valentine special

Saint Valentine can take up shop somewhere else….let’s say to the streets, under the tunnel and highway, where the homeless, already miserable enough with socially distant tents, now face the coldest week of the year. Saw two of them fighting for a better spot at a street corner where the light was longer and cars were waiting to make a left turn for the highway. Scarcity.

What’s love gotta do with this??? In a hurry a seminarian passed by his fellow man in need, to take the test, whose topic was “What does it mean to be a good Samaritan”.

Life presents us with few choices, and even so, we still screw up.

He who is faithful will be given more. Hence, the cream rises to the top, and money begets more money.

Back when the country was discovered (1600), the early Dutch settlers received land grants along the Hudson river, now worth millions and billions.

The USA pyramid scheme: later comers get a smaller flag (“and the flag is still there”), early ones got a big one.

That’s how it goes, every country on Earth, as it seems, sharing a shrinking pie (population explosion and rising expectations).

Now China is joining the top rung, circling Mars after checking out the other side of the Moon.

Japanese Olympic organizers kept resigning (if not for covid, then it’s something else).

Life goes on at Super Bowl, or Supermarkets (Valentine’s chocolates), at Chinese New Year days or Presidents’ Day.

We are in love, with our screens (that we devote the majority of our time to). Time is finite. So is attention.

Yet we trade those precious commodities for ads of things we don’t even need or want.

May algorithms rule, with more power and precision. We slowly give in and give up ourselves, at the altar, of the gods of data.

Pretty soon, we won’t even know what it’s like to have free time, to have a thousand-yard stare, to sit on the rock and to have a conversation (let’s say, with those who crawl out of a different rabbit hole).

Once, we mingle, let’s say after an event, around the punch bowl and the cookie tray, pointing to our name tag and introduce ourselves. Those days now seem so far away, if ever, make a come back. In place of The real is the replacement, off- online.

Pressing the flesh will soon be a lost art; the price of the pandemic and politics of division. Sad time, even on Valentine. Sadder still, when our tech mate gets more attention than our real mate.