keep on living or let live those that would destroy us. However, sometimes we do not succeed and we lose our own functionality. This can be as serious as Alzheimer, but it can also be a psychological limitation, such as dwelling on a past that hurts and does not serve a purpose. Therefore, it is clear that — in as much as it is possible — we must let the right memories go, so that we can keep on living in a good and healthy way.

Two weekends in a row of birthday parties. First, that of a dead man whose work is universally acknowledged among the greatest in world literature. Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires. Selected crowd of guests, some of them rather prominent. My role was to accompany someone else, which is rather interesting when the milieu is foreign. It helps to create impressions and, I must confess, I sometimes can thrive on that. It is external passivity taken to the most active internalization of surroundings, people, manners, behaviors and — of course — food.

I like these gatherings where people really do not have a purpose to be there, but they are. Some were there to celebrate l’anniversaire de l’absent whereas most simply wanted to pay due homage to the hostess and continue to be in her radar. A song starts to play as the party draws to a close and the moment to cut the cake arrives: Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The man apparently liked it a lot, once more confirming — as if it were necessary — how simple literary genius can sometimes be. White cake, white frosting with a touch of coconut and dulce de leche, really good, even while I did not have any, only indulged in watching my valkyrie eat her small piece. And off we went, having mingled with a variety of characters that ranged from the most ridiculous to the most interesting (the last group, unfortunately, was rather scanty). The hostess preserves the tradition and the memory of her love for that man unblemished. He probably would have enjoyed the irony of death as he was being wined and dined in absentia.

The weekend after. Las Cañitas, my own birthday. I went through the details, the organization, and enjoyed it, for the first time in my life. I recognize my own behavior as a sign of growth. People I love and cherish, people whose friendship I value with a certainty that only deep feelings can award, were there to laugh and cheer as the day progressed into the shadow of its own cyclical renaissance, leaving me with a new definitive number from which I should be drawing a life for the next 365 days of my existence. I have plans, I am being born again into and out of myself. First inside, where it all lies. Then outside, to enjoy the world, breathe life into a wiser soul and thank the mystery of existence for shining some light along the way, and bringing her to me in her splendor. It really feels like happiness.

Plath. There is Plath hovering around me these days. I have come from a long journey, and my body feels the fatigue of life in a vacuum with wings that takes people places. But there is Plath… and the world, in its slow-pacing death and inevitable pulse of being, takes on a new dimension. On reading her, words heave with full resonance and flailing dissonance. Her tempo, her prose so in tune with the wholeness of life as the protagonist disembodies herself that the text becomes palpable, a skin with thousands of layers that fall down in slow motion. She is nude before New York, a world in itself.

A stiff breeze lifted the hair from my head. At my feet, the city doused its lights in sleep, its buildings blackened, as if for a funeral.
It was my last night.
I grasped the bundle I carried and pulled at the pale tail. A strapless elasticized slip which, in the course of wear, had lost its elasticity, slumped into my hand. I waved it, like a flat of truce, once, twice…The breeze caught it, and I let it go.
A white flake floated out into the night, and began its slow descent. I wondered on what street and rooftop it would come to rest.
I tugged at the bundle again.
The wind made an effort, but failed, and a batlike shadow sank toward the roof garden of the penthouse opposite.
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray sraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

I am my own funeral, and the author of my own rebirth. I have fed my soul to the places where I have loved and been loved.

I am my own woman. The next step is life.