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...the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us.

Stuck smacks of "duck" or masking tape. Mud, tar and quicksand. Then again, vortex stirs up whirlpool, drain, and dump. Always always the dialectic of cleave. Always mulling over muck. His. His?

*** Thanks to advances in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby's first attachments imprint its brain.

Ah, ah, ah. Blank. Long black hair. Blanket. Blank. Hands handling. Blank. Blank. Cotton. Cotton is mamama. Cotton blanket is blankety-blank.

She keeps his number in "contacts" so she knows when not to answer.

*** It isn't that caregiving changes genes; it influences how the genes express themselves as the child grows.

I don't want her beat-up Tiny Tears. ... I don't want her stinky skort. ... I won't go to her Sweet Sixteen. ... I don't want to hear his ex's name, any of their names. I don't want to not want.

*** Breaking old habits isn't easy, since habits are deeply ingrained neural shortcuts, a way of slurring over details without having to dwell on them.

Shortcuts? Like to grandmother's?

or When he saw his daughter's new hair cut, by way of a greeting he said, "Did you read in the news that a lesbian was raped in Prospect Park?"

or slurring or slur?

or Smoking, etc.

or When she saw crumbs on the passenger-side seat, she assumed he was cheating on her with an ex or with a babysitter or neighbor or adjunct or manicurist--

or She was nonplused.

*** Dr. Siegel, a neuropsychiatrist, refers to the indelible sense of 'feeling felt' that we learn as infants and seek in romantic love, a reciprocity that remodels the brain's architecture and functions.

Or, today, envying the dove the dovecote.

*** Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.

She asked the mirror who is fairest in the land? and the mirror declared, the daughter of your husband. So she instructed a huntsman to cut out the girl's heart, though in the end he brought her that of a wild bore. That is, boar.

NOTE: all quotes taken from Diane Ackerman's New York Times article, "The Brain on Love"--with apologies.

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