I wrote this awhile ago for a girl I really cared for. I don't care for her much anymore. A young man once lived who would carry on like many young men often do. He would meet people and laugh, read books and reflect, go places and see, and think wonderfully elaborate thoughts to pass the days that spoke a language he had never learned. He dreamt of the picturesque happiness seen in children’s stories. He had intelligence but not wisdom. Never much would people see him become seriously upset or act ungracefully rude. Many times, while this young man was out of earshot, others would describe his temperament as agreeable and friendly, though possessing a serenity that appeared to come from such a grave, profound piece of knowledge that everyday living had become a kind of hilarity to him. However, it is necessary to realize that this hilarity, this comic nature that had been correctly identified in him, was not of the type that makes one laugh. This young man, whose name is wholly irrelevant to this brief account, had all that could be wished for to live a comfortable existence. The family of which he belonged to loved him with their warming hearts completely. They would never cease to support him in whichever endeavor he had chosen to follow at the moment. He had no awful disease and he could eat when hungry. The bed he would lay on during sleep was soft. The future, by any standard, looked promising. And yet, with everything as it was, a part of him still had no harmonious counterpart. This piece analogous to himself, as he knew, would be difficult to find and even harder to keep, for it was something he could never own. As it were, he never gave much thought to the difficulty of the search. It may as well have been impertinent, that trying task. Even if by an unmistakable proclamation he were to become convinced of its impossibility, he would still continue, for there was not much else. There was only ardor and dark and the end. Imagine how he felt when, brooding that the hunt was without point, his desire just fell right into him, there onto his lap! It was as if something, too, had been searching out him! But he deemed the thought nonsense without any hesitance, for all he had ever been able to attract were hollow beings of an immeasurable dullness that had the gall to even hold names. It was almost unfeasible to him when he realized that, without a doubt, this was reality!--not just some useless dream that his mind had the tendency to create. Even more surprising (and how thankful he became!) was that it was not merely an “it,” but a “she!” At first he was unable to describe exactly just what drew him to her. He didn’t have any concrete facts, no tested hypotheses, or any reliable data to back his claim, but he did have a feeling. He had a feeling that grew ever stronger whenever he heard her speak. It was so strong and bright, alluring and hypnotic, that to ignore such a feeling would be genuine idiocy. And yet what caused this feeling? What made it emerge as a sudden shock in this young man’s mind? It’s largely impossible for one not to wonder: But where did all this arise from? Although his attempt would be nothing short of futile, the young man decided to create a mental list (merely to satisfy his own curiosity) of all the qualities she possessed that made life a little better, that made him a little happier, and that made him realize Earth isn’t just a horrible, shitty rock floating in dark space. So he began: “I object to the prospect of calling her beautiful. No, to think of something as beautiful is to imply that beauty is a characteristic of that something. That kind of logic, while appropriate for a lifeless sunset or a moving composition of music, is positively inappropriate to describe a woman like this. What should be said, if I ever produce the courage to utter such a statement, would be something along the lines of: ‘You are not defined by beauty. No, it is beauty that is defined by you. Beauty is not a characteristic of you. Rather, it is you who is a characteristic of beauty.’ Then I would go on to tell her how she makes me feel so near and so close, even though she’s all too many miles away. I would tell her how much I appreciate her letting me simply be me. All the courage and hope and joy she brings me--well, I would tell her about that, too. I’d make sure to let her know that every time she laughs it’s like a short splash of heaven. Someday, I’ll say to her, ‘When I’m thinking about you I just feel so lucky, and I don’t even believe in luck.’ Oh, Christ!--the things I would tell her. ‘Nothing much seems all that frightening since I’ve met you. There’s six billion and some odd people on this planet, and I must say, I think you have to be the best of them. You are a dream and I want to have you at night.’ She is intelligent (very much so, in fact) but never condescending. She has class but is not a snob. She dreams but doesn’t mind reality (at least not too much, anyway). What is most wonderful about her, however, is that she is one of the few people that is deserving of being called a human being. Most everyone is just a person, but she’s human.” The young man of our brief story laid his back against a soft chair and thought about the enigma of attraction. He had long ago reached the conclusion that every attraction is merely a chemical change in the brain. After meeting this woman, however, he realized that this view seemed to grossly undermine the deafening, idyllic feelings he had for her, and he began to speculate that she may be touching him on an altogether deeper part of his self, an abyss which the young man had found very few people possessed the courage to climb down. Yet here she was, pick in hand, descending deeper and deeper into not only a hole, but the whole! He wanted with all of his being to believe that one should want to proceed as her example, that one should even wish for it, but, being a person that had been largely preoccupied with his own existence for years and years, it was truly touching on an impossibility to ask for a faith as such. It was almost, he imagined, as if she were making a selfless sacrifice of her own volition, for how could one actually desire to retreat into such an unfamiliar, dangerous place? It was easy for him to fall into her, he deemed, because she was absolute and pure loveliness, but he--no, he was nothing of the sort. And what does, the reader may ask, ultimately become of our young man and the feminine entity that fell so unexpectedly into his life? This humble narrator is of the opinion that query should first begin with an entirely different set of questions, namely: How many times has this story been told once before, with higher grace and superior eloquence? And how many endings are truly possible, but one of varying degrees of good and one of varying degrees of bad? And what exactly is the feasibility of a love eternal, unblemished and retained in totality? The truth of the matter is, as with all matters in any way connected to the word “love,” this narrator does not have the slightest notion, not even the tiniest fragment of a notion as to how our story will end. In fact, this narrator’s time would be far better spent contemplating matters that are unrelated to ridiculous questions of the infinitely unknowable.