By Heart

Can you say the alphabet of your language by heart?  Do you know the recipe for brownies by heart?  Going to the store and buying a package of Little Debbies doesn't count, people, but remembering how to get there does.  By heart.  This is what it means: from your heart.  Why on earth from that organ associated more with emotion than any other, including the digestive system, (a 'gut feeling' is based on the fact that 95% of your serotonin is in your intestine), is it connected with memory?  Pull up a gyro, my dears.

Not only did the Greeks consider it the center of emotion, but the heart was also said to house intelligence and memory.  You remembered in your heart, so recitation or knowing was said to be "by heart"; you remembered a story by heart.  Ask a child to recite something, and they will look to the ground, as if the task is an impossibility; start them off with "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..." and their expression changes to joyous recognition.  I know that!  I can do this!  Most of them know nursery rhymes without the realization that they have indeed memorized the lines.  It is not an impossible wall to surmount, and once they understand it, will bubble up with rhyme after rhyme, unstoppable and happy with a talent they didn't know they had.

Remembering the words to be said out loud shares an intimate part of you, the phrases are usually in rhythm whether poem or prose, similar to the pulsations of the heart as it pushes blood through your body, supplying the metabolic processes with oxygen.  Memory fills the spoken word with the personality of the one who is remembering, giving the audience language by which to understand wisdom.  An open door to a place in their heart, if only for a little while.  Like sharing half a sandwich with a hungry soul, the act nourishes and pleases, satiating the innate human need for communication and recognition which resides in our heart's desire.

New debate in the past few years wonders if the Greeks were closer to knowing more about the heart than our current theory, with many claiming that the heart does have memory.  Neurons, those connective tissues of the brain, have been found in the physical heart as well; some folks are touting that as evidence of knowing, that there is sentient thought in four chambers.  Well, who knows?  But neurons transfer energy, not thought or feelings.  Yet there are stories of transplant patients experiencing new patterns formerly found in the original owner's background.  Recognition of relatives unbeknownst to the recipient, fears, awareness of a second personality, and intuitions have been recorded as pointing to the possibility of something further going on.

 Recorded.  Re- means "again", cor comes from the Greek word for "heart"; to record, then, is to tell it again by heart.  Have you ever?  I'm sure you have.  My talent when little was to draw; I was so shy that I would draw pictures of things rather than ask for them, so getting up and reciting something wasn't going to happen until I was made to learn the Ten Commandments and had to recite them for catechism class when making my First Communion.  Idolatry?  Adultery?  Covet?  Words way beyond my vocabulary, but they were Biblical, so I imagined recitation was earning my way to heaven.

But, what do you know by heart?  Did you say the words to anyone, or was it for your own accomplishment?  I don't recite, but I know by heart several poems by Coleridge, Yeats, Emerson, and Carroll.  It's a secret hobby that no one has been allowed to visit, just me, yet it is a happy achievement when I get one down.  In another two days, I will know "Lucifer by Starlight", but for love nor money can the battle be won with "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by Cummings, which is one of the most beautiful poems met.  How can "Xanadu" be little problem, but this much shorter verse frustrate for years?

So tell, who smiled when you stood before them and sang your sentences out, lined up numbers, alphabetted, or told a joke?  That smile told that you made them proud, and for a moment, you shared a doorway of history and understanding.  Good for you.

Storms are predicted this evening, and apparently I slept through a whangdoodle of one last night; I hope this one comes early enough to see, for the rains and winds whip 'round the brick corners of the building, whistling and pulling at windows.  I love to read during a storm, and more, to draw or paint.
Crackling lightning and subsequent thunder lend a Frankensteinian atmosphere to the creation of art, particularly portraiture, as it is punctuated by the heavy rain into a statement of success.

In film studies, the course book advised that rain or water in the scene indicated new beginnings for the protagonist, as a baptism or symbolic washing away leading to change.  As storms push debris down gutters or streams rise, or you look how far it is to the car, slow yourself.  Let the rain pelt your face if for only a second, dousing away the day of it's convolutions, leaving an essence of what was without the complications put forth by dissent, hurt, or anger.  No rain?  Wash your face and hands, then.  You'll feel better.

Let night come to assuage your own heart, remember a phrase or familiar cascade of words you once said to set your compass right in navigable waters. Words become stories, plays, novels, oaths, and truths to share a bit of ourselves with the world, to look in the mirror at who we are.  To remember.  By heart.  Ever on.  Second star to the right.