Thoughts While Visiting Cardiff On A Quiet Saturday In February

Opticians are always young women. Where do they go afterwards? Optometry isn’t something you just study in order to go work somewhere for a few years then move onto another career… Do any men do optometry? Maybe it is just me and all I see are young women in this career? I went into a number of stores and passed by a few opticians and I saw no male staff.

John Lewis: More makeup means a woman looks like she has more of a jib… an attitude displayed by the jutting out of the lower lip in a defiant manner though there is nothing to challenge the in their immediate vacinity as they only go certain places, wih certain people so such a gesture is a display of a close minded individual indicating their prejudice to anyone who does not fit into their social caste. In hindsight maybe she was just a very confident shoplifter who made people around her think she was meant to be there unlike someone with a heavy coat and deep, opaque, bag wandering around with ‘eagle eyed action man’ darting glances observing their surroundings.

St Davids II Shopping Centre: Store workers are dressing very casually recently… no it would be more appropriate to say they are dressing stylishly but it is increasingly hard to tell who is or is not employed at the shop. I saw a girl with fake tan, platinum blonde hair and wearing a white dress with smudges of primary colours on it and only realised she worked in the shop when she started to handle stock by the arm full. One day someone walked up to me and asked me to help them as if I were a member of staff when I wasn’t. As much as I wanted to go along with it and lead them into purchasing the least appropriate item my morality stopped me and I informed them to go hence to the nearest optometrist and purchase a pair of corrective eye lens with which to better conduct themselves. Also to perform an act of masochistic onanism upon themselves post haste. I find shops are too casual nowadays.

Card Shop: I saw a card with a very funny phrase. I noted it down on my phone and will use it in due course. I suppose I could do that with any card that had a good idea. Especially those Hipster lookin gones where the image is a very basic doodle of a joke. Its all just a question of morality as I doubt the staff will walk up to you and ask what you are doing just assuming you are texting someone and it is none of their business.

Park Plaza: Privileged women enter the reception taking one of the few footstools for themselves across the room next to one of the open fires. The youngest looking one, face reddened by makeup and skin cleansers removing the top layer of dead skin fro her face, looks blankly ahead in doing this act. Hair crisply styled, grey hoodie, leather gilet and jeggings. All very expensive items no doubt but also very generic looking. Tall. Very, very, thin. Model, sickly, physique unfit to bear children without medical intervention. The caesarean scar no doubt would be a badge of honour for their motherhood being too posh to push’ unlike the common folk they view as cattle, worthy only being beasts of burden, to ensure their ongoing lives of luxuriating being sustainable. Her companions who did less look older due to makeup and what looked like dyed blond hair contrasted against black shawls hiding their physiques apart from tree trunk legs held in by calf high boots.

They read self-help books. They look the sort. On audiobook of course while they work out at the gym, if not running down the narrow country road holding up traffic, to ensure as many people as possible see them leading a ‘morally responsible’ healthy life as endorsed by social doctrine. It is the only tie sweat is allowed even if it means purchasing non-running makeup to wear especially for this act.

‘Own the space you inhabit’ – self-help books often state such a mantra but in practise it is an endorsement of acting in a sociopathic manner. It is a vicious circle in which the advice tells you to act like those who do not consider you and in turn you become such a person to someone else who themselves goes seeking advice only to be told to do the same and thus the ouroboros of societal behaviour perpetuates itself leading to a loss of humanity for the sake of perceiving one’s self as ‘alive’ according to the perceptions of others.

It’s a vicious circle. The polite etiquette the British are known for is gradually being eroded away and will be lost one day. Every generation fears this believing it will happen within their life time but although it is put aside as a foolish notion it is happening much in the way that even with beaches the coast is gradually eroding away gradually no matter how slowly it is perceived to be doing so. It can be padded and defended with certain concrete defensives but one day it will be irrevocably lost. What Henry James’ generation feared in ‘Daisy Miller’, where we adopt the brashness of American societies ever revolving need for conquest and self-empowerment, will finally come to pass.

In thinking that I am being unfair with this notion I dismiss it and go to the toilet.

There are three urinals against the wall. A man in the standard uniform of t-shirt and blue jeans of the casual relaxed yet casual smart man stands at the central urinal with his legs wide apart. ‘Own the space you inhabit’. He is breaching the understood social convention to use the furthest urinal and leave at least one urinal empty between users. In the scenario he should have taken the furthest and I the one furthest from him. But no instead he had all three to himself.

I go into the lone cubicle and do not hear the taps nor the hand drier, the latter being directly outside the cubicle, being operated so I have to assume he also left without cleaning his hands. Obviously he intends , like a feral dog, to smear his scent all over the place to mark his territory I suppose. The hand drier has that slow uncomfortable heat like the breathe of an old age pensioner invading your personal space speaking to you or hugging you in a deathlike grasp betraying their age.

