Some Days You Don't Want To

The Hill showing potential IMC

There are days when you don't want to go out cycling. You know you love it; you know that just three consecutive days more of 36km rides will ease up 2 milimetres on the belt. But some days, you just don't want to. When the clouds have frosted the sunlight, and the coast sweeps in a nippy breeze, all of creation says it's time for hot coffee and lazing on the patio bench.

Front Row Seats To The James Taylor Show

After you have perused the skyscape and concluded that you can risk the weather at the behest of that Freddy Mercury's I Want To Ride It When I Like!! looping incessantly in your left ear, you trudge back into the hall to seek out your bicycle only to be subdued by James Taylor's Her Town Too coming warmly over the Rogers telling you to give it up for a lengthy listening session. Yea, some days you don't want to...but you know that you must.

Which brings me to this dreadful turn in the second month every annum. Saint Valentine's Day and its attendant Anti-Valentines Day. Sigh....only in Malaysia.....

If the old martyr knew the asinine clamourings in this country with trite religious, political and non-governmental entities plus some individuals too, exhorting Moslems in particular and Malaysians in general to not celebrate St Valentine's Day, surely he would spin in his grave. I am more riled than the saint...for these exhortations were posted on my facebook for bloody 'ell's sake. Yeah, fine that you warn your flock to stay apart from the rest of us goats, but must you justify it by saying Saint valentine's Day is about immorality? In your loss of control over your own, why sully someone else's day of rememberance and reverance? Keep up this line of logic and we really have more reason and occasion not to meet than to meet and be Malaysian.

First of all, this is Saint Valentine's Day. Amidst the obscurity, it is still Catholic in origin, with its universal values being adopted by all, regardless of creed. On that token, allow me to appeal that you render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God, what is God's. Live, and let live.

In essence, Saint Valentine was a priest who performed the rites of marriage and administered the sacrament of matrimony in secret for those who sought to marry against the decree of a tyrannical emperor, to his own peril. Reflecting on society's failed marriages, divorce rates and the overall breakdown of the nuclear family, in commemorating his selflessness to those who were in love, we may be well served when reminded to go the distance for those whom we say we love even and especially when it hurts us.

The proponents of the Anti-Valentines Day message have not understood the spirit of Saint Valentine's Day any better than they fathomed Seksualiti Merdeka and I have scant trust that this vitriol has its source in semantics. If such were the viral strain of thought that enflames the nation, surely celebrating Halloween and prom night too should be likewise castigated, but nothing has been said about those, right? Phew!! Speak of choking out the gnat but swallowing the camel!!

This divisivity can only be borne in the comfort of never having to trust another human being regardless of race or religion. When your face is in the bush and your arse is covered by your mates who are both your race and not, and the enemy who will shoot you dead is also from your race and not, the epidermial imperative is completely lost.

When men, of your creed and not, trust you to pluck them out of God-forsaken spots in the jungle in your vessel, chased ever lower into the earth by weather that would swallow you up in a flash, you learn that all life, all men and women are sacred. When you take risks to evacuate a woman in the throes of labour from her indigenous village far from any trail and medical assistance, or the wheelchair bound man who has to be carried across the river before he can be placed in your stretcher, the question as to which God he or she believes in doesn't even occur. You are then doing his God's work, answering his prayers to The One and The Same.

You cannot choose how you will die, nor with whom, but you can choose the manner in which you live, and the manifestation of the faith you profess. The car you drive can be crumpled into a sheet on the grille of an oncoming bus, and there you go, believer and non-believer alike in a tangled mass of roadkill. When it is all done, how do you justify to whom amongst the dead shall salvation and eternal life be given? Whom will be left to eternal damnation, whom to the bosom of Abraham? Seriously????

That's Me In The Corner!! That's Me In The Spot-Light!! Losing My Religion!!!!

Therefore in consolation and lengthy conclusion, behold my friend, Mr Effa Rojie who was spotted in the tupperware within which my wife and daughter are trying to germinate some greens for our meal-time consumption. He was no casual visitor. He keeps his bum warmed in the sod, and he has been there for days. I have faith that he has a much better mental disposition than the twits (have I spelled that wrongly??) foaming at the mouth over Saint Valentine's Day. The obvious reason is that this amphibian friend of mine can be seen. He isn't beneath a tempurung, which is infinitely more than I can say for those buggers.

Really, some days I don't want to say anything against the noise of idiocy. But I know that I must, even if it is only and quietly to myself. It worked for Galileo when he had to recant.

And with regard to the politicians, all I can say is Bah!!!!! Humbug!!!!!