Valentine's Day

It's that day again. And it's about to end in roughly half an hour.

Having never actually experienced a Valentine's Day - let alone any particularly known holiday - in the in the sweet, passionate embrace of a significant other, I simply cannot fully comprehend the experience that shiny series of moments a couple goes through. As a writer, this is terrible. What if I want to write a vignette about Valentine's Day? I will be incapable of writing it!

Wait, Nick. Didn't you write about a nomadic tribe trekking across the wintry alps of some unnamed country, then across a rickety 50m bridge connecting land-mass to land-mass, then entering a fortress on an island-glacier? In high school? That didn't make the cut for the student literary magazine Ka Wai Ola. Even after going back to the drawing board, revising and maturing my writer's voice as a nascent American writer, even after finally knowing a friend in that prestigious, elite committee, even after all these years of being denied the mere acceptance of someone who gave extraordinary effort time and time again, year after year, I was denied. And that got me thinking upon that realization - a writer must wrestle a Bengal tiger to write about wrestling a Bengal tiger. Writing about a nomadic tribe trekking across the wintry alps of some unnamed country, then across a rickety 50m bridge connecting land-mass to land-mass, then entering a fortress on an island-glacier requires that I join a nomadic tribe trekking... well, you get the picture.

But did I not write the story, nonetheless? Imagination prevailed. Abstraction and metaphysics WORKED (see the Metaphysics in New Jersey in Different Hours by Stephen Dunn). Anyway, Valentine's Day. It has been a while since experiencing my first and only intimate relationship. Wait, was it a relationship? Was it intimate? Mid-term memory is breaking down too. From what I salvage, yes and yes, for better or for worse. The story - I'll try to condense this - was just basically I was ready for a relationship (almost too ready) and she wasn't, which brings up another tangential thread; in our marketing module for one of our business core classes - it's 301 - our professor actually recognized a paradigm of the human race: we do not act our age. Whether we live in a materialistic society where we define ourselves - as well as our age - by materials, the minimalistic cultures define themselves by their creations, believing themselves to be mature relative to their dogma or rather, beliefs. It's like me as a writer. I don't act my age. I wax poetic, dropping phrases like social politics, post-modernist, and transcending. One moment I'm 52. Another I'm 17. And then I'm 33.

There is something narcissistic about my blog. Talking and talking about myself. Isn't that what blogs are for? I'm actually trying to stop the first person talk or else I'll sound like my family.

But ANYWAY, if I could offer any advice for couples and or nascent partners of a relationship by just using my imagination, here's a small list:

- hopefully you'll have no harmful expectations towards each other
- have mutual goals
- laugh a lot
- challenge each other (OK. OK. Got that one from Good Will Hunting)
- be committed; Marc Maron say if you're depressed or in the %#&@, then your lack of commitment is the issue
- relax, enjoy, experience; the information age often deprives complete intake of the whole experience. But relax, don't let the future bother you when in good times; let it be
- don't take your relationship too seriously in terms of introspection; well, I know marriage opens that casket. Isn't marriage a little passe these days?

Happy Valentine's Day, all you nice couples out there. OWN it, savor it, live it, live it in the present

National Gumdrop Day is tomorrow, on February 15. Just thought at least one person might be interested.