essays in love.

On my flight back from Dubai I was seated next to a man whose name I don't know how to spell. Despite, at the time, being completely enamoured by A, I felt nervous talking to him. I guess I understand why, now.

I spontaneously decided to visit a friend from my past after my art class. It was late in the night and he had already been drinking. There were wine marks on his lips as he leaned in and told me that there are infinite possibilities surrounding us and that life continually repeats itself in alternative realities. A very Nietschian sentiment. He said it to appease me, to let me know that my decisions weren't heavily loaded with implications and weight.

As I sat in that aeroplane, thoughts full of A, I felt anxious. The man talking to me was attractive, well travelled, well read with a whole life behind him. I had committed myself to A, but the comfort that I felt around this man made me question that the reality that I had chosen was going to make me most happy. We got to talking about the partners we knew would be waiting for us at the airport. "Do you think it'll be the same as it was before?" he asked. "Better, the distance has made us closer." I replied. He frowned, "Every time I leave, I change. The person that returns is so different from the one that had become the object of love for every one of my girlfriends. I wonder if it'll be the same for you." I always remember what he said and I think that I agree. I changed, but not for the better. I view my last relationship in two phases - pre-Baltimore and post. To change, you don't need to wander out into the world, but you need to experience something novel.

I started reading Essays in Love and of course I thought of every one of my past relationships, in particular A which didn't bother me at all. And so I wanted to write this entry though perhaps I shouldn't. I had an amazing weekend which is odd because I generally want to block out my birthdays. They always seem to remind me of disappointment, but turning 20 was the most fun! Some of my reflections on love/attraction/courtship are as follows.

1. There is a theory that we fall in love with those that we feel have something that we lack. Through this union, we start to feel perfect as well. Pre-Baltimore, A made me feel this way. He always seemed to have this creative mind that I felt I lacked, or rather, had lost for a while. In America, I'd walk around with a big smile on my face and I was so surprised by the attention I received. I can pinpoint almost the precise moment when I fell out of love. It was the day he no longer appeared perfect to me, the same day that I felt ugly and worthless.

2. It's odd how easily you can flirt with those that you don't find attractive. Give me a homosexual or old man, any day. I become the most inept flirt around a beautiful woman.

3. Why do we always idealise/feel more powerfully for those we don't have? I still have never felt as strongly as I did for my first love, who introduced me to Paul Desmond. It was a completely different love with A. I never suffered with A and once in the relationship, we never argued. We laughed at everything so there was never a feeling that I was losing him. I think it's important to have that balance. Some would probably say that I'm overdramatising thingz, but when you don't long or yearn to be touched, there doesn't seem to be that feeling of reward. In Baltimore, I went out of my mind but we could never recreate that crazy passion when we were together.

4. As Proust would say, classically beautiful women are for men without imagination.

5. The Manu of New Guinea don't have a word for "love". I think love is universal, but can you feel what we know to be "love" if you don't know what to expect? II guess no expectations leads to less disappointments! In our world of rom coms and great love stories, there is a certain expectation of what "true love" should feel like. At first, my reasons for staying with A weren't admirable but after feeling disappointed at my previous attempsts at love, I wanted to feel the security that I knew he would give me. In the same way that the charm of the Taj Mahal has been lost to photography, has love lost its mysticism and wonder?

6. I like that there are certain things that I do now that are purely A's influence. Like how I bend the bottom corners of pages whenever I read a beautifully phrased paragraph or sentiment. Or the way I've adopted A's method for brushing teeth. Of course, the relationship (like all my others, but I don't like talking about them), changed me. There's this intimacy when you're in love where you feel compelled to be honest with one another. To point out facets of character that others aren't bothered with. Like the way I wriggle in bed, my pessimism, my uneasiness in certain social situations. It's good. It helps you mature and recognise how to change. Or, learn to love your quirks.

