"For the heart is an organ of fire."
Michael Ondaatje, "The English Patient"
Although it is usually concealed beneath the fabric of my clothing, there is a notable artery that runs horizontally in the valley between my breasts, infinitisimally further south in latitude than the base of my first tattoo. It is aquamarine in hue ~ like the crystalline eyes of a dear Middle Eastern friend ~ though nowhere quite as brilliant. It is, in fact, such a subdued tone as to be deceptively pallid, yet it's ironically the passage through which my life's blood vivaciously pumps. Slice through that conduit, and I die.
And in truth, though any part of my body is vulnerable to such thoughts when given the consideration, it is on the odd occasion when my top falls open enough or I catch sight of myself before or after a shower in the mirror that I am struck forcibly anew with the realization of my mortality.
(Although it is a ridiculously slim chance that anything could happen to that one artery, I've seen far too many episodes of ER and Grey's to know bad, bizarre things happen to ordinary people every day. It certainly doesn't help to have a mother who was a career RN and midwife, or have friends who are paramedics, to become acutely conscious of our incredibly complex make-ups and simultaneous fragility. The paradox simply baffles the mind.)
The proximity of this artery (or vein?) in question is essentially smack dab in the centre of my chest, the core of my corps, the heart of my sternum. It is here, not my brain, where I feel the most breath-sucking pain when my world comes crashing around me. Question: How often have we seen depictions of people suffering heart attacks, their eyes either flying blindly wide with alarmed terror or clenched tightly with unfathomable agony? And how often have we experienced love's futility or life's despair and outwardly represented the perfect mirror image of one suffering a cardiac arrest?
Is the pain actually similar? I've always wondered. Does heartbreak feel like a heart attack? Is breathing not severely compromised in each instance? Does the stomach also clench during a heart attack as it does during heartbreak? Does fear of death figure into the equation in one instance, whereas desire for it manages to eek itself into the other? I imagine if you're in the throes of true life-threatening cardiac arrest, all your inclinations would be to fight to live; on the other hand, if your soul's collapsing and the insides of your chest feel like they're weeping blood into your stomach, you might indeed wish for death so the pain will go away and you won't have to deal with reality ~ or see the people involved ever again. Interesting how the realism of one's true brush with mortality can negate one's desire for it, though conversely in the case of heartache, its potential lack of practical possibility does not present itself as a viable option, thus appearing desireable for one in romantic, despondent, or aspirative arrest.
I suppose it's easy enough to look up the physiological explanation for the crushing physical agony in your chest when your heart's taking an emotional thrashing, but I just can't bring myself to research the scientific explanation. Not this time, anyway. I prefer to continue perceiving the heart as a spiritual and emotional organ, the one incapable of logical reason and calculable thought, the one that's wiser and truer than all the other organs combined.
The heart, not the brain, is an organ of fire. It keeps us flowing and enflamed with life, joy, passion, and heat.
It is the driving force for the continuance and perseverence of our intrinsic selves; it helps us seek what our internal selves crave and need, and reminds us of who we are and always will be, no matter what age, experience, cynicism, sardonicism, our families, societies, or convention dictates or demands. And the core, infinitely-set, hard-wired aspect of our hearts ~ tensile cases for our souls ~ are what will have us do all that is silly, sweet, impulsive, and most of all, enduring, keeping us each unique and necessary spirits in our varied, astonishing worlds.
(photo credit: a stunning angiogram of a healthy heart from National Geographic's website.)
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