Happy Valentine's Day

Trying not to be bitter today. And not for the usual "Valentine's Day sucks" reasons. An old friend stated that hate is love restrained. So what are we, society, doing insisting on restraining love that isn't even ours?

Tradition states* that today, almost two thousand years ago, a man died who, among other things, committed the crime of performing marriages for a group of people who were reviled and forbidden to practice their faith. (and thereby, get married).

Heaven forbid anyone marry the person they love, no matter what society at large has to say about it. At various times of my life, I've felt required to keep the people I love apart, because of fear and the specter of shame. (I'm not ashamed, dammit. I don't want to act like it.)

So here's a prayer for anyone who's in love with a person--or persons--that someone else thinks they shouldn't love.*** For gays, polyamorists, people of disparate races and religions and political creeds and anything else I haven't thought of.

Thank you for love
for the joy it brings
and the sharing
and caring.

The glee and excitement
that turns dried flowers
into nectar-spilling roses.

Let me share my nectar with all the world.
Let the whole world benefit
From the relationships I create
For are not two more powerful than one?
(And three and four? An infinite net to catch me and my children when I fall.)

Let there be no orphans
Or widowed hearts
Damned to isolation
Because of fear.

Let us proclaim our love to the world.



*No matter how tradition may have been revised.**
** Also, happy Saint Cyril and Methodius Day! Yay Cyrillic writing system! Knowing how humble saints are supposed to be, I'm sure Methodius doesn't feel shafted for the writing system not being called Cyrillmethodic.
***Excepting the pedophiliacs. Sucks to be them. As long as we're praying, we can all pray they manage to be self-aware and in control.

Walruses!

My parents and I went to the Point Defiance Zoo today. I haven't been there since I was a kid, so <3 <3
There were tigers and peacocks and elephants and sharks, but the coolest thing was by far the walruses. I've never seen them in real life. THEY'RE HUGE. I've seen elephant seals (granted, not as closely as the walruses) and I think ET the Walrus is bigger than those.
It's extra impressive when you've got 4,029 pounds of blubber jiggling just inches from your face behind a plexiglass wall. He was rubbing up against it, when he wasn't going after the smaller female in the tank. He's horny right now, but sadly, she isn't. They beat each other up, but, I think, affectionately. When two incredibly large sacks of blubber slam against each other, there's more jiggling than Homer Simpson's belly being hit with a cannonball.

The third walrus is a huge, blind female. She just swam back and forth, sucking in air down her pink gullet and sounding asthmatic. You know what's creepy? A giant brown sack of blubber rising from the deep with pure white, cataract-sealed eyes, opening her surprisingly small mouth to go sluuurrrrp right at you.

(And no, there was no autofellatio.)