7. As French writer Stendhal noted, humans are "social creatures", we are nothing if we're not surrounded by others. Alain de Botton describes humans as amoeba; organisms with an elastic membrane that can change shape. Different people bring out different sides of ourselves. Around A, post-Baltimore, I was always so composed and introverted. I always wondered why it was that I felt more alive around others. It's not that I wasn't myself - it was just a facet of myself that I didn't like. I think both of us started to unleash our own insecurities near the end. I thought I was inadequate and never voiced my opinion feeling as though he would crush every one of my arguments. You can't expect one person to give you everything that you want. But you need an intermediary that doesn't make you feel deformed or misrepresented. I feel happier now than I did with him. When did I stop loving him?

8. I think it's impossible to feel love (how the hell can you even define love!) all the time. People enter your life, you develop attractions for others, and you question if the person you're with is the one you're happiest with. They say the first six months constitute the 'honeymoon' period of the relationship and that once you step over that milestone, most start to question if it's time to persevere or take off.

9. I spent eight months of my life with A. He'd visited me when I came back from hospital, he held me when I thought Kita was dying. He had been a part of my life so when it ended, I felt like a part of me had died. It didn't matter if I loved him or not, I just wanted things to stay the way they were. I was devastated because I knew a part of me would never return. Like cats, I think humans have multiple lives. We can conquer death. Although, I know, that i will never feel the same again, a new life form will replace that which I have lost. It's not sad, it's just change and it's thrilling.

10. Living in the present is a scary thing, at first. One evening, I told him, "I'm scared that I won't know when to end it," and he told me to live in the moment. When you have no expectations, you feel lighter. I remember being in Asia with my friends in high school and feeling an overwhelming sense of freedom but the anticipation of its end would lead to an XTREME sadness. When you want to live in the present, you rarely do. I wanted to feel happy simply being with A, but thoughts of international placements, travel plans and what had happened three years ago kept bothering me. And so I felt heavy.

11. It's as if the ingredients of love's collapse are contained within the beginning. At first, I loved his intelligent conversation. Later, I came to view it as arrogant and insincere. I loved the way he kissed and cuddled and how he gave me space but it seemed so mundane towards the end. When you sense that the love is dying, you try to bring it back my doing the same things that kindled it. I tried eating out at restaurants again, wearing the same outfits that I did on the first few dates, reminding him of the first moments we shared together. I could feel it escaping me, but I knew that if the love died, a part of me would as well, so I struggled on and tried to hold onto it. It's like what Joni wrote about in her final telegram to George Nash, "if you hold sand too tightly in your hands, it will run through your fingers." I felt myself falling.

12. I read in a magazine last week that our memories aren't kept in time, but in place. The article used this to argue for the importance of architectural design and innovative space to human interactions and well being. When you're no longer with someone, you still feel their presense. everywhere In the space on the left side of your bed, in the empty chairs outside the restaurant that where you shared calamari. When I stopped seeing us sitting outside The Flying Taco, at first I felt guilty. Now, I smile.

13. It's always the one that no longer loves that makes the tender speeches in the end. I don't need to explain myself anymore. I'm glad I read this book, at least. In the same way that a century becomes remembed by a few important events, so will our love. Maybe I shouldn't have written this blog entry but I don't feel like I've divulged anything. It's just about love and who isn't facinated by it. I wish I had loved him, and though I know I did once upon a time, I couldn't sustain it. Something changed after Baltimore and the clock keeps ticking now.

the end of an era.

It was the stuff you read about in science fiction novels. 63-year-old William Sheridan from New York, whilst waiting for a compatible heart donor, drew pictures as a way of killing time. His 2D stick figures bore no semblance to the world around him and mirrored those that you might find in a kindergarten. A heart transplant later, this all changed. Sheridan’s childlike drawings transformed into creative and artistic depictions of landscape and wildlife; of billowing brooks and wild imagination. You see, the transplanted organ had belonged to 24-year-old Keith Neville, a stock broker with a passion for art and once it was relocated into Sheridan’s body, the New Yorker had indeed, a change of heart.

