his iron heart...

I carry a curse with words in that while I love to read, and enjoy a good conversation as much as the next guy, I am doomed to loose it, to forget it. My reading comprehension is pitiful, having to read and re-read passages in books just to remember them, and I cannot repeat anything heard without jumbling the words or forgetting it all together. Sarah can remember entire conversations, and lines from movies and shows she saw years ago. She is an ever patient reminder that I am a hopelessly visual person. For this reason, I am grateful for movies.

I just got home from seeing "Iron Man" and it was fantastic! A completely enjoyable and exciting movie, free of any cheesy lines (what was intended to be funny was actually funny), and the cast was terrific. Probably about the best "super hero" movie I have ever seen. The movie was good because the story had depth, a story about figuring out who you are, and living with the things you've done. It is a story of injustice and war. The most remarkable part of the story for me though, and forgive my ignorance all you fan boys, comes in the source of the hero's power. This may be fantasy, but bare with me for a minute.

Tony Stark is a brilliant scientist, engineer, and weapons designer who is captured by terrorists seeking to enlist his services. In his capture, he is sprayed with shrapnel, and a doctor, also in captivity, attaches an electro-magnet to his chest to keep the shrapnel from working its way into Stark's heart. Seeing the limitations of the attached car battery that feeds it, Stark finds a new way to power the magnet and sustain his life through a small, chest-mounted reactor of his own design. Instead of making weapons for the terrorists, Stark builds an iron suit, powered by this new invention and escapes. As Stark returns to society, he is touched by the delicacy of life and the terrible cost of war.

This is a story about what drives us, about what makes us strong in our weakness. In the unrealistic source of Iron Man's power we see the delicacy of the heart, that we are driven by more than pure mechanics and biology. For every bit as real the heart is, beating inside our chests, there is a metaphorical heart that for those who feel it, keeps the physical heart beating. We derive passion from it, endurance, motivation, and excitement. It feels pain, weathers turmoil, clinches in sadness, and moves with love.

I am often aware of my heart when I am anxious. It is as if a cord is pulling it deep into my chest. Anxiety rears its ugly head at the most inopportune times, when I hold a guitar, when I write these words, when I find myself on the verge of vulnerability. At my best I do not know this.

It works the other way too. Just the other night I was in my car during the last hours of daylight. The sky was electric blue like a tropical cocktail, blanketed with with thin strips of cloud colored and textured like ceiling insulation. The blue and pink were the only two colors in the sky, set in hard opposition. The voice on my radio repeated, "Your love is strong," and my heart expanded in my chest. Where anxiety makes my heart sink, joy could make it explode. This is the heart meant to endure. All the while the other heart, the finite heart, beats.

The point comes, as it does in all good hero stories, where the protagonist's strength fails and everything hangs on the brink. Iron Man is driven beyond his abilities, and his artificial heart begins to fail. Without spoiling anything, we are given a glimpse into the the true strength of Tony Stark's heart. It is a moment seldom found in a big summer blockbuster. I love a good movie because it inevitable gets my mind going. As I sit and consider the heart, I'm thinking $8.50 is a small price to pay.

Cheers!