Love at First Sight
Friday, April 3rd, 2009So there I was yesterday, riding my bike home through some neighborhoods that I have rarely, if ever, visited before. The ride itself was routine: one eye on the cars to my right, alert for the sudden opening of a door, the other eye monitoring my left flank, where cars were passing with an uncomfortably small margin or error. With both of my eyes thus occupied, you might not think that I would be able to see anything in front of me, but our brains are miraculous sensory processing machines, sorting, filtering and combining vast amounts of data into a surprisingly reliable guide to our immediate environment.
So I saw her well before I actually reached her: her graceful curves, her open, welcoming mien, her smooth, unblemished face. I was so overwhelmed by her beauty that I literally stopped short, too awed at first to approach. As I stood there agape, my left foot still on its pedal and my right foot grounded, as if to steady my fluttering heart, I sensed—no, I knew, knew to the very core of my mitochondrial DNA—that she was waiting for me. Indeed, I’m not normally one to spew a lot of new age nonsense about kismet and cosmic master plans, but I could tell immediately that the universe had placed her there in anticipation of my arrival, and that she was eager to take me in her embrace, to have me and to hold me, to selflessly help me attain my goals.
And so, after regaining my composure, I rode forth once more, shorn of hesitation and robbed of all fear, and when I finally touched her, she was everything I had ever dared to dream of: (more…)
