This is a fine weekend to be single. It is cold and in many places snowy.
What is better than to curl up in front of a fireplace with a glass of wine knowing, whether you are with someone or alone, that you have no responsibilities to anyone else.
And in company? Of course, no one gets married any more.
Now I know what it is like to find the love of your life, but short of spending the day with that person, what is the value of the holiday to everyone else. Expensive flowers, cheap candy, emotions expressed through cards, because real love is reserved for so few, those who have no impediments and who, somehow, find the right person through all the crap they otherwise have to go through.
Well, not everyone is cold. I know those who are in the southern hemisphere would allege it is summer, but Valentine's day is historically a northern hemisphere holiday. It is worth noting that i think at least half the time the map of the world on weather channels should be shown upside down lest we of the northern half of the planet become too smug in our beliefs of our position on what is, after all, approximately round.
Valentine's day is a crooked day, having its roots in the violation of the law to perform marriage. There it is, marriage again. You'd have that be the dream, but is it a dream without the right person, or is it merely something that keeps right people apart. The right person will be there without the marriage, the single person has the chance.
And why outlaw marriage? For the good of the (Roman) state! So the Justification for violating the law is supposed to be love? No, valentine's day is not about love, it is about betrayal.
Betrayal takes many forms. It requires some sort of allegiance, Pearl Harbor was treacherous but not a betrayal if this is accepted.
True love is unavailable without betrayal to the couples of the world, ignoring for the moment those who are in love. Once the bond is in place, marriage or relationship, a duty of sorts exists on the part of everyone to it, everyone who even knows of it and accepts it takes a small amount of responsibility for it. Society recognizes this. Perhaps a perversion of this very concept led to the Justinian era christian Romans placing the death penalty on homosexuality. Perhaps, that was considered a betrayal of some unwritten commandment of god, thou shalt not bugger, something they felt must have been left off the original 10 because, perhaps it would have made the list uneven or perhaps the other one was lost with it when the original was smashed, one can imagine, though shalt take care of the planet, approach religion with some degree of logic or some such counterbalancing theme.
Perhaps it is the natural tendency to destroy what we do not understand and who would say they understand love. I will write something on understanding and love perhaps, that would be appropriate.
Is love sacrifice or mutual support? I was writing this earlier and it struck on a common theme, "no one is taking care of me." And that in turn led to religion, the ultimate safety net. When no one else is there, there is god. "Yea though I walk through the valley of death, thou art with me, thy rod and that staff comfort me." The one shortcoming of deism. There is no one that loyal, no one who cares for those in the valleys. I picture an alpine valley between mountains, where the shadows part during the middle of the day to allow a warm sun and then close and it is dark and cold; but that is not the valley of death, I suppose. That valley must be so deep that the sun never reaches the bottom which must be either too hard or too soft, perhaps a type of shallow quicksand, the rocks ground to powder by the endless parade of humanity who have walked through it.
So who is this one lover, who I was thinking never skyped with me. Now if my computer monitor didn't have a camera I wouldn't think of these things, but I find myself thinking of these things and wondering what they mean. Perhaps even the perfect love was nothing more than a figment of my imagination. And when love is gone there is only pain, deeper than the pain of loneliness, although there is pain there. Loneliness and doubt. Will I ever find love? Was there something else i should have done?
Kahlil Gibran argues "Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." You have to have a name like Kahlil to come up with that stuff. Lost love is lost faith. Lonelier than doubt. And religion is a type of love we can have alone. The safety net if you can find it, if you can believe in it, the last refuge of the lonely, the one who doubts, the lost lover wondering where his lost loves are on valentine's day, who they are with, what they are thinking, why is he alone.
But the single people, they can still hope to find true love, they can pick up from where they are without worrying, they can fall in love and betray the Roman empire if they must. They are the ones who need a holiday to strive for, so valentines day must be for them. And let's not forget those who toil in the dirt to grow flowers, who sit at desks with candles writing sonnets to go on cards that will be sold at deep discounts on the 15th of February. They have some artist's trivial design and words like these:
I can still see your eyes
They glow with intelligence
I remember your words
full of knowledge and wisdom
how everything about you
is like a codex
some collection of thought
i will remember you
like the deep ocean
dark, mysterious, beautiful
never the same
seductively serene
hiding secret dangers
you taste of salt
and i am glad to know you
however superficially
irregardless of where we are
or where we will be in the future
whether i want it or not
i am, your valentine
Well, the last line is the double entendre (or however it is spelled) for the history scholars, or if not the history scholars than those who study the fables that surround history.
Valentine, after all, lies with a broken neck in a traitor's grave, and the card with sonnet will be on sale Monday.
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