Don Quixote

Let's just get this out of the way at the beginning: girls drive my crazy. They drive me wonderfully, horribly, insanely crazy with desire and curiosity, suffering and a whole slew of emotions that just bounce about in my head until I decide to just bang my head against a keyboard. More about that later. Oddly enough, girls turn into characters in my head, into memories that are vague ghosts of their former selves and they do this constantly.. I fall for them in that schoolboy way, having spoken only a few words to them, or not at all... perhaps even only seeing them as a picture on a screen or text on a page. I fall in love with the idea of them, the possibility that I conjure up in my head. Sometimes, they even last long enough for me to get to know them, but that usually just ruins the illusion. However, they all slowly they fade and morph into something not quite human, something literary, a being that hints at more about myself than them... a girl who once wrote on a blackboard for me, or an Atredies, perhaps the Princess Leia who I met in a corridor, or the blonde in the Tiger's cap, or...

A girl once told me that I was quixotic... a practical girl with a long nose, cute little smile and glasses. A girl who I once walked with around Ann Arbor at night in a hoodie, talking of Star Wars, Shakespeare and the smell of books. It was cool, but not too cool, exciting, but not to the point of nervousness, but comfortable enough where I slipped into that state of goofiness that I show so few. I grinned and laughed, told funny stories and made a fool of myself to make her smile... I really was quixotic, even though she had called me that name weeks before. Perhaps I was trying to prove to her, or myself, that I really was.

Quixotic... like the man of La Mancha, like Don Quixote.

I'm not sure if it was a compliment, but I think it was. I'd like to think I feel it as a compliment in any case, that that is who I truly want to be.

Noble, disillusioned and romantic?

What could be better... except perhaps Star Wars, Shakespeare and the mustiness of old books in an Ann Arbor night?

I'd like to believe if I could I would spend my life off tilting at wind mills, because isn't that what I'm truly doing here? None of this matters in the long run, it's not putting bread in my mouth, but I suppose it's just my attempt at living. I've given up caring what others think of what I do here, I no longer worry about posting on time, because I'm writing for me, and if others enjoy it, I appreciate it and it gladdens me that I could make a small impact, but... it's not about that.

I'm here fighting dragons. This is about Smaug, not studying or a career. I suppose that's why I embraced that title then, and why I remember it so fondly still. I doubt she even knew how big of an impact that one phrase had on me, I know I didn't at the time, but that's surely not the issue. She's an idea more than a girl now, just like so many others... a memory, a fond