Funny Valentine

I have a glass of wine.
I like wine.
Wine used to be such a common and beautiful thing.
Now it's beer. Well...ok, maybe that's overkill. Wine is still beautiful and yatty yatty yatty, but it's not as 'high class' as it used to be. Now, for more consumption, you can buy it bulk...in a box...and still have money left over for pizza or a bag of Cheez-Its. WOOOOW. High Class.
I feel refined when I have wine. Even now, sitting in my sweatpants, slippers and hair tosseled up into something that resembles a bun, I feel distinguished and intelligent. 'You know, my lovely Perstephanie, I believe that the French Renaissance, too, had been a comparatively unreasonable phenomenon. The Italians had led the French in all spheres of the arts, letters, manners, and humanism.' 'Yes but, Frederick daaarling, although Catherine de Médicis had been the consort of one and the mother of three other Valois kings—exerting a powerful influence on French art and cooking—the Italian presence in Paris had not had the civilizing impact that a mother might have hoped for...'
I don't ever want to be that refined. But still...

I had wine yesterday as well. For a celebration. Valentine's day. The day of 'love'. Yesterday, on Valentines Day, a friend stated "Why do we celebrate the profitable industry of cards instead of the historic St. Valentines Day Massacre?' ... I did not respond. Though, after some 'serious' thinking, I decided...'Why do we celebrate the silly little things with silly little acts, but yet, we have lost so much of the true richness of the simple things in life that have been replaced with following the 'norms' of society? In the past, our ancestors...wait, too far back...our families, did such wonderful things, that have now since been lost. My dear friend Rachel made a very good point tonight during a, quite random, discussion that: as generations and cultures change, some things will be lost. This is true. Though, it very much makes my heart sad.

Classic.

I feel that tradition can be 'popped up' into our culture now and still be absolutely beautiful.



Script.
Cursive handwriting. This beautiful art, I feel is almost extinct, if not already.
It is not taught it schools and is not cherished enough as an art form. I try to write in cursive, just because it's more efficient to write notes...but it is a sloppy mixture of printscriptcrap.

Paper.
Not but two days ago the question was raised 'how long before education systems everywhere move to 100% technology oriented and paper will no longer be in use'.
Personally, I don't feel it will ever happen, but, there are a large handful of people who do think that this is not but a hop, skip, and a jump away from being true.

Singing.
I sang a lot yesterday.
Which, for myself, a few years ago was not uncommon to be done in public. I have made the conscious realization that I do not sing outloud by myself anymore-which shocks the beautiful people that I grew up around, but...it's just a change that I did not realize had seriously happened until yesterday. I feel, it was all the love in the air that made me burst into song.

...It felt good.
It felt really good.
I'm still very self conscious of singing in public.
I used to do it all the time.
I used to feel no shame about it.
I used to be involved and had purpose to sing often.
It used to be a well known fact that I did sing frequently, and well.
But...something clicked one day and I all of a sudden took a step back and thought 'i just don't want to...'
So...I didn't. As strange and bizarre as it was to me...I just kind of-well-stopped.
It wasn't until yesterday that I realized how drowned I almost felt.
This is silly...and I know this...but it's true.

The point: once upon a time, as an act of love and purpose, men and women used to sing outloud in public all of the time. It was not uncommon for a simple walk with a 'beau' to end with a serenade, or a community picnic to have chime in's of hymns or songs of the season.

Little traditions are being lost and it breaks my heart.
I realize that things change, motion happens, and it's usually-supposedly-for the better of everyone, even that thing we call 'society'.
Though this is true and I acknowledge it...I still don't like it.
Moving on, things are lost-it happens.
Moving on, the things that we loose...we don't really realize how much they affect our lives until they are lost.
My hope is that the things that important to us now, once we move on, we don't forget them. We don't forget how meaningful they are to us. My hope is that the important things that are in our lives will continue to be used and accessed as often and frequently as we permit them to be.

'The best way to spread good cheer, is singing loud for all to hear'.
sorry. it is fitting.