Sheridan isn’t alone in this phenomenon. Over 70 personality change cases have been recorded following heart transplants, unlike any other organ. James Clark in the United Kingdom, never one for romance, all of a sudden started to write passionate poetry for his wife after receiving a transplant from an amateur poet. You have to ask the question, does a life threatening operation simply put things into perspective, making one more open to trying new things and experiencing life to the fullest or does the heart have some sort of mysterious connection to emotion and our personality?

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks 2500 years ago saw the heart as the seat of the spirit and the rational soul. When you feel bad after a sudden loss in your life there’s this tightness in your chest and it feels as though your heart is beating irregularly. It’s little wonder that so many years ago, it was seen as the centre of love and emotion. By the late 19^th Century with advancements in medicine and technology, the important relationship of the brain to intelligence and emotion became established. Despite the growing evidence that the heart is merely a responder to stimulation by the brain, there is a growing movement among scientists that is trying to reverse this understanding. Some scientists are now convinced that the heart is so much more than just a biological pump; it may have memory and emotional intelligence.

You make me so lonely baby,
I get so lonely,
I get so lonely I could die.

Losing someone that you love is difficult. It’s hard to sleep, concentrate and find happiness in the things that you once loved doing. You can lose a ridiculous amount of weight and feel hopeless and nauseous all the time. The blood flow to your brain, changes. The anterior cingulate cortex associated with physical pain and distress in depression, becomes active and your immune response is weakened. Although it seems infantile and silly, evidence now suggests that you can die from a broken heart.

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Jim Callaghan, who died 11 days after his wife of 67 years, is one person who is believed to have died from a broken heart. A study conducted in 1996, examined 1.5 million cases between the ages of 34 and 84. It was discovered that the risk of dying from something that resembles a heart attack 6 months after the loss of a loved one, increased from the norm by 20 to 35%.

Broken heart syndrome, also known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is a recognised medical condition that is caused by extreme stress often after the loss of a loved one and is more commonly found in older people. Fear and grief leads to a greater secretion of noradrenalin and adrenalin, hormones associated with the fight-and-flight response. These hormones lower the pumping ability of the heart and can cause chest pain and symptoms that closely mirror a heart attack. It differs from a heart attack, though. The heart undergoes a transformation; it takes up an atypical shape that compromises its pumping function. Its base squeezes normally but the middle and tip do not. This is not an ordinary heart attack. It doesn’t kill the heart muscle, just renders it helpless and can affect perfectly healthy people that don’t have any blood clots. Sufferers often recover within two to three weeks. It is a reaction to emotion.

Dr Ilan Wittsen of Johns Hopkins University has examined this remarkable condition. Blood samples from patients believed to be suffering from Broken Heart Syndrome contain high levels of adrenalin and noradrenalin which are more elevated than in normal heart attack patients. The heart responds to emotion like no other organ, but does it have a brain of its own?

Is your heart filled with pain?

Shall I come back again?

Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

In 1967, Dr Christian Barnard performed the first heart to heart transplant. Although the patient survived only 18 days, it was clear that the heart was a secularised organ, capable of beating on its own without the help of the brain. A person can remain heartless for about 15 minutes and even after a transplant, the connections linking the heart to the brain can remain severed. It continues to beat autonomously because of the Intrinsic Cardiac Ganglia.

The Intrinsic Cardiac Ganglia, affectionately known as the “little brain in the heart” is integral to the heart’s maintenance and performance. It is a collection of cells dispersed throughout the heart that strongly resemble neurons, the cells of the brain. In addition to this, it has brain-like supporting cells, proteins and messengers. There are about 40,000 neurons that sense and control your heart rate and communicate with the brain. If the heart contains neurons, why can’t it behave like a brain and remember and associate?

