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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Other Topics  |  Off Topic Discussion  |  Valentine's Day: A Reflection « previous next »
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Author Topic: Valentine's Day: A Reflection  (Read 1112 times)
ER
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The sleep of reasoner breeds monsters. (sic)


« on: February 14, 2018, 09:50:18 AM »

Oddly it’s not your birthdays or even Christmases that make you feel like life flies by in a whooshing rush, it’s Valentine’s Day.

It feels like one moment you’re a little child, four last December, 1982, not sure what Valentine’s Day even is (and in your case having a twenty-two-year-old mother who gives you the religious version of it when you ask her) but you’re begging for a pack of McDonald’s Valentine’s Day coupons, and you get them, so bright and filled with familiar characters from TV commercials, you tear open the plastic covering and spill them out onto the restaurant tabletop and turn them over in your hands, they have a lovely papery smell, and you know all the figures by heart, you’ll be keeping these, no one to give them to, maybe your grandma will get one, maybe your cousin Dee, maybe your dad when he gets home, whenever that is, but maybe not, maybe you’ll keep them all, because you want them, and you’re not thinking of the future or of what little past there has been for you, you’re caught in a fascinating bubble of the moment that is, childhood’s gift, that ability, and you’re happy.

Then life flashes on to school, third grade, the Winter Olympics are going on in Calgary, 1988, and you’re living in a whole different state now, everyone’s made decorated paper baggies and hung them off the chalkboard, and you’re supposed to put a Valentine’s Day card in each bag, whether you like the person or not, so you do, but there is one girl you wish you could skip because she yanks your hair when she can get away with it, and your mother tells you she’s jealous of you but you’re not sure she actually is, you think maybe she’s just monstrously evil, and then class stops the last hour of the day so you can have a party with red punch (the kind your dad says makes you hyperactive) and heart-shaped cookies with red sprinkles, and in the middle of the party a low-flying jet from the international airport over the hill flies past loudly enough to notice, when mainly you no longer quite hear them they’re so common, making the teacher say, “My goodness, that one’s low!” and you make eye contact with her and smile and she smiles back, and maybe you’re a teacher’s pet, you don’t know, you don’t even know if kids in public schools get these parties, but one thing is true, and that is then and there you’re happy.

Then it’s middle school, 1992, and someone buys you a real red rose for five dollars, they’d been selling paper roses for a dollar or real ones for five bucks to raise band booster money, not that you’re in band, you suck at music, and you have to pay a dollar to find out who sent it, and because someone bought you an actual rose you have to know who it was, you can’t live with not knowing, so you pay and find out it’s just some plain boy you’d barely noticed, not any of about five others you hoped it was, and so in discovering this your best friend GG (for whom you bought a white paper rose because as shy as she is you’re not sure she’d get one on her own) laughs and goes, “What, him?” and you laugh, too, because, well, that’s what you do at thirteen, you disdain things, boys, gestures of feeling, though inside you're flattered, and soon you’ll press that rose when it dries and keep it for years, and eventually, not that day but soon, you do smile at its sender and it makes you feel lame doing that but also makes you feel kind of cool too, that someone, anyone, even him, would send a bookish tennis player like you, a girl who rarely gets a good hair day a week, a five-dollar rose, and you’re happy.

In the blink of an eye, though, you’re fifteen, life is very different, you had a summer the year before that transformed you, and you’re insanely in love with someone you can’t have, he’s older, he’s too old, it’s impossible, and Valentine’s Day makes your stomach hurt, though you go to school anyway, it’s a Monday that year, and sit there miserable, you even ask your French teacher if you can put your head down on your desk since you got your work done, and she says OK, and all day you hope none of the boys from school try to buy you a paper rose, or a real one, and you don’t want to see cards, you’re stuck in your misery, and it’s a strange place to be, almost nice despite the pain, and you go home and walk your dog, Charlotte, you bash tennis balls against the side of the house as hard as you can, and you think about the girl this guy is actually with, and you want so much to absolutely hate her, because she has him and you don’t and probably never will, but even though she’s got him and she’s older and hotter than you, hotter than you’ll ever be, because you don’t do hot, you do pretty, a whole different thing, you can’t hate her because she’s so frustratingly nice to you, even though she knows you love him and she’s got him, and she feels a little sorry for you, because you’re not threat, no, none at all, so you call your cousin, even though it’s Valentine’s Day afternoon and she’s getting ready to be out with some A-lister at her college, she’s hotter than you, too, and more popular, your cousin, the coolest human being you will ever know, and you cry to her on the phone, holding back no secrets, and while sometimes she’s mean and taunts you, this time your cousin is sweet and explains there’s no mystery to why you’re unhappy, and the funny tragedy is you can’t even hate the girl the person you love is with, because she’s been kind to you. So it’s Valentine’s Day 1994, Kurt Cobain has a month to live, and you lie alone on your bed in the dark and listen to The Cure and The Smashing Pumpkins through headphones, and you’re anything but happy.

Then in the blink of an elephant’s eye you’re in your twenties and you wake up in a bed in the Hyatt in Chicago, and it’s another Valentine’s Day, and even though the night before you’d had exactly one and only one drink at the longest bar in the city, some say the whole world, your head mildly aches in simulation of the hangover it’s simply not possible for you to have, and you think of the day ahead, a carriage ride and roses, and because you’re such a science nerd, the Field Museum, and the man who took you to Chicago is up earlier than you, he’s always up earlier than you, and he teases you about that, but you go to the window wrapped up in the bed’s top sheet and nothing else, this feels daring, and look out and the city is there, the capital of the Midwest, this horrible and wondrous jumble of buildings and humankind, and for no good reason you lose the present and remember being four and getting the McDonald’s coupon cards you asked for, and you smile and giggle about how simple life once was, and hearing you giggle the man comes over and kisses the top of your head and goes, “What, El?” truly curious to know why you giggled, and because the day promises to be wonderful, and because you’re in a good place in life, and because you love him and know you'll probably marry him, though you worry maybe you love him less than he seems to love you, so complex you still love someone who is physically gone, you’re happy.

Life, however, it just flood-flows by, its full-force cacophony of onrushing sounds like the crash of water or wind, and you’re nearly forty this gray dawn, and the morning begins with an instant’s amnesia, which it always does, and you open your eyes wondering where/who am I, and all those other Valentine’s Days are less substantial than dust, fragile memories, whatever they were in the trembling moment they were real, they’re gone now except insofar as they’re caught in the web of your mind. You lie in bed in the semi-dark, knowing you don’t have much time, children, responsibilities, life as it is in this temporary now, this chapter of your life soon to pass as all the others passed, so many people left behind, and what's going to happen in what's ahead, not only today but from now on? You don’t have much planned, though it’s Valentine’s Day, but that’s all right, you’ve lived through a lot of them and you’re content with what is here and now, you love and feel loved back and you try to see that others in your care are happy as they point toward their own futures, so many yet for them, that’s what life is for, right? You already hear the child-footfalls in the hallway, you know you have just seconds, but you want to center yourself on this instant, this newness, though you feel them tugging you backward in time, other Valentine’s Days. They dance through your thoughts, rising from the memory-web this one day per year. And you ask yourself, are you happy?


« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 12:29:28 PM by ER » Logged

What does not kill me makes me stranger.
indianasmith
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A good bad movie is like popcorn for the soul!


« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2018, 08:59:08 PM »

This is just marvelously written.  Wow.
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