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Thoughts about valentine’s day

I have had my fill of people pissing and moaning over this holiday. I have heard enough rants and seen enough irreverent humor over how the day came to be, or how it’s a “Hallmark Holiday” meant only to funnel money into the greeting card business.

Being a bitchy, poo-poo’er of this holiday makes you, in general, an ass. Why? Let me explain.

Valentine’s Day is just that, it’s effing Valentine’s Day. And at some point someone decided to start a cult-like hatred of a holiday. To which all I can do is laugh.

GET OVER IT.

February 14th is going to come every year, whether you’re single, dating, in an open relationship, married for 15 years, or married for 60 years. And every year there are going to be pissed off drama queens and lame guys who take joy in making fun of it.

To everyone who likes Valentine’s Day: Good for you for not getting your panties in a bind over a holiday.

To everyone who dislikes Valentine’s Day: Keep your opinions to yourself, because no one really gives a crap about you being upset over a date on the calendar.

quotes for later use

“Ares, to glory strife he speedeth, wroth with foes, when maddeneth his heart, and grim his frown is, and his eyes flask levin-flame around him, and his face is clothed with glory of beauty terror-blent, as on he rusheth: quail the very gods.” – Fall of Troy

“Saviour of cities, harnessed in bronze, strong of arm, unwearying, mighty with the spear” – Homeric Hymn to Ares

novella a la la la

“I’m going,” she said.

Every day I wish she hadn’t. Maybe I should have stopped her. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. But at least she would be here with me on the last day, the last minute, in these forever on-going seconds of which I have only a few left. I would give everything just to have her here. Even if it meant she was going to die too.

….

Helen. That was her name. I’d rather not get into full names just yet. Saying someone’s name who you’re sickeningly in love with is strange. Haven’t you ever noticed how a person’s name stings on your tongue and wafts in the air in front of your face, in front of them, just kind of hanging there as though it should not have been spoken, but now that it’s there it is not going away.  You feel kind of giddy when you discover it. It is like digging up some secret about that person and you hold onto it and keep it to yourself. Full names are meant to be shared with very few. Your parents, your most cherished friends, and a person who absolutely, without a doubt, will be absorbed into every fiber of your being. You love them. They know your name and you theirs.

I had a love affair with Helen. And Helen had a love affair with her hands. To be more exact, a love affair with things in her hands. It was a problem everyone had at this moment in time. But more on that later. I still want to talk about Helen, because Helen is what kept me going on this long road which was laid before me. It has been a long time since I’ve seen Helen, but every day I think about that moment she walked away, and I watched her walk away. There wasn’t a door for her to slam, or a car for her to speed off in, leaving tracks or kicking up dirt into what was our past, not caring because she was headed into an unknown future. I watched her walk away until my eyes were as dry, unblinking because I did not want to lose a moment of her. I must have looked at her for an hour before I couldn’t see her anymore. She was a speck on the horizon, and eventually elevated from the ground, wiggling in the last line of sight, because when something gets that far away and you haven’t worn your glasses for awhile it’s all blurry nonsense. She could have been a bird if I hadn’t know for sure it was her, because like I said, she walked away and never turned back.

Helen was gorgeous, pure, angelic even. I am making her out to be this vestal persona. Some elevated being. She wasn’t. She was a normal girl, but to me, imperfections were perfections, and perfections were evidence the Almighty existed solely to make a beautiful girl named Helen and He only existed for that moment in time because I certainly don’t believe in a God now. And it makes me think, if I don’t believe in Him now, than I never did in the first place. My decision to stop believing was pretty straightforward even though I tend to bleed it out like it happened over the course of this disastrous problem.

Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships, her beauty sent men to war, and she was born from a God. My Helen and I lived in a war, but my Helen did not possess the beauty to send anyone to war against this. This was a not a war of men, or possession, or love, or Gods even.

Often I wonder why we started calling it a war in the first place. In order for there to be a war there must be a reason. Behind a reason there must be conviction and behind conviction there must be the men to hold onto it. Personally I think the word “war” just started getting thrown around pretty easily some time after people stopped caring about words in the first place. <– Possibly move this to another part of the story

There was a lot people stopped caring about.

….

