Topological improbabilities aside, I was thinking about The Nymph today as I drove around doing errands. We were on the phone until late last night and continued our pattern of having an increasingly hard time hanging up on each other.

I realized today that some time ago I passed without conscious decision through that stage of imagining-with-trepidation our first meeting, and have now moved squarely into the stage of unreservedly wanting it to happen, the sooner the better.

That’s the more emotional side of my personality talking, and for the time being it’s got the microphone in an iron grip. The intellectual side still squawks and yammers from stage right, hissing and blubbering in a bad Smeagol voice about great folly and about silly masters who fool themselves and about the bad ends to which romantic adventurers are prone. The intellectual side of me has been very handy for projects like organizing my economic life and keeping body and soul together, but “intellectual me” has a terrible record of being as useful as a eunuch at an orgy when it comes to making decisions about matters of the heart. Resolved: ignore that timorous bastard for the duration.