Outside Walking from Queens Street towards the New Theatre: Along a wrought iron fence walks an old woman. Face like crumpled leather. Hair dyed gregarious ginger. Spindle legs hang out of a very heavy fur coat giving the impression she is in fact wearing a modifiyed gorilla costume. Danging out of the arms are her hands clad in red leather gloves and a cigarette hangs lazily from her right hand the smoke and ash drifting onto everyone behind her wake.

Two compatriots walk with her. They are of similar age in luminously sun-bleached yellow and pink padded coats respectively. They walk three abreast spaced just enough to give the impression you could wak past them but in approaching realising you do not in fact have enough space to do so. By which point the still warm ash has drifted onto any exposed skin burning you.

I thought I saw my English teacher from my first year of Secondary School. If so she hadn’t aged so it couldn’t be her. She always looked like the stereotype of what you would expect a young female literary student to look like. She had a doctorate when she taught me. Why would someone with a doctorate teach in a Comprehensive School? I didnt know then and I don’t know now.

Apparently there are only 500 ‘real’ people in the world and everyone else is just a bit player. However there are multiple coexisting dramatis personae consisting of 500 people all overlapping so it is not the cause of an existentialist crisis for anyone.

---

A few days away.

Nothing to say.

Here is a rambling number of notes.

I read too many things but Charles Bukowski and Daniil Kharms.

More to follow. What it is cannot be said… because I do not know.

Valentine’s Day: Who is The Man, The Myth, The Dilution of Traditions?

Who is Saint Valentine?

Saint Valentine (Latin – Valentinius) is a widely recognized third-century Roman saint commemorated on February 14 and associated since the High Middle Ages with the tradition of courtly love. But of course nowadays the celebration of his feast day is overshadowed by petty commercialism and the suggestion for men to take this opportunity in hoping women are mindlessly adherent to social conventions and displays of contrived romance. Upon reception of a card and gift, be it chocolates or flowers, he will have the rare opportunity to pursue ‘avenues less explored’ in an intimate relationship *cough*youknowwhatImean*cough*. If I am honest I am surprised Durex has not had a big campaign this year like they have recently. Perhaps due to the release of the ’50 Shades of Grey’ film they felt it was redundant to do so. Certainly BBC Breakfast this week seemed a little too interested in the film and speaking of it as if it were a social phenomenon rather than just a rather popular, if universally acknowledged as weakly written, bit of saucy literature in the tradition of works like ‘Moll Flanders’, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and many other scandalously erotic (to their contemporary audience) classics of English literature.

So here we will just breakdown who the saint is in a sort of quasi-bullet point info dump for easy reading and comprehension.

Name: Saint Valentine
Rank: Bishop and Martyr
Born: unknown
Died: Traditionally ca. 269
Venerated in: Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Western-Rite Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, Lutheranism, and individual protestant churches including Baptist
Feast: February 14 (Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran Churches) or July 30 (Eastern Orthodox Church)
Attributes: birds; roses; bishop with a crippled or a child with epilepsy at his feet; bishop with a rooster nearby; bishop refusing to adore an idol; bishop being beheaded; priest bearing a sword; priest holding a sun; priest giving sight to a blind girl.
Patronage: affianced couples, against fainting, bee keepers, happy marriages, love, plague, epilepsy.

So those attributes are quite interesting… you don’t hear mention of most of those if you asked someone what they associate with him in secular coverage. Certainly he has epilepsy as one of his ongoing concerns it seems. Birds seem to be one of his iconographic symbols although I tend to associate them far more with St Francis of Assisi though you could easily say birds as symbols of communing with the divine is a universal image.

All that is reliably known of Saint Valentine commemorated on February 14 is his name and that he was martyred and buried at a cemetery on the Via Flaminia close to the Milvian bridge to the north of Rome on that day. It is uncertain whether St. Valentine is to be identified as one saint or the conflation of two saints of the same name. Several different martyrologies have been added to later hagiographies that are unreliable.

…So we don’t know very much and what we did know is more based on the mythology which has evolved than the man himself. If anything he is even more fictionalised then than Saint Nicholas as Father Christmas…

Because so little is known of him, in 1969 the Roman Catholic Church removed his name from the General Roman Calendar, leaving his liturgical celebration to local calendars. The Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize him as a saint, listing him as such in the February 14 entry in the Roman Martyrology, and authorizing liturgical veneration of him on February 14 in any place where that day is not devoted to some other obligatory celebration in accordance with the rule that on such a day the Mass may be that of any saint listed in the Martyrology for that day. Use of the pre-1970 liturgical calendar is also authorized under the conditions indicated in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007. Saint Valentine’s Church in Rome, built in 1960 for the needs of the Olympic Village, continues as a modern, well-visited parish church.

…’we have nothing better to put on that day so why not give it to Saint Valentine?’ seems to have been the logic applied then…

Saint Valentine’s Day, the Feast of Saint Valentine, is an official feast day in the Anglican Communion, as well as in the Lutheran Church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saint Valentine the Presbyter of Rome is celebrated on July 6 and Hieromartyr Valentine (Bishop of Interamna, Terni in Italy) is celebrated on July 30. Notwithstanding, because of the relative obscurity of these two saints in the East, members of the Greek Orthodox Church named Valentinos (male) or Valentina (female) may observe their name day on the Western ecclesiastical calendar date of February 14.