It’s mid-November now and it’s pleasant. I live in California, what used to be the Huntington Beach area. I like it because there’s a lot of color around, teals and pinks, canary blues. All the buildings, houses and stores, are painted in those colors around here. They’re faded and dilapidated, but there is still color. The ocean is enjoyment at its finest too. I find myself down on the beach where the sand is pearly white and the waves lap at the earth. It’s a meeting point, one element coming into contact with the other.

I came out to California when I was 20, that was five years after the problem. Five years is a long time for thearre to be a problem. Ten years is even longer for there not to be a problem anymore. And fifteen years in between now and when it all started, man, that is the longest time of all.

Cycles are what puts everything in order. The history of the world is all about rise and fall, kind of like a heart monitor in a hospital. It’s a steady line that goes across, but then it jumps up and comes back down, constantly. The history of the world is also created by the people who were in charge. No one else really gets any input. That is why I like to think of it in a circle instead, because everything goes around and then it just starts again, never ending, but always doing the same thing, never deviating. Change happens, growth, sustainability, knowledge, but then it falls and starts all over again. Resilience is a good way to look at it, because even though it just keeps coming back to the beginning of that circle we trudge on.

The year is 2090. The problem started in 2085.

….

“I don’t like the idea of it.” Those are the words my father used while plugged into his PET. He was streaming a CNN live broadcast from the Capitol into the entire house. I hated it when he did that. Oh right, a PET is a personal tablet, it’s just a shortened version of the two words. Everyone had a personal tablet, it was you. And it did everything for you. Basically you were not you without it. No one left their house without their PET. I heard rumors all the time that there were still places in the world where people didn’t have PETs. Being a bone-headed teenager I didn’t believe it, but neither did a majority of the population. Seriously. If the information didn’t come from your PET – you didn’t believe it. PETs replaced laptops and personal computers around 2030. The last few cell phones were still in use around 2050. At first people didn’t like carrying around their PETs because they were bigger than their cell phones, but eventually everyone just got used to it. Ladies started carrying bigger purses and guys, well they just sucked it up and carried it around in their hands. After all, it wasn’t like we had wallets anymore and the only reason ladies needed purses were for their “lady things” (cosmetics, mirrors, etc.) PETs were about the size of a book, thin as a piece of paper, and pretty much indestructible. I can’t count how many times I had my PET taken from me and tossed around during high school. But no matter the abuse, my PET was perfectly fine.

Open Letter to Trop West & I-15 Hobo

Dear Trop & I-15 Hobo,

I see you every day. You are quite dedicated to your craft. I am sure you recognize my car every morning at about 7:55 AM. And probably every other car that gets off at Tropicana to go to work within the hours of 6 AM and 9 AM. For all intents and purposes I assume you begin your day at about 5:45 AM in order to catch early commuters and continue on till about half past 9 AM. That is when traffic starts slowing down and the free cash stops flowing.

At first, like with every other homeless person, I felt a pang in my heart for you. There you were with your cardboard sign (I’m sorry I’ve never been able to read it, partly due to my poor eye sight and partly because I fear making eye contact with you and making you think I’m going to empty my dolla dolla bills into your dirty dirty hands) and your thin looking, ratty clothing. That was the first time I saw you. But then I saw you… again. And again. Every day you were there. Every week day anyway.

So I began to ponder every time I saw you there… was this, somehow, some way, your job? Just like me, you were there, on time, walking up and down the freeway off ramp, plucking money (and sometimes food stuffs) from open car windows. Hand outs. Free money. I think to myself, “Well that’s not fair. I work for my money. I go to an office and listen to rednecks complain about how their onsie pajamas ride up their asses. And you… you stand on the freeway off ramp and take money from people out of their car windows.”

Look, I bet if I were to drive to the Tropicana West exit and get off on Saturday at 7:55 AM you wouldn’t be there. Nope. Because it would be your weekend. Hobo, I know if you can be that dedicated to showing up at the same off ramp every day, you too can get a job like the rest of us. I know it’s hard hobo, but I really resent your mockery of my morning commute. GET A DAMN JOB HOBO. Your job is not to take money from strangers. Go take money from an employer. Do it now.

Most Sincerley.

Ashley (driver of the 2005 blue Jetta)