My wife, at the beginning of our relationship, used to coach me days before February 14 to make sure that I had gifts ready to go. I couldn't understand why it was so important; it seemed unreal and insincere to me -- the candy, the flowers, the cloying cards, the candlelight dinners. It made more sense as a kid trapped in a elementary school classroom with 30 other kids; then, being forced to communicate your feelings and show a little affection and overdosing on heart candy one day out the year, it was like Mardi Gras. But the adult man-woman Valentine's ritual does not liberate; it binds, in disappointment, failure, regret.
As I walked home yesterday from work I felt good. I am a free man. Back at the job, most of the women seem unhappy. They are either alone or with someone, a husband or a lover, who is not making them happy (enough) -- as if it is their right that they be made happy by a man; as if they are little girls entitled to daddy's love and care. I felt for the people I passed by on 12th Avenue out on the town for Valentine's dates, planted on bar stools or staggering down the sidewalk drunk. All that projection, all that suffering. On the iPod Anthony Hamilton's "Charlene" synchronistically appeared:
I felt good too walking to work that morning on 12th Avenue. What brought a smile to my lips was hearing the old hippie standard "Carry On" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young:
The hippies get blamed for a lot, and rightly so -- their infantile narcissism and their poltroonish naivete -- but on the big issues -- the evils of the rat race and the primordial nature of peace and love -- they were right. The hippies' mistake was in the belief that the race to be run was a sprint. It's not. It's an ultramarathon. Change takes time and the wiliness of Odysseus.
After "Carry On" -- I'm listening to songs alphabetically now -- came Malouma's "Casablanca." I felt ecstatic:
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