Dear St Valentine

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 13th, 2019 - 25 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, Media, Politics, the praiseworthy and the pitiful - Tags:

Deep in the perpetually joyous realm you inhabit, could you pop over and have a chat to St Francis?
 
I am pretty sure that your spirit of spreading love throughout humanity is so necessary that if you did not exist we would have to invent you.
 
But the speed and volume of the GrabOnes and DowntownForTwo specials now pinging me through cyberspace makes me feel that this spirit isn’t quite being fully realized.
 
Up on the side of Assisi’s snowy mountain home, I’m pretty confident that St Francis would have woken up on the 13th and told everyone that he dreamed last night that every dinner was poisoned. A real downer guy, obviously destined to be single, but a necessary corrective.
 
If one happens to be lucky enough to have someone brimming with sustained belovedness in your life, maybe champagne isn’t completely compulsory. We can still signify that they are our sun – and yes it really does usually involve going out to dinner somehow. If you don’t think so, you better have a really good second plan.
 
This year, St Valentine, we are going to put love first, rather than conform to someone else’s idea of how best to prove that love. If we go out, we’re going to choose a restaurant we know and love, and eat the things we know and love. If that means sushi, schnitzel or avo on toast, then so be it.
 
Or we are going to let them know beforehand that we are going to spread the blanket out on the beach under a Pohutukawa, and there will be rich evidence that some thought was put into it.
 
There will be no plastic gas-filled love hearts. There will be none of those scent-eradicated Ecuadorian roses. There will be no lobster. There will be fewer of the trapping gender constraints and St Valentines Day tropes for either male or female. But hey, while it’s too hot for chocolates, it’s not the Day of The Dead, so get to it.
 
There will be time, booked in advance, with all devices turned off. There may well be a physical card with something heartfelt that signifies that the other is always the intended.
 
Patriarchy will not be unwound with a few daily amendments. On the other hand don’t think you can get away with “forgetting” this day. Or they’ll make sure you never forget it afterwards. It’s time to show some actual feeling.
 
I am preparing mentally and logistically already. And I am letting the beloved know that I am in planning for it.
 
St Valentine, help me let them know my intent.

25 comments on “Dear St Valentine ”

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  1. Kay 1
    13 February 2019 at 8:25 am

    Apologies for being slightly off topic Ad, but this is Valentines related- a bit of trivia not known to many outside of our circle that may be useful in a pub quiz one day: Dear St Valentine is also (one of many) Patron Saints of epilepsy. The background is quite interesting.

    “The Link Between St Valentine and Epilepsy”
    https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/valentine#.XGMcNDMzbIU

  2. patricia bremner 2
    13 February 2019 at 8:32 am

    Counting blessings is a good place to start, doing something for the others.. simple but sound. Be happy and spread love around. Ask someone on their own to coffee or make a visit.

  3. greywarshark 3
    13 February 2019 at 8:38 am

    Prayer to a saint on help to attain saint-like qualities.
    St Valentine do help us spread love around in a person-friendly-person way. And then may that love linger on for the whole year and survive anger, annoyance, irritation, disappointment, rejection. Give us time spent just relaxing the mind, remembering the difficulties of forming a valid view of the world that includes generosity of spirit is ever more difficult, and help us to work on recognising the small signs from people of attempting these; loving that in others and fostering that in ourselves.

    People can love and do generous, giving things to each other.
    Ayn Rand acolytes, neolib, freemarket devotees are trapped in golden chains, loving the idea of machines, technology, tinkering and turning everything loving people hold dear. Help us to feel understanding and show wisdom but wariness of their depleted level of instinct to love, feel empathy and do kind things for others. And help us be careful of the machine-thinking, technologically saturated people, who may find that they cannot love, be generous and giving to others. They see this as unreasonable, inefficient and ineffective; they are too busy.

  4. marty mars 4
    13 February 2019 at 9:08 am

    Just love people everyday then you won’t worry about a made up day of love. Just say you love people and they will hear it when you’re not there. Good luck.

  5. DJ Ward 5
    13 February 2019 at 9:10 am

    “Patriarchy will not be unwound with a few daily amendments. On the other hand don’t think you can get away with “forgetting” this day. Or they’ll make sure you never forget it afterwards. It’s time to show some actual feeling.”

