Valentine's Day
Happy Valentine's Day. I like this holiday, actually; I always have. I know there are those who intellectualize its comment on the connection between commerce and romance. I know there are people who pessimistically rail that the very exclusive and otherwise painful nature of relationships render the holiday a farce. There are even singles who sourly feel the holiday marginalizes or denies them. I suspect these last people have a good point, actually; god knows that romantic love is something seldom studied in the abstract precisely because one either has it or one does not. I like this holiday for the first two reasons above. I like that one day stands right up and, once and for all, minces no ideology over the connection between loviness and money. I love that the very painful nature of relationships is celebrated in an unhealthy morass of brown and red treacle, encouraging ladies and gentlemen to reach right in and bite the gooey hearts provided them. It's a rather gothic holiday, eh? If love is a creaking, drafty, shuttered construction casting window-light out onto the world's frozen maze of skeletal flora, then Valentine's Day is the chink in the pitched bluster when inhabitants can stroll the widow's walk and then huddle back inside as better people. But enough waxing pretty: Sunshine and I spent our first married Valentine's finally doing that long, laborious grocery chore necessary for our a brand new unit. This took an incredible amount of time and energy and four trips through the icy parking lot with crushing armloads. After, we drove across the street and ate really excellent Vietnamese food. The restaurant was only halfway full and none of the Southeast Asian clients seemed to care there was a holiday going on. Sunshine and I cared, though. [Cavin]
this had happened to Mr. Cavin by 12:12:00 PM
Then, a 2 sided conversation ensued...
I like Valentine's Day too and as a liberal, educated, feminist, whatever you want to call me, I always feel guilty for liking it. But not this year. This year I said "Let's celebrate!" (Unfortunately I was in Florida!) It is fun to find yet another excuse to go out to a fancy meal, drink expensive wine and make-out like teenagers.
See, I don't think any of those things are good reasons to feel guilty about Valentine's Day unless you subscribe to the notion that it is intended as an opportunity for men to gift women with approved tokens of payment for favors accrued. I see that many people do think in these terms about the holiday, but you don't have to. I celebrate an equal Valentine’s Day where I expect as much attention as anyone else gets, even though my name starts with a Mr.
But then again, I celebrated this holiday all those years I was bitter and alone, too. So my sense of Valentine's equality even stretches to the lamentably single. Even those lamentably in Florida.
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