A 23-year-old British woman recently had a chance to look at her own heart on display, part of The Heart exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

She had the heart transplant at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, three months ago after a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal condition in which the heart walls stiffen. Her first reaction on seeing the old heart was disgust, but later she described the experience as slightly surreal. She said: “Because it was mine, I was like, wow, that’s my heart. I just couldn’t stop grinning. It’s odd to think that I stood here alive, and that was part of me once upon a time.”

- From the London Times Online, 9/1/07

This is the mix for DateDyke, which she (thank the heavens!) received yesterday. I made an elaborate cover (including that photograph and quote, above) and insert, with a few sentences on why I chose each song, but which are kind of special for her, so I won’t include that here.

Here, however, is the tracklist to the new year 2008 mix called how much my heart can take:

1. Electric Light – PJ Harvey
2. Wicked Game - Giant Drag
3. Preparedness - The Bird & The Bee
4. Sexual Animals - Sarah Fimm
5. Love Me Like a Man - Bonnie Raitt
6. Closer to You – JJ Cale
7. Warm – Kinnie Starr
8. One Big Love - Patty Griffin
9. Please - Tristan Prettyman
10. Headlock - Imogen Heap
11. If I Was Your Man - Joan Osborne
12. Tear You Apart - She Wants Revenge
13. Yr Love - The Butchies
14. The Fear You Won’t Fall - Joshua Radin
15. Did I Imagine You? - Dot Allison
16. Sweet The Sting - Tori Amos

And if you’d like to download these songs, I stuck ‘em up at YouSendIt, tracks 1-7 and tracks 8-16. YouSendIt allows 100 downloads of each file, so if you get to the file and you can’t download it, let me know in the comments and I will reupload with a new URL. … Though maybe not until after Miss DD is on her way back to Seattle on Tuesday. I might have better things to do this weekend than upload mp3s. Maybe. Just sayin’. I’m sure you understand.

9 hours, 45 minutes.

Because I was worried that my comment on “only a broken heart” would be misunderstood, and because it was, I am reposting here a comment I made on that last post:

I’m not saying “only a broken heart” in order to dismiss it, or to belittle it, or to make it mean less, or to diminish the experience. yes, of course, a broken heart is a big fucken deal (I mean, obviously - probably the most traumatic thing we humans go through, aside from death & trauma).

but what I’m saying is this: I have been struggling for quite some time with the elaborate, complex emotions, feelings, resentment, hurt, pain - all that crap - and I’ve been struggling, forcing it, really, to mean something cosmic and soul-deep and all-consuming and infinite.

but really, it’s just a broken heart.

see what I’m saying? now, that is NOT to say that I don’t think there are bits of the cosmos, the soul-deep, the all-consuming inside of a broken heart. I do.

but what I’m doing is naming this experience. putting it into a little box called “broken heart” and closing the lid and putting it on the shelf. it’s only a broken heart. that’s all this is. I’ve wounded; I will heal.