Conversations with the Heart (#96)
Hearing all the voices my heart uses to express itself. Plus: Candy statistics (literally) and the humourous heart-brain divide.
What does your heart tell you?
My heart whispers furtive valentines in my ear: tender wishes I dare not speak into the ether; the treasures I keep carefully tucked away in four chambers of secrets.
My heart speaks in code; it stutters in chalky staccato expressions that I can only understand sometimes, but which still have me reaching for a pocket translator on occasion. (Yet, whether it’s three or a thousand, there never seem to be enough characters to put words to my heartbeats.)
My heart quietly contracts and expands with hope, testing the frozen river of dreams before it gingerly toes the unmarried ice. It perches on the shores of my sleeves, exposed to all the salt and wind until it is smoothes and tires, like the stones underneath the surface.
It shivers, although from cold or from worry, I’m uncertain.
It freezes in silence, unable to speak for the millions of butterflies that migrated north to sit in the garden atria. It will take decades to untangle all the vines, so that you can find a place to sit amongst the flowers that slowly grow there.
Then, it’s warmer.
Then, it flows, honey and languid tones, flowing at a rate of five litres a minute. As if it were a warm mug to be filled; as if it were a dam, opened to pour into the wilderness it comes from. Or, it yowls in defiance of being dammed up: a beast, untamed and barely tethered by reason, searching for the first chance to be free. It’s impossible to keep wild animals caged forever, although we can show them respect, learn to live alongside them.
But where does it want to go? It’s in the right place, but also, it grabs my hand to have me to follow it.
If it’s in the right place, shouldn’t I be fine?
A muscle the size of my hand, keeping life flowing through me, as if it were that ever simple.
Because it’s never that simple. Because it’s never that quiet.
It’s a constant dialogue with my heart.
This Week in SciArt
Conversations En Masse
I wanted to make heart art again. Instead of painting, though, I wanted to puzzle together a cardiac mosaic. It wasn’t quite what I had hoped for, but it was an amusing exploration all the same. (Certainly, it was a point of consternation for Ben and I, upon reading the 2024 version of “sweet nothings”. I mean, YAAAS1?)
Scooped up from a bulk grocer, I took a random sample scoop and found myself with 195 conversation heart candies that shared 35 different messages across six colours (pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, and white).2
Frequency of Conversation Heart Messages
Nine Times: YAAAS, Luv You
Eight Times: Rock Star, GOALZ, BFF, Peace, BAE, DM Me
Seven Times: Cool, XOXO, Let’s Hang, Cutie, Love
Six Times: Call Me, You & Me, Hug Me, Blank
Five Times: Nice, GOAT, Gal Pal, TTYL
Four Times: Be Mine, LYMY, Smile, LOL, Miss You
Three Times: Only You, Kiss Me, Sweet, Love You, Laugh
Two Times: Dream
One Time: Text Me, TOTES, Real Love
Compartment Syndrome
Is there a better comparison for the dichotomy of science and art, than the distinction we make between the brain and the heart?
They’re only parts of the same whole, yet they are attributed with stark differences - which are highlight to great effect in The Awkward Yeti’s “Heart and Brain” comics:
It’s funny how everything that makes us, “us”, is the brain, but it never became a symbol or a saying. Probably because “affairs of the brain” sounds weird.
Actually, this was first coined by Shakespeare, in Hamlet, Act III, Scene I:
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did you assay him?
To any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ
YAAAS QUEEN.
Not to be taken internally. All the texture of chewable antacids, but with 1980s-levels of artificial dyes as flavourings.
The histograms out of candy are so clever 👏 Really enjoyed this!
Art from the heart(s) ! Yes!!