Dr Garry Schwartz, professor of psychology at the University of Arizona considers the heart to be a “bio, psycho, socio, spiritual organ” and is convinced that it has independent intelligence and paranormal abilities. He argues that there is circular communication between the heart and the brain and that memory can be transferred to the heart. In the case of James Clark, Schwartz believes that the donor’s heart had cells associated with poetry prowess. Clark’s change in personality from a masculine English brute into a sensitive, and ‘in touch’ gentleman also convinced Schwartz, that the heart affects emotion and love. It’s probably important to note that all this is coming from someone who believes that psychic Allison DuBois, the inspiration of television’s Medium, can indeed contact the dead with 77% accuracy and that none of this research has been published in a peer reviewed journal.

Schwartz calls this theory cellular memory and believes that memory exists in every cell of the body but most strongly with the heart. Cellular memory has been the topic of many books and films. In the 1924 book inspired, silent film, Les Mains d’Orlac (translated, “The Hands or Orlac”), concert pianist Paul Orlac loses his hands in a tragic railway accident only to have them replaced by the hands of a murderer. Orlac becomes consumed with murderous thoughts and develops a thirst to kill, like something off an episode of Passions. It would be terrifying to think that now in the golden age of science and medicine we may transform transplant patients into living Frankensteins.

A Californian research organisation known as the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) has developed an entire discipline on heart training and meditation. Crazy haired Research Director, Dr Rollin McCarty is convinced that our high stress, anxiety saturated, socially awkward society may be the result of negative emotions being transferred from one person to the next by a magnetic field that radiates from the heart and through the skin.

In one study, McCarty got subjects to look at a series of photographs, both pleasant and unpleasant ranging from disfigured persons to large, fulsome boobs and recorded response times of the heart and brain. He found that the heart responded correctly to the image, at a rate greater than predicted by chance, before the brain did and before the repulsive picture, for example, was even viewed. McCarty suggests that it’s not the brain that perceives negative stimuli and then signals the heart to beat faster but that the heart intuitively reacts, then the brain and then the rest of the body.

Starting today I’m teaching my heart

Not to ache anymore

Just because we’re apart.

Reversing common scientific notions especially to a more primitive, 2500 year old idea is a difficult task. UWA’s own Nobel Prize winner, Barry Marshall had to face decades of dissent and publication rejections until he deliberately infected himself with a bacterium and had a severe inflammatory reaction. He proved that stomach ulcers could be treated with an antibiotic and were the cause of bacteria, not stress, lifestyle or diet but it was a long and arduous process of acceptance.

Science, as it stands, is reductionist and not holistic. It concentrates on each organ as a single entity, not the overall picture in order to get to the heart of the matter. One thing is for sure, you feel something in your chest when you lose something or someone that was important. Perhaps that’s the heart thinking and feeling for itself, but according to current scientific though, it’s the brain that’s holding the reigns.

Although his ideas may be a little farfetched, Dr Rollin McCarty has developed an effective way of coping with heartbreak. Pick something that hurts you, but don’t think about it, just feel it. Visualise the transfer of energy from your breath into your heart and activate feelings of positivity. It sounds wanky, but meditation really doesn’t get the credit that it deserves.

Find it in your heart to do the things that you love and make you happy. Give yourself time, talk and reflect. In order to transcend pain, you must first experience it; pain is your body’s way of motivating recovery. A broken heart can be repaired and strengthened, just think of William Sheridan and the artistic flare he never knew he possessed. I cross my heart.

***

Not entirely sure why so many people liked this article more than all my others. It really is the end of an era. Who knew one silly office could mean so much to you. A sad, but healthy day.

blueberries, old friends and handy activities.

I like the idea of starting anew, of feeling like I'm on a clean slate. I know that New Year's is just an ordinary day and that really, every day should be one in which you fulfil your potential (or at least make the decision to evolve) and all that wank, but there's something rather special about this one night, this one hour, this one countdown.

I went out this New Year's, for probably the first time and I finally see what's so special about this one night. Everywhere I looked people were so happy and willing to talk to you without having any ulterior motive (well that may not be true :p) and there was this strange energy around; one which isn't present on just any old Saturday night.

