If there is one thing the Owl has learned in writing this page for the last year, it is to never ever look at the origins of feast days. All these saints had some seriously bad times before becoming holidays to eat chocolate and give roses. St. Valentine, according to various very.reliable.internet. sources (just like the Owl) tried to get some Romans to give up paganism (which honestly seemed like a pretty time–don’t strike me with lightning) and even cured an emperor’s daughter of blindness, but then was executed for being Christian. So how that turned into conversation hearts and blow pops, I just don’t know.

Here in Weston, the day is celebrated by shoveling out your neighbor’s walkway, letting someone pass in front of you at the Intersection of Doom (I know this is hard, Weston), and reading ee cummings who is, let’s just say it, the best poet of all time though very much opposed to punctuation which is a lifelong dream of mine.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Weston! Be kind to yourself, be kind to your neighbor, and share the love.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

–ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)