Rude.

I think it was rude of me to refer to someone as a project.

I thought about him on my drive. I thought about how I meet some people, and it is though a big question mark gets branded into my chest. I want to spend time with these people in an attempt to resolve the question. I was trying to explain this phenomenon to a friend. He said, "Ah! A soft crush!" Another friend of his had described it like this:

"The Soft Crush

I think it's easier to get to know someone when you have no agenda. If you can just take the time to communicate without pretense, the momentum of that fundamental connection will guide everything else, for better or worse.

I'll be the first to admit that I have zero "game". No pick up lines, not slick double talk, no inclination toward the notion of sweeping someone off her feet or her sweeping me off mine. I don't think about her all the time and I'm quite sure she doesn't think of me. It's not like that at all. She's the one who, if she read this, would probably not even have the slightest inclination to think it's about her.

You can be mildly aware of someone without intentionally focusing on her. It's more like remnants of her persona (a picture, a smile, something she said or wrote, her sense of wit, whatever) that cling to your peripheral awareness, and you find within yourself a little curiosity. Just a little curiosity that keeps you wanting to know a little more than you did before.

It's an odd curiosity, one with absolutely no basis; no rhyme or reason. It just is. An acquaintance, not even a normal one; a distant, almost negligible acquaintance. You may not even know each other beyond the informal realm, and it might not even be very practical if you did… but that's not the point.

It's a slow smoldering curiosity, not a blazing fire of passion and lust. You can nourish this curiosity, consciously or otherwise, without being obsessed or even in pursuit… but you can't extinguish it. Not at this point, because it's not ready to be dismissed just yet; it refuses. It continues to cling to you like a wet piece of tissue that you can't really feel and don't really notice… But you do."

I'm sorry...I don't know who wrote that, or whom to credit it to. I think he got it about right.

It has been beautiful here in the mountains. You have to know, I think alot about staying here.