    Strange isn’t it that social constructs defined with male privilege terms like patriarchy are actually the opposite. It’s actually the matriarchy as the privilege as described is in the females favour as its the male that gets punishment for non compliance. No flowers, or chocolates, or night out etc from the male and he will never forget it. If the female does nothing for the male, nothing happens.

    While every relationship is different, eg my household doesn’t celebrate this day. Initiated by my partner as she sees it as a commercial con, the steriotype of the male having to get or do something for the female is still subconsciously real. If she had this brainwashed expectation, like other men I would be held hostage to the expectation. Especially my wallet.

    Do we have a day like this with the steriotype of females showing love for there man?
    Even Father’s Day now revolves around adds with kids giving something to a solo mum, saying thanks dad.

    I will be taking the kids around the house etc to pick a bunch of flowers. It’s free.

    • greywarshark 5.1
      13 February 2019 at 12:20 pm

      Ladle your love out in a measure DJ Ward. Making sure that there is one for you, and one for her, and one for you, and one for them. Even if you have to be careful to see that you don’t give out more than you receive, at least there will be
      an efficient exchange. And love and friendship will be passed around albeit in perhaps parsimonious quantities.

  6. Cinny 6
    13 February 2019 at 9:13 am

    The incredible Matthew Silver is a Valentines Day inspiration…..

    Love is the answer, stop buying stuff !

    Grab a rubber chicken, a drum, don your undies, don’t forget to wear socks and shoes and…. Spread the word 🙂

    • rata 6.1
      13 February 2019 at 9:45 am

      I would have preferred a female model 🙂

    • greywarshark 6.2
      13 February 2019 at 9:46 am

      Stop buying stuff is simplistic of course. Trading with each other is how a community survives. The problem is imports from countries with large poor populations. If they could run their local economies so as to diminish their poverty their wouldn’t be a workforce that sacrifices themselves for such low pay and can be exploited by wealthier people and countries.

      It’s hard to do apparently, many Chinese peasants remained ‘dirt’ poor after the revolution. But perhaps improvement could have been reached if villagers had been given exclusive rights to produce something tradeable to a good standard, which would have given each village, a desirable product for trading with others. Competition would have had to be controlled so that the system couldn’t be undermined.
      That is probably the sustainable way.

      ( I am looking at this on a practical basis. In current economics, competition is good, but with problems that are admitted, reluctantly probably. But is a statement that has been pushed as an absolute, and in the end just another human idea being processed.)

      • Bruce 6.2.1
        13 February 2019 at 9:55 am

        There is a system in Thailand, OTOP, One tambon one product.. Each area took an item from the area with potential and developed it and promoted it regionally and cooperatively. Seems to work well.

        • greywarshark 6.2.1.1
          13 February 2019 at 10:17 am

          Thanks for that. Knowing somewhere its happening is good. And you say it seems to work well. I will keep that in mind, see what more I can find about their observations of its progress.

        • patricia bremner 6.2.1.2
          13 February 2019 at 12:07 pm

          Interesting, I looked up OTOP Thailand and up came reams Thanks Bruce.

      • Cinny 6.2.2
        13 February 2019 at 12:56 pm

        I quite like Michael Tellingers Ubuntu method. He stood for election in South Africa, didn’t make it into Parliament, but it hasn’t stopped him in his quest for change.

        https://michaeltellinger.com/ubuntu/

        Bruce, thanks for sharing, haven’t heard about OTOP before, will check it out.

  7. Psycho Milt 7
    13 February 2019 at 10:05 am

    My favourite IDLES lyrics:

    I fucken love you
    I really love you
    Look at this card I bought
    It says “I love you”

  8. Puckish Rogue 8
    13 February 2019 at 10:27 am

    I’ll be sending my love to Mrs Puckish Rogue, she being full of infinite patience and understanding

    And Jude obviously

  9. Brutus Iscariot 9
    13 February 2019 at 4:09 pm

    This article is an acid trip.

  10. ropata 10
    15 February 2019 at 12:05 am

    Little bit of history for those misled by commercialised bullshit:
    https://twitter.com/nickygumbel/status/1095957972881211392?s=21