Last night I saw “(500) Days of Summer” with the girls, at a Gender Relations Department-sponsored screening. It’s quite an adorable movie, in all, and it had some very pertinent and truthful insights into modern relationships in young adults (the actors seemed so very young to me, even though I know they are in their mid-to-late 20s, at least). But the character Tom’s declaration of the fallacy of the greeting card industry struck a particular chord with me: holidays seem to be made up, established merely for the sake of having an excuse to show someone you care or, even worse, to spend money. Capitalist consumerism runs into overdrive when we have a calendared excuse or expectation for it.
Hence the hundreds of bi-annual gag-inducing jewelry commercials.
February, in particular, is not really a spectacular month except in the holiday aspect. Think about it: Groundhogs day, Candlemas, Imbolc, the Super Bowl, President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, the ongoing celebrations of Black History Month, and the elusive Leap Day…nearly more holidays than the busiest of months, and yet it’s the shortest month of the year!! Why is this? The earliest Romans (and probably a good number of other cultures) didn’t even consider February a real month until 700 BCE (winter was a period beyond the qualification or defining restrictions of time). It’s a mighty little creäture, that’s for certain. But I can’t help but feel like, for all its eventfulness packed into a neatly 4-week schedule, there’s a lot of Heart either inherently forced or lost in the rush.
It could just be that I’m a bitter single girl; maybe Valentine’s Day would be more attractive if I wasn’t? But the month seems to be dedicated to letting someone know you’re bats about them…leaving those miring in singlehood to a merely brief yet painful 4-week reminder that they’re lacking something seemingly essential: a better half. And it’s easy to get jaded and feel like everyone else’s affections are wasted with money and excess…the sort of impersonal approach to love the boy in “(500) Days of Summer” feared was the status quo.
I still have hope, though; I am embittered, yes, skeptical, definitely, but hopeful…of course. I am young, I can’t possibly be alone forever. I could shoot for the Helen Reddy route and declare myself invincible and not requiring a man in my life (it’s not as fun, though). I can hint to cute boys and pray they catch on (lord, please let one of them catch on…)–but I will not chase them (boys just don’t seem to get the hint these days, do they?). I’ve chased enough, I feel like it’s time to see who’ll reach out for me. I’ll keep my eye out for some nice, interesting, unique guy while trying not to dwell on past failures or current dry-spells of attention from the opposite sex.
In the meantime, I think I’ll knit a sweater to get the lovey-dovey-ness and excesses of the month off my mind. February’s damn cold in this arctic tundra of the Lake-Effect Region of Indiana…without an arm around my shoulder, I have to make myself warm somehow!!
There’s this gorgeous cropped sweater in the Lughnasadh 2007 issue of The AntiCraft! (by far one of my favourite craft blogs on the internet)…what do you think?
