Temporarily waving the sap ban
"I guess this is turning into a weekly thing." - Me, about my blog.
Also a man, commenting clumsily about the status of his relationship with some other person. Is this getting serious, he might ask then.
I have a lot of things rolling around in my head, mostly about writing. But today, tonight, as many of you may know is special. Being single, I really don't have any viability in the realm of relationships, or much of anything to celebrate on Valentine's Day (no, I'm not that guy that celebrates in mockery of the those people too "stupid" to attach themselves to someone else).
But I did spend the evening with a friend. He poured himself onto the table for us to introspect on about the foibles of the romantic overture while he spent some time pouring alcohol into his body. I tried to empathize. And if not, sympathize. Together, we tried to understand. As they say, you only have to get it right once, 'it' being a good and lasting relationship with some other individual that jibes with us. As we decided over drinks, just having to get it right once doesn't mean that it will happen the first time, or the second, or the third, etc.
Which might be another reason they call it the game of love. It's like a contest that comes on every night, with millions of viewers and contestants, spinning wheels and flashing lights, prizes and losers. You just have to keep playing, and trying. On the way home, I spoke with another friend who was experiencing some ugly aftermath over a recent breakup. The emotional wreckage was severe, and the misunderstandings (which w'ed think would happen less with a person that knows us so well) are just as costly after a relationship as during.
And until tonight, I had never had a cause to celebrate, or be contemplative about Hallmark's day of love. I had never been given pause about how special and unlikely love is. True, the holiday is a scam, but simultaneously it is about something truly great in a world that produces fantastic amounts of the mediocre. Like the perfect blossoms Japanese poets spend their lives searching for, among millions of imperfect ones.
I had a discussion recently about the internet. A revelation about how useful youtube could be was cited. I stretched and posited it as analogous to humanity in general. Some of it's good, I said, and some of it's bad. Later, I concluded, we come together and argue about what is one, and what is the other. And parody, that friction of cognition, is what creates knowledge. Debates are ongoing, discussions perpetual.
But I think everyone got together a long while ago, some congress of elders, scholars, thinkers, and children. The topic was love. All in favor, someone said, and every hand in the room went up.
Love is good. And today, we celebrate that. We includes me, and you. I celebrate your love. Congratulations, folks. And Peace.
Also a man, commenting clumsily about the status of his relationship with some other person. Is this getting serious, he might ask then.
I have a lot of things rolling around in my head, mostly about writing. But today, tonight, as many of you may know is special. Being single, I really don't have any viability in the realm of relationships, or much of anything to celebrate on Valentine's Day (no, I'm not that guy that celebrates in mockery of the those people too "stupid" to attach themselves to someone else).
But I did spend the evening with a friend. He poured himself onto the table for us to introspect on about the foibles of the romantic overture while he spent some time pouring alcohol into his body. I tried to empathize. And if not, sympathize. Together, we tried to understand. As they say, you only have to get it right once, 'it' being a good and lasting relationship with some other individual that jibes with us. As we decided over drinks, just having to get it right once doesn't mean that it will happen the first time, or the second, or the third, etc.
Which might be another reason they call it the game of love. It's like a contest that comes on every night, with millions of viewers and contestants, spinning wheels and flashing lights, prizes and losers. You just have to keep playing, and trying. On the way home, I spoke with another friend who was experiencing some ugly aftermath over a recent breakup. The emotional wreckage was severe, and the misunderstandings (which w'ed think would happen less with a person that knows us so well) are just as costly after a relationship as during.
And until tonight, I had never had a cause to celebrate, or be contemplative about Hallmark's day of love. I had never been given pause about how special and unlikely love is. True, the holiday is a scam, but simultaneously it is about something truly great in a world that produces fantastic amounts of the mediocre. Like the perfect blossoms Japanese poets spend their lives searching for, among millions of imperfect ones.
I had a discussion recently about the internet. A revelation about how useful youtube could be was cited. I stretched and posited it as analogous to humanity in general. Some of it's good, I said, and some of it's bad. Later, I concluded, we come together and argue about what is one, and what is the other. And parody, that friction of cognition, is what creates knowledge. Debates are ongoing, discussions perpetual.
But I think everyone got together a long while ago, some congress of elders, scholars, thinkers, and children. The topic was love. All in favor, someone said, and every hand in the room went up.
Love is good. And today, we celebrate that. We includes me, and you. I celebrate your love. Congratulations, folks. And Peace.
I think that I've gotten it right multiple times. The problem was I then got it wrong an equal number of times. The real trick is failing to get it wrong that last time.
ReplyDeleteAnd I say that the concept of love as a "game" dates from an unfortunate social era, and only ever applied to men, who have built a society to let them avoid consequences. I prefer the song that says love is a battlefield.
Everyone who's anyone agrees that love is good, but that's not everyone. Maybe you're not familiar with Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. It's long and complicated, but the action mostly revolves around the eponymous ring, which gives its owner...an unclear and unspecified power, a "mastery" over anyone, or of the entire world. It can only be made from a certain lump of gold, which can only first be touched by the man (yeah) who will utterly renounce love. And there's a guy who does it, of course, and though everyone finds him repulsive, they all want to take the ring from him, to get the power without paying the price, and in brief (it's the whole second half of an titanically long opera), doing this ruins everything...actually, there's a fantastic two-volume graphic novel that you might find rewarding.
Wagner was a sunovabitch, but I think there may be a useful metaphor there: some people actually do live without love or empathy, and with the right circumstances, that can give them an immense advantage. We detest them, and are jealous of their successes, but trying to follow them while still having human feelings leads rapidly to self-destruction. And I didn't get that just from reading Wagner.
Also, it's "waiving."