Perhaps it's just another excuse to party and you know that everyone else you meet is going to be there for the same reason? Perhaps it's the idea that you can make this next year count? Perhaps it's knowing that there's that precious long weekend ahead of you. I don't know. I was just so ecstatic to finally be able to start anew.

I've met so many new people in the past year, but there's no one quite like your aulde friends. There's no one I'd rather hang out with and new Year's Eve must have been my favourite night since.... a looooooooooong time. It's a pity we did not bring a camera with us, but I always feel so stifff when I bring one along. It's almost as though taking a photo drains some life out of everyone to the point where you start posing and taking 'myspace' photos (oh gosh, if this day happens, please shoot me).

We went out to Tiger Lils (and Amps) which was really cruisy and I loved the decor. I can imagine my Dad absolutely lovin' it; well duh, there were some Indian statues in the corners aka from my Dad's homeland (pfff he wishes) and I could really see him coming into the club with his video camera and commentating about Shiva and Parvati, Kali and Brahma and all that wonderful stuff! Secretly, a part of me wishes Tatulek had come out clubbing with us.

I feel like I should recount some of the things we did, like driving down Swan Valley the next day (AND THERE WAS NOTHING OPEN! what wankers) and having dinner at the Scotsman, but I guess there's really nothing to note. Old friends are the best and I'm so grateful for all I have :)

I remember walking around my block last New Year's Eve with a piece of paper on which I'd written all the things I wanted to forget about. I kept ripping little bits of the paper and letting them fly in the wind, hoping that this one symbolic act would help wipe away the guilt and pain I'd felt in 2007. It didn't work out. 2007 was the year of mistakes, 2008 was the year of recuperation; fuck I hope 2009 will be epic.

It's not as easy as ripping a scrap of paper and hoping that, miraculously, your sorrows might be blown away just as that wind blew away those tiny bits of paper. My favourite quote is 'to trascend pain, you must first experience it,' and I think that that's how it happens. It's strange how sad I feel sometimes. You look at your family history and all the shit that they went through and in comparison to their stories, your own experiences have don't even weight up and yet, this generation feels so much hopeless than the last (i'm generalising). I recently read an article that put this paradox to our subdued reward circutry. According to this researcher, the mechanisation of daily activities such as washing clothing and packaged foods (i.e. the 'things that make life simple') deny our brains with the feeling of 'reward' or 'achievement'. Because of the strong connection between the motor cortex and the limbic system, the researcher suggested that we should start to do more things with our hands (LIKE BLUE BERRY PICKING!!!) to alleviate depressive tendencies. So there goes my first New Year's resolution: to be more crafty and creative especially with my hands because they take up a huge chunk of the motor circuit.

So (after side tracking a little bit), I must admit that I am finally happy with where I'm heading with my life and who I'm becoming; so 2009 should be pretty damn fine. I'm sorry whoever is reading this; I promise my next entry will be less cheesy. I'm in a cheesy mood; it must have been the 6am wake up call; you know, cos Tatulek was keen on going blue berry picking. Apparently next time we are waking up at 5am. But having said that, FUCK YES THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES IN THE HOUSE!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!!! CAN THIS YEAR GET ANY BETTER? (Magda, I am forcing you to go through the hell I went through; it's just crazy how excited Tatulek gets when it comes to blue berry picking.)

(Speaking of blue berries, I think that the only people who actually participate in this activity are Poles who are absolutely appalled by the high prices.... but I do have to ask the question: are we more stingy when it comes to our food? Oh, who really cares THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES IN DA HOUSE AGAIN! YESSSSSSSS)

That should be it for now. I feel a lil embarrassed for sounding so emotional in this blog; I just felt like these last few days deserve some sort of acknowledgement.

i can't wait for next New Year's :)

#2 New Year's Resolution: have more fun

peace

xo