Being “crazy,” being prone to fits of frenzy, is actually a lost norm. The protagonist, Catherine, after losing a close friend and her childhood home, should have her soul stirred into bouts of raving monologues and feverish paroxysms. When meaning is interrupted too quickly, emotion is never allowed to bind—and memory thins.
We should all take note.
Distraction prevents emotional consolidation, and without that pause, memory and meaning decay.
Computer screens with multiple senses engaged, the memories become colorless more effectively.
We need more fits of the real in response to the altered, or dying, ties of our ephemeral lives. I have seen the reason why in my own Edgar Linton, style avoidance through submersion. In the 21st century, if you wish to forget something, it has become deathly easy to do so. Technology is not just an escape; it erases the color and vivacity of a memory if you use it immediately following the experience.
Memory is about correct coding. Memory is about linkage, chunking, and association with images, smells, sounds, the senses, etcetera. Emotion tags memory as worth keeping. Memory is hard to destroy, but easy to lose.
I experienced this while reading Wuthering Heights. I was, as always, impressed with Brontë’s diction, syntax, and vocabulary. A wonderful pen. But I grew bored with the sublime romantics. I mean, your husband punched your childhood companion (a soul-bonded non-lover?), which would make anyone upset and overreact (and be forgiven for we all get it); however, that does not mean you should go insane. I was so bored with this hyperbolic feminine writing that I started to reward myself by playing video games after reading, and I noticed something this morning.
I stopped the color. I stopped meaning. I stopped care, and part of memory, by not allowing my mind to soak. Playing games immediately afterward was like stepping on a soaked sponge: the sponge is still wet, but it no longer holds enough juice. My memory of the book remained, but without anything to call necessary.
Logically, this makes sense. If I tell that little brain, Hey, that thing we just did? It was required, but not necessary. I had to do it, but I do not have to care that I did it.
I need to be allowed to go insane—like Catherine.
I realized that we, in the digital age of womb-to-tomb simulation, need caverns. We need separation. We cannot jump from topic to topic in this way, for if we do, we blanch our cares and live only to alter.
Catherine did not study for an important test, ace it, and then go party at a wild rager. No. That would drain the emotion from the content of the test. She, wisely, sat and enriched her ties to what mattered, growing her memories so vivid that they served as paintings in her dreams and even bled into waking nightmares.
I am not saying that we all need to ruminate on the past, but we need to shut out the world so our personal bubble can grow more detailed while the near-sighted nature of man continues. Distance is meant to be opaque; the cares of that which does not affect you must remain distant.
I read Wuthering Heights these past few days and decided simply to stop afterward. I chose to stare and calm myself instead of gaming. It is not that I like the plot more, nor that I like the characters more, but I now see an application to our world that is purposeful in its logic.
Brontë may have had no idea what our world would look like today, but she knew damned well that the important parts of one’s life must remain vivid and on top. Linton, reading his cold books, could not protect Catherine from the fiery passions that drove her mad. No—Linton did what I (and maybe you) do. I stoppered the bunghole. I sutured the wound. I did not paint the drawing. I simply kept leaving the important things in my life and replacing them with the color of Pokémon, or Instagram, or exercise, or movies, or porn (though I quit that about ten years ago), or whatever else was easier.
I see an answer.
After anything close to you—do nothing.
After you fight with your wife—do nothing.
After you study—do nothing.
After you make love—do nothing.
After you die—do nothing.
So, Catherine Linton, your ravings remind us that we must passion ourselves by stopping and drowning in the personal—by letting meaning stain us and refusing to wash it out. That is what it means to have a colorful memory.
That is what it means to be human.
Wrong Words 