Day of dreams

I always got the feeling that Valentine's Day was better in older times, when love was more forbidden.

When I was a teen Valentine's Day always tortured me, because I never received the anonymous valentine that I secretly longed for. Then as I got older and became a little more acquainted with love, still without ever receiving a valentine, I grew to look upon Valentine's Day with a degree of cynical disdain. Now I enjoy Valentine's Day from a distance. I look upon it as a day of nostalgia and dreams, where ponder romantic fantasies, the things that I have always hoped someone would do for me - write me a love letter, give me roses, elope with me to the city of love...kiss me amongst the wild flowers. I start to wonder, "Will anyone ever do these things?" not because they will never love me, but because, well things are different nowadays. Or perhaps it has always been this way and it is film and television that has given us these huge romantic expectations of Valentine's Day?

In my heart I feel that the true essence of Valentine's Day is young love, new love and forbidden love. To me it's about the risks an thrills of new love. But ironically, I don't think that many young people write love letters or send valentines anymore. Is it because love isn't as forbidden nowadays, or is it that we're just not as classically romantic? I have also never sent a valentine myself (except when we were as good as forced to do it in Primary school, but does that count?), which I think is partly due to the fact that if I had given valentine to a boy at my high school it would be seen as a huge joke - or is it because valentines were traditionally given to women (I don't know)?

Anyway...sometimes it's nice to imagine what romance can be, regardless of whether it has been for you.

I am an avid collector of images that delight and inspire me, especially now that I have Pinterest, so I thought I would share some Valentine-themed images that are inspiring me. Lately, Valentine's Day also seems to awaken an obsession with pink...

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Look at these two!

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Perhaps someone will throw you a pink tea-party, or send you a love letter or kiss you in the wild flowers this Valentine's Day. I hope that they do. They probably wont, but does it matter? Isn't the longing, hoping and waiting what Valentine's Day is really about?

Ode to the tee vee

Next week analog tv channels are closing down for good where I live, to be replaced by digital. They have already been shut down in NSW and some other states. I think Melbourne is one of the last to go.

It didn't really hit home to me until today when I came across this article - about an old tv collector who owns about 100 old televisions - in the morning paper, that this really is the (abrupt and sad) end of an era.

I've always wanted to buy an old television, I guess it has been on my 'To do someday' list for quite a while. And let's face it, if you own an old television it would be great to be able to use it. But now alas, that will not be possible. I have a soft spot for old televisions, like many other mid-century modern gadgets (radios, record players, cars etc.), because they really are just beautiful incarnations of design - they were designed to be beautiful. Whereas now most things seem to be designed for functionality, or to a sense of beauty that I do not understand. I certainly would not describe today's flat screen tv's as being beautiful.

But I think what really get's to me is the sense of finality. It is doubtful that analog will ever be brought back, because most people probably won't notice it's absence, and the one's who do, the nostalgics and collectors of this world, are drops in the ocean of new modernity. So this is it for the original tv. It is over.

In the article, Mr Lawson, the tv collector points out about one of his tvs that, ''It saw the very first TV broadcast, the parts are dated one month before that,'' - that it was in fact, probably bought to watch the first broadcast. And now it will also see it's last.

Goodbye old tee vee. You will be missed.