"I begin to sing of ivy-crowned Dionysus"

So. Methinks that February is a strange month for me. Also, looking back over past feb-posts, I seem more fond of using metaphors than during any other month. When I think of it, there are several reasons February very well ought to be an odd month for me.

Firstably, I quite often get sick for a week or so in February. So far I have avoided that this year, but we'll see. Getting sick in February is a tradition going way back to at least third grade. I don't know if this physical sickness has anything relationship to the mental state I seem to be in come February, but it might.

That feeling right after you are sick, right after spending so much time away from the world, right after worrying about nothing but getting through or stopping the pain... It's a moment of reinvention of world and self. It's an exciting feeling, of being new and fresh and yet weak and tired. Also very vulnerable.

Now pile onto that the significance February holds for me. Despite the promise of almost inevitable sickness I always look forward to February. I love February. I couldn't tell you exactly why. I think it's for reasons most people might associate with January, the feeling of a new year, but I usually feel I hate Januarys for being too cold and too busy so February becomes my January. Also, as many of you may know, I love Valentine's Day.

I loved it when I was kid, the solid promise of chocolate and puppy love and presents from my parents. (On the year I was actually sick on Valentine's Day I was devastated, but my Dad got me a Magic 8 Ball and that was awesome.) My first few years of high school I was desperate for a boyfriend, but it never occurred to me to think less of Valentine's Day or be emo or anything but utterly happy on that day. Sure, I wished I could get chocolate and roses and kisses and stuff, but I also had a feeling of content that such traditions existed and a hope that some day I too would have my Valentine's Day in the romantic sun. I am a big fan of Love, though I've had my problems with it.

Then Valentine's Day became linked with Shannon, and ever since it has been special for that reason.

In fact I have found through the years that I actually dislike Valentine's Days that become too linked with romantic love. I feel that they should be about every type of Love, everything from familial, to friendshiply, to crushy, to unrequited, to lost. Just the existence of it.

I also see February in general, and Valentine's Day especially, as a Dionysian month. A month to celebrate the passion and chaos within.

So all in all it's a busy month for me. I like to observe this month and this holiday by remembering who is important to me, and reevaluating my relationship to them. If there is room for change this is the time to begin with it. I need to renew in my heart the sense that Love is important, that people are important to me, and re-decide how best to positively effect the world and others. I impose my own sort of holiday season that lasts all long. Needless to say this is a very emotional and serious month to me.

And, in the end, since February is a month of memory, a month of asking the big questions "Where was I last year? Who was I? Who am I now? What needs to change?" it also becomes a sweet-bitter month. A feeling of homesickness at home, as it were. A time of remembering both the good and the bad of what Love has brought to my life and celebrating both.

I above all do not see Valentine's Day as a trivial holiday to be spent looking through rose-coloured glasses and eating bon-bons. Nor will I ever allow it to be ruined by the commercial mess Americans of course try to make of it. I think that commercialism comes in and tries to profit off of everything that is truly good. Also Christianity does, but that is a more touchy subject. However, I think that just because America has turned October, December, February, and Hippies into commercial shells of what they once were does not mean that those of us blessed with Critical Minds should step aside and confuse what those have become without putting a good fight in for what they originally stood for and what they really mean. America sales Che t-shirts for Jove's sake. They successfully make once great people, once great traditions, once great ideas, and eventually once great holidays into shoddy baubles. They successfully charm the masses with these baubles and cheapen these great things beyond recognition for those who think critically. In the end we let them kill the idea, some of us by accepting deformed rubbish and some of us by mistaking the deformed rubbish as all that is left of those once great things. I say this every year.

I am a complex person. I am not persuaded that Love is only a good thing or that it should be. I think the world is made up of both/ands instead of either/ors. And I am going to use this time to celebrate that. To celebrate the danger/chaos of love as well as the joy/blessings. That is what I feel Dionysus was about and that is what I feel February is about for me.

Thank you for your time.