The name “Valentine”, derived from valens (worthy, strong, powerful), was popular in Late Antiquity. About eleven other saints having the name Valentine are commemorated in the Roman Catholic Church. Some Eastern Churches of the Western rite may provide still other different lists of Saint Valentines. The Roman martyrology lists only seven who died on days other than February 14: a priest from Viterbo (November 3); a bishop from Raetia who died in about 450 (January 7); a fifth-century priest and hermit (July 4); a Spanish hermit who died in about 715 (October 25); Valentine Berrio Ochoa, martyred in 1861 (November 24); and Valentine Jaunzarás Gómez, martyred in 1936 (September 18). It also lists a virgin, Saint Valentina, who was martyred in 308 (July 25) in Caesarea, Palestine.

…Lots and lots of Valentine’s exist! Take your pick and if you are named Valentine, in the masculine or feminine form, then it’s a good excuse to have a party. I don’t mind that as much as the ‘day of obligatory romantic gesturing’ that it has become to many now in secular society as ‘just a bit of fun’ or blatant excuse for an argument.

So what is St Valentine’s Day then?

English 18th-century antiquarians Alban Butler and Francis Douce, noting the obscurity of Saint Valentine’s identity, suggested that Valentine’s Day was created as an attempt to supersede the pagan holiday of Lupercalia (mid-February in Rome) although many more recent researcher have dismissed this idea. Many of the current legends that characterize Saint Valentine were invented in the fourteenth century in England, notably by Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle, when the feast day of February 14 first became associated with romantic love.

Professor Jack B. Oruch charges that the traditions associated with “Valentine’s Day”, documented in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules and set in the fictional context of an old tradition, did not exist before Chaucer. He argues that the speculative explanation of sentimental customs, posing as historical fact, had their origins among 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler’s Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. In the French 14th-century manuscript illumination from a Vies des Saints, Saint Valentine, bishop of Terni, oversees the construction of his basilica at Terni; there is no suggestion here that the bishop was a patron of lovers.

The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as “valentines”).

In Europe, Saint Valentine’s Keys are given to lovers “as a romantic symbol and an invitation to unlock the giver’s heart”, as well as to children, in order to ward off Saint Valentine’s Malady (fainting, epilepsy and other seizure disorders). The charm usually takes the form of a metal key and is commonly used in the province of Padua, Italy.  It was once common in southern Germany, eastern Switzerland, Austria, and northern Italy to appeal to him to heal fainting, epilepsy and seizure disorders, thus they became known for this reason as Saint Valentine’s affliction.

In a ceremony at the Oratorio di San Giorgio, a small chapel in Monselice, Padua, on Saint Valentine’s Day each year, small golden keys are given to children to ward off epilepsy Valentine’s Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards. During the Middle Ages it was believed that birds paired couples in mid-February. This was then associated with the romance of Valentine. Although all these legends may differ in ways, Valentine’s day is widely recognized as a day for romance and devotion.

---

That’s not a comprehensive breakdown of who Saint Vantine was nor what Valentine’s Day is but hopefully it’s a bit more than we knew before today

I guess it’s a good enough excuse, if one be needed, to make romantic displays. However doing it on an assigned day makes the gesture, to my mind, hollow. Acts of true love, if such a thing could be defined, are small and personal not grandiose. I hope you enjoy the day if you celebrate it and if you are alone bear in mind, just as with Christmas, you shouldn’t let the saturation of the media beguile you into believing the image you are presented with is the norm. It is an ideal they use to compel you to be a compliant consumerist.

Shakespearean styled modern Essex banter would be an interesting thing to arise as a modern tradition. It would be a fun way for someone to write something funny, yet poetic, without the odd attitude which gets ingrained in people during school lessons where teachers cover very little, if any, poetry. I find that a sad matter and it is a vicious circle as each generation of teahcers influences the next generation until poetry is an alien concept along with things like philosophy. They are ‘soft subjects’ and ironically a more sciencetifically orientated education, in both the sciences but by creating ‘criteria’ to be achieved in the arts subjects has people more logical and by that extent more ‘cut-throat’ because people can objectify how muc or little harming others is detrimental to oneself. You get the achievement of high grades but it holds no value to you and is discarded as soon ad it is deemed non-essential. It is a vicious circle society wide devaluing having higher, non-personally orientated, goals. It gives rise to faux sycophants and a mercenary attitude in interactions. We are a generation of Othello’s Iago if you will…

Back to the point, they used to have a regular sketch involving ‘the only way is Shakespeare’ on ‘Live At The Electric’ on BBC3 but unfortunately what few videos there were seem to have gone now. I wish there was more use of this idea as it is quite funny to hear the modernised equivalents of Shakespeare’s use of language