One of my favorite lines from a movie is from Closer. when Clive Owen’s character says to another: “Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood!”
The two characters are talking, among other things, about love.
****As a digression, another memorable line is when Owen’s character says to the person: “Go fuck yourself, you writer!!! You liar!!!”
The character is a writer, and I always thought it was funny the way “writer” appeared to be used as an epithet.
Because of my critique of those who call themselves writers. Because, everyone is a writer.
Everyone writes, something. An email, a letter, a grocery list, a poem. And can’t a grocery list also be a poem? And as long as you’ve shared your thoughts and feelings with another person using pen and paper or a keyboard — aren’t you a writer?
I feel similarly about the term activist. I mean, isn’t everyone also an activist? You stand up to an abusive boss or partner, you tell a cop to stop following you around, you flick someone off on the freeway who cut you off and put your child’s life in danger. How is this not activism? Or is one only an activist if they have some sort of degree and social media platform these days?
Which, lord knows, is not to glamorize other professions. Many of which basically require years of schooling only to be followed by “practice” which mostly involves looking things up in a book. That is, something produced by, well, a writer.
I’m also very open to be proven wrong, but I’m just saying, on this day, I ponder the meaning of those particular words.****
But this digression is not really the subject I hope to write about here.
Rather, on today, I’m pondering about the heart and why the real image of a heart — the one alluded to by Owen’s character — is obscured and what that might say about our lives.
Research suggests that the two-curves-and-pointy-bottom shape of the heart that appears on Hallmark Cards or emojis or, perhaps, here may have been derived from the shape of a fennel plant that grew in North Africa near Greece, or that it came from Aristotle’s description of the human heart as having three chambers with a dent in the middle.
Some have also posited that it came from the look of a woman’s tush. (And it really does!!)
Whether it came from a North African fennel plant, or female anatomy, or Aristotle, the fact is that it doesn’t look like an actual human heart at all.
The actual shape of a human heart, as Owens character alludes, is messy. It’s complex. It’s has tubes, perhaps unappealing, jutting out from its top. It’s veiny with haphazard bulges. Not just cherry red, but deep blue, and heavy brown and many other hues.
If you saw it laying on the street, you probably wouldn’t be like awww how nice, love! You’d be like what the fuck is that bloody awkward mess get it away from me. Then you’d text someone a heart emoji and feel a sigh of relief for all the pretty things in the world right at your fingertips.
But it is that bloody, awkward, pulsating shape that does so much for us, for our lives. It carries our blood (which, some say, contains the spirit) and it feeds us with the oxygen and nutrients we need to sustain healthy lives.
It needs to be awkward, it needs to be messy for it to be able to carry out its functions.
So why have we neglected the image of this beautiful, powerful, complex shape for a flat rendition of a female, non-cellulite-having butt?
Perhaps it’s because sex sells?
Perhaps it’s because it’s an easier shape to draw?
But perhaps, it’s because of our aversion to things that are messy. Our preference for non-complication. Our belief that truth is one-dimensional. Our obsession with things looking a certain way. You know, that right way. That way that pleases the senses. That way we have been conditioned to believe pleases the sense.
You see this in the way history is often devoid of the stories of heroes and activists who, though incredibly effective, didn’t fit the image of a “leader.”
You see this in the way background singers, despite having amazing, powerful voices are relegated to the background while mainstream hot girls and boys (with palpably less singing talent) become stars.
You see this in this comic, that a friend of mine shares often, that demonstrates the ways in which culture is created by non-whites, then co-opted by whites who then make themselves the image and central point of that culture, while non-whites are excluded and left in the peripheries.
You see this in the 1996 classic The Truth about Cats and Dogs, in which Janeane Garofalo’s character asks a more conventionally attractive woman to pretend to be her so that a guy will like her. (Yes, I said classic.) In other words, he archetypal brainy nerd girl, who one might like for her brain or ideas, but who doesn’t fit a certain mold.
These obscured people, figures, and groups, are perhaps the lifeblood of our culture, of our society. They are only unacknowledged because of the belief we have learned that certain images are good, worthy of being seen.
But much like the heart, it is the three-dimensional, bumpy, pulsing, fist-like energy, that makes these people phenomenal. It is, to quote Queen Lizzo, what carries that juice.
So on today, let’s stop disrespecting the heart.
Let’s stop using emojis that look like this:
❤
And maybe use ones that look like this:
꣖𑁩
(and yes I know this is an emoticon for all of you young millennials and Gen-Z’ers who have PhD’s in that sort of thing)
(which I know, I know, doesn’t look precisely like a human heart [and also still has some butt-like elements] but the point is that it’s complicated and well-supported]).
Let’s encourage our children to wear Halloween costumes (should that be a thing this year) that look like real hearts in all of their awkward glory.
Let’s stop choosing the simple, one-dimensional over the complex and potent.
So on today, let’s embrace that bloody fist.
So that, we too, may know love. ꣖𑁩
