Is love real or a neccessity? Is there really such a thing as magic? Come on Valentine’s Day photo journey

We all know love is in the air on Valentine’s Day. But what IS actually in the air? Today, we will not only research it, we bring you photographic evidence that is is real. And open up the possiblity that answers for our problems today lie in our souls, not just our brains.
I discussed this subject with a woman who was suffering from mental illness on the magical day.
“Valentine’s Day has magic. You can see and feel the power of love right here, if you can get out of your own head, she told me.
The world she looked out on was a landscape of injury and illness, Yet people working to help and the victims themselves had a jolly and shared silly about them that had not been there the day before. We had witnessed Friday the 13th together, and just one day before, agony and gloom had her cold fingers on everyone.
The gal I conversed with has a great, if tortured, intellect and what she calls “spiritual gifts.”
She says she sees too much, she feels too much, and her mind has been injured by others and the traumas of this world.
We talked about how many times I have hit my head on door jams and ceiling fans in my life, a frequent topic of conversation for me, lol.
The same thing happens to her on a regular basis.
“My soul is too big for my body, and it keeps hitting its head too,” she said, with a laugh.
People who think differently are the only solution to the mess the world is in today.
Blessings on her and all those seeing clearly through the glass of reality. Unfortunately, the system is designed by straight, angry, judgmental thinkers, from a background of self-righteous Euro-American manifest destiny colonizers. I wish i could help, but I honestly don’t know what practical things can be done.
She believes that the magic in Halloween (her favorite and among mine), July 4, Christmas and Thanksgiving were undeniable and real, but the whole notion is ridiculed, and there is no way to even study what we were conversing.
But what about today, a rainy Saturday, February 15? How do we find magic and strength?
How do we bring magic when we get derided for “magicl thinking” when we try?
And its not as if the “real world” makes any sense now.
Everything we do now is actually magical thinking; just look at politics and the hateful propaganda of the culture wars that millions accept as fact. Magic is far more real than what most of us believe. Its more real than our money, more real than the line drawn between the United States and Canada. Its much more real than the idiotic concept we dedicate our work to, that the market has an “invisible hand” that sanctifies the horrific behavior of corporations.
The “real” St. Valentine existed and lived roughly 1800 years ago. There are no records of him, no proof of his flesh and blood existence. But the magical stuff about him making us all love each other longer and deeper oneday of the year, that’s reality. . One scholar believes he has confirmed that St. Valentine was indeed a priest who performed Christian weddings outlawed by the Roman Empire and was executed for it. Father Valentine died for love. (Later, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and pagan weddings became illegal)
Valentine’s Day has been the holiday of love, romance, lust, and sex since the 14th century, likely longer than that. Cupid, the Roman God of love, lust, and romance first appeared in artworks at that time.
In 380 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and Roman gods like Cupid were outlawed.
In AD 496 Pope Gelasius I established Feb 14 as a holiday (then called feast day) to honor the martyred Saint Valentine. Cupid and Father Valentine were destined to share the holiday for the next 1530 years. The god and the priest were together blamed for the sexual hijinks that took place on what was supposed to be a religious pilgrimage in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry in the 1380
This is very funny to a nerd like me. Here was St. Valentine, executed for defying Roman gods like Cupid. Later, the Roman gods became illegal in the Roman Empire. Cupid was the eternally teenaged son of the goddess Venus and an unidentified mortal man she rendezvoused with.

But love is more powerful than priests or empires. The mostly naked and naughty Cupid and the martyred Catholic saint together have created a lot of bouncing beds over the millennium. Greeting cards portraying Cupid and his love arrows became popular about the time a young surveyor named George Washington was surveying the Wild West (which was then Kentucky and Tennessee). Grumpy old Congress has always refused to make it a national holiday.
If they aren’t getting any love from anybody, just all their money, we aren’t getting a holiday where we can all make love!
Despite the best efforts of the deniers of Cupid and Father Valentine, we believe the invisible arrows of love do fly. We know it. We felt them!
Earlier on Saturday, Feb. 14, Linda and I had experienced the magic of Valentine’s Day. We argued at first but when we went out together, the love rolled over us. Of course, the happy dogs always help We went to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. There a couple who literally frolicked. Next year, Feb 14, 2027, they will get married there. The love arrows bounced off them and onto us. Plus, Caesar gave them some kisses.
Come with us on a photo story!