HEART

 The organ that does all the heavy lifting in the background does a lot of heavy lifting in the language, too.

Besides the blood-pump, "heart' can mean "personality", "compassion", "love and affection", "courage", "character", "memory" ("by heart")  and "most vital part".  In the past it meant "intellect". 

But of all those meanings, it's usually shorthand for love. The heart supposedly creates enough energy each day to drive a car twenty miles; extrapolated over a lifetime, that's "to the moon and back". So if you've ever told someone you love them to the moon and back, you're saying "I love you with every heartbeat, with every ounce of energy I produce as long as I live". 

Heart is an old, old word. In Old English it was heorte, from Proto-Indo-European kerd, which is where 'courage' comes from. The expression "break my heart" goes all the way back to 1400. 

It's not hard to see how ancients came to believe the heart was the centre of their being. You can feel your heart fluctuating with your emotions. 

The heart shape we punctuate texts with is thought to derive from silphium, a species of giant fennel that drove the economy of ancient Libya, among other places. It was a popular seasoning, a potent medicine, and especially, a fairly effective and extremely widely used contraceptive. It was harvested into extinction by the first century CE; legend has it Emperor Nero was presented with the last surviving stalk. (Unconfirmed reports suggest it may yet survive.) 

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My heart is, as everyone knows, oversized.

It always has been, at least since I was nine years old. I have an infinity heart on my left shoulder; 

(That red mark beneath it is from Eva scratching me earlier that day to demonstrate what the tat would feel like.) 

I swore up and down I'd never get a tattoo from early childhood until almost the day I got two of them. They have meaning. That infinity heart is the standard symbol for polyamory....but if you don't know that, "infinite love" is a suitable alternative phrasing, and works just as well to define me. 

And once again I've run out of inspiration. Tomorrow's topic is spicy, you'll see more tomorrow.