Countdown
And who decided that a saint cannot represent love? And express it in his own way, of course?
He opens flower shops, luxury restaurants, balloons and bouquets of every kind. He buys carnations and roses, bottles of expensive wine, mostly frothy and fragrant, carries little packages of chocolates, small boxes of expensive perfumes, cards with little hearts, and whatever else a well-trained lover can imagine who also wants to impress his or hers, object of desire .
In the past, when this craze first began, everything was far more tumultuous. But while generations grow and get bored or indifferent, new enthusiasts continue to emerge. Despite the new ways, the cost of living, the pandemic that kept us apart and the relentless digital age that has scattered everything into pixels and whatever else AI might invent, the truth remains: love is not merely these outward displays, but something mysterious and otherworldly, something humanity has struggled to comprehend for millennia and still cannot fully grasp.
The whole show will collapse when at midnight tonight the date changes from the 14th to the 15th. Finished.
Let me confess something. I have two sons born in February. At the time I was a fanatical anti-saint of love. I feared… that they might be born on 14 February. I even warned the gynaecologist: “Stay away from 14 February!”
Without doing anything magical, not sure about the universe, the first was born on the 15th and the second on the 12th. I must admit, it was a relief. I could not imagine a worse anniversary coincidence.
But this matter needs serious attention. I truly do not know what today’s sufferers are celebrating. As Plato and the other wise of the world argue, love is nothing but a manic illness that, as it arrives suddenly, disappears in the same way, leaving ordinary mortals shivering with pain and grief.
Great poets tried to tame it by writing incredible lines, which of course do not concern all lovesick. Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseas Elytis writes conclusively in Monogram in 1971:
VII.
In Paradise I’ve spotted an island
indistinguishable from you and a house by the sea
with a large bed and a small door;
I’ve cast an echo in it’s groundwork
to look at myself every morning I rise,
half to see you crossing the waters
and half to weep over you in Paradise…