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Detail of the Fire, Richard Siken (2014) / Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix (1830)
Prelude. / Honoris Causa; For The Sake Of Honor.
Hoppla! Dieses Bild entspricht nicht unseren inhaltlichen Richtlinien. Um mit dem Veröffentlichen fortfahren zu können, entferne es bitte oder lade ein anderes Bild hoch.
Content Warning: Death of a child / Parental physical and emotional abuse.
⠀⠀Most people believe the human brain is solid. They imagine a loaf of bread soaked in gelatin: you can hack off quivering slices. But the truth is, the brain's texture is more like toothpaste. Brain matter will squeeze through a keyhole. If the swelling cannot be stopped, the living brain will project from the hole in an inverted funnel. This is called a "coning," and it marks an end.
Most people also believe the brain is gray. Its cells are called gray matter, after all, and isn't that how the organ looks in horror flicks: a slaty walnut floating in a jar of formaldehyde in some mad scientist's lab? But a sheathed brain is bracingly pink. The tissue only turns gray once the cerebrospinal sac has been perforated, once the air hits it. When a brain cones, the tissue changes color; traceries of ash thread through that bubblegum pink as a million thoughts flicker and die.
The brain is the seat of memory, and memory surely is a tricky thing. At base level, memories are stories—and sometimes these stories we tell allow us to carry on. Sometimes stories are the best we can hope for. They help us to simply get by, while deeper levels of our consciousness slap bandages on wounds that hold the power to wreck us. So we tell ourselves that the people we love closed their eyes and slipped painlessly away from us. That our personal failures are the product of external forces rather than unfixable weaknesses.
Tell yourself these stories long enough and you will discover they have a magical way of becoming facts. But a secret can be hidden from everyone save its holder, and the brain is not only a storyteller, it is a truth-seeking organ. If the stories we tell are no more than an overlay, the equivalent of six feet of caliche covering a pool of toxic sludge, something's bound to bubble up, right? And the most awful truths will do so in the darkest hours of night, when we're most vulnerable.
