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February's Walls

If they could only speak of Memories long past, yet still present.

By Novel AllenPublished about a year ago 5 min read
3
February's Walls
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

If walls could talk!!! What an atrocious statement. We have been trying to communicate with human beings, people, for many Millenniums. As the thousands after thousands of years have come and gone, we keep beckoning. Oh, but do you even try to listen. Of course not, you see; every day sees the same pages of history written. Written with different words, using different actions, but ultimately, they all have the same results. You all claim to be evolving, changing, maturing, modernizing. Trains, planes, cars instead of carriages, radios, satellites, computers and such technological development that would have made Einstein and such men blush. HAH!

You may hide inside your huts, igloos, tents, fortresses, tenements, modern concrete jungles, which are marvels to behold, if I may say so myself. Yet deep within your hearts, nothing really changes. You are all driven by greed, lust, power, selfishness, desire, the ME syndrome, the wish to conquer and a winner takes all attitude, I don't give a flying fig about the other person mentality, and many more which I can't recall at the moment. So yes, every wall that I have ever spoken to, all have the same story to tell.

Humans are hopeless and doomed, unless they finally wake up and start listening to us walls, or at least to someone or something other than or greater than themselves.

February is BLACK HISTORY MONTH. Don't even get me started on those walls. Walls then, walls now, hopefully not walls to come, because humans will have finally evolved and become inveterate beings, that quality or state of being obstinate or persistent, tenacious in their will to do, and become better at the game of living.

"Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as, African-American History Month. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated in February in the United States and Canada, while in Ireland and the United Kingdom it is observed in October".

This month was chosen because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and that of Frederick Douglass on February 14, both of which dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century.

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first of three autobiographies. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition. His second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers his life up to those dates. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and he held several public offices. Without his permission, Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States, as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the Equal Rights Party ticket".

By British Library on Unsplash

Douglass believed in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass's willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong".

February heralds The Dawning of the age of Aquarius. An astrological age which is about to begin, marked by the precession of the vernal equinox into Aquarius, believed by some to herald worldwide peace and harmony.

We, Us walls, look forward to this phenomenon with the greatest of heart felt anticipation. PEACE AND HARMONY...What a most fabulous concept!

February is a complicated month. Within this month is also celebrated a saint's day, St. Valentine. He Gave us Courtly love, a literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry, and which attracted a large audience. In the high Middle Ages, a "game of love" was developed around these ideas as a set of social practices.

Saint Valentine was a 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Western Christianity on February 14 and in Eastern Orthodoxy on July 6. From the High Middle Ages, his Saints' Day has been associated with a tradition of courtly love. He is also a patron saint of Terni, epilepsy and beekeepers. Saint Valentine was a clergyman – either a priest or a bishop – in the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians.

He was martyred and his body buried at a Christian cemetery on the Via Flaminia on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine (Saint Valentine's Day) since at least the eighth century

"Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice for the experience of eroticism and desire. In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent"

His skull, crowned with flowers, is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Other relics of him are in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, Dublin, Ireland. A popular place of pilgrimage, especially on Saint Valentine's Day, for those seeking love.

We are February's walls.

By JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

Hopefully, now you will listen when we try to whisper sweet nothings in your ears!

If only walls could talk you say. We speak volumes every single day!

.........................................................................................................

Contains historical excerpts.

SatireHistoricalExcerpt
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About the Creator

Novel Allen

Every new day is a blank slate. Write something new.

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Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  • Donna Fox (HKB)about a year ago

    I really enjoyed this piece on the human condition, the want to evolve and change but the obvious inability. I appreciated the pieces of history you inserted within the article.

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