Unpack Your Heart

Ah, the human heart. I taught a yoga class about this incredible vessel yesterday, which seems a bit funny, since I can't even begin to understand it.

I've been listening lately to the CDs that my first love has made me over the years, and I realized something: the only song that he ever repeated from one disc to the next (decades passed between some of them) was the song Hurt.

Sometimes it just feels like there's so much hurt in this life. It's everywhere you look. And even the most magical feelings of love often get replaced by hurt. I say often because I know, not from my own life, but from the examples of others, that it is possible to love someone as much as I let myself love the New Englander and have it turn it very differently than that relationship turned out.

I was talking today to a bodyworker who advised me that now probably isn't the time to date, but when people start asking, to just stay really hypervigilant that I don't once again take elements of a person and a relationship and create a projection -- even if it's a really fucking beautiful projection -- of the partner and the love I am seeking. Because ultimately, that's what I did with the New Englander, because originally, that's what I did with my father.

Tricky business, this heart stuff. Luckily, like all hard things about being human, the difficulty and complexity of our hearts can be mitigated with poetry and music.

I'm going to start with the poetry. This poem is called Heart. It is from an episode of the New Yorker this summer, and it was written by Sue Song. I first read it when I was out in Portland in August, and it has come to symbolize for me the universality of the difficulty that two human beings so often have with loving one another:

When removed, I know
you will be more mahogany
than vermillion. The mass
of you less than one pound—
fisted fibre of muscle, language
of tremor under the breastbone
quieted.
Sorry for blaming you.
Too many nights I felt you
transform to the heaviest alloy
and demand to be carried,
rite of my fidelity to you.
Then, on whim, you’d dissolve
quick as mercury,
rise to cast my throat,
cause an allergy of tears.
I hated your cadence, betraying
me. Contraction and beat,
stenograph of your honesty
when my lips were complicit.
I understand you are sensitive.
Forgive those years I left you
pounding your Morse of grief, alone—
knocking against my sternum,
wondering if I was even there.

Wow.

And finally, from the speakers in the locker room this morning came this song -- a new one to me -- and it seemed hopeful:

Meet me where the sunlight ends
Meet me where the truth never bends
Bring all that you're scared to defend

And lay it down when you walk through my door
Throw all of it out on the floor
Your sorrow, your beauty, your war
I want it all, I want it all

Bring your secrets, bring your scars
Bring your glory, all you are
Bring your daylight, bring your dark
Share your silence
And unpack your heart

Show me something the rest never see
Give me all that you hope to receive
Your deepest regret dies with me

The days when you stumble and fall
The days when you grind to a crawl
The treasure that hides behind your walls
I want it all, yeah I want it all

Bring your secrets, bring your scars
Bring your glory, all you are
Bring your daylight, bring your dark
Share your silence
And unpack your heart
Unpack your heart

Oh, I'm on your side
So shed your shadow
And watch it rise

Oh, I'm on your side
So shed your shadow
And watch it rise
Into your darkness
I'll shine a light

Bring your secrets, bring your scars
Bring your glory, all you are
Bring your daylight, bring your dark
Share your silence

Bring your honor, bring your shame
All your madness, I will tame
Won't you lay down, down your guard
Share your silence
And unpack your heart

Lovely.

Now here this, Universe: the next time I unpack my heart, it'll be with someone capable of making space for me, unpacking his heart, and leaving it unpacked, even when it gets scary and hard...