Matters of the Heart

I. Biology

[Hummingbirds] have racecar hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut.... Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death....

The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It's as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around in it, head high, bending only to step through the valves.
* * *No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

--Brian Doyle, "Joyas Voladoras", in The Best American Essays 2005

II. Character

Today I saw Brokeback Mountain. It was a bit slow, but the scenery was nice. In fact, I'd say the Canadian Rockies put in a star turn playing the role of Wyoming.

I had a difficult time deciding which character was more despicable, Jack or Ennis:

• Jack seems honest, to some degree, because he keeps talking about leaving his sham/loveless marriage and openly setting up a home with Ennis. That seeming courage and truth is only in words, though; at the time of his death 20 years later, he is still married. Let's face it, Jack is really sleazy - although married to one woman, and supposedly in love with one man, he carries on liaisons with other men (including at least one prostitute) and other women.
• Ennis seems a bit less sleazy; he at least seems to be with only one woman at a time, and he cheats on her with only one man. But his cowardice is such that he can't make a true commitment to anyone or anything: not his daughters, not Jack, not his own nature. And certainly not his wife (who inexplicably waits 5 years to divorce Ennis after seeing him and Jack kissing madly before driving off to be together unobserved).

In fact, it's not so clear to me why all the other characters like Ennis so much. Maybe he is so taciturn and closed-off (like a wall) that they can all project whatever they like onto him.

III. Convention

In a column published in the Washington Post on Feb. 15 (p. C10), Miss Manners responds to a Gentle Reader who has asked for "a polite way" to let someone know he has caught her fancy, "without putting the gentleman into a potentially embarrassing position, and possibly ruining a close and wonderful friendship should he not harbor like feelings."

Miss Manners replies that "subtle means are required" to preserve "the deniability you need to keep from forfeiting the friendship (or your dignity)" --

To progress, you need to send a few ambiguous signals. Whether he responds in kind will give you your answer, while still allowing you deniability should he not do so.

For example, you stare at him too long and soulfully, and then look away as if you had hardly known what you were doing. You sit too close to him, and then idly get up and sit somewhere else. You brush up against him as if you had not noticed that you did.

Oh, stop pretending to be shocked at Miss Manners' knowing such things. Before the world turned as crude as it is now, flirting was a common and innocent practice.

--Judith Martin

IV. The Ickenham System

In a number of novels, P.G. Wodehouse advocates a different approach to courtship than Miss Manners. His technique is more tailored for the masculine energy.

"With me behind him, the most diffident wooer can get the proudest beauty to sign on the dotted line. ... The Ickenham System ... might seem a little abrupt. ... Just giving you the bare outlines, you stride up to the subject, clasp her to your bosom and shower kisses on her upturned face. You don't have to say much -- just 'My mate!' of something of that sort, and, of course, in grabbing by the wrist, don't behave as if you were handling a delicate piece of china. Grip firmly and waggle her about a bit. It seldom fails, and I usually recommend it...."

Lord Ickenham, in Cocktail Time ch. 9 (P.G. Wodehouse).

Although the technique is attributed to the dapper and debonair Lord Ickenham in some stories, it is elsewhere attributed to a young man's inner "cave man" instincts (at war, naturally with his saintly, self-sacrificing "Better Self"):

"Mashed potatoes!" said the Stone Age Ancestor coarsely. "The 'ole thing 'ere, young fellow, is you just take this girl and grab her and 'old 'er in your arms, as the saying is, and never mind how many bright, good-looking young men she's engaged to. 'Strewth! When I was in me prime you wouldn't have found me 'esitating. You do as I say, me lad, and you won't regret it. Just you spring smartly to attention and grab 'er with both 'ands in a soldierly manner."

--Money for Nothing ch. 15.

Perhaps the technique works. In September 1914, P.G. Wodehouse married Ethel Newton, "a widow whom he had met in New York eight weeks earlier." They were married for 60 years (i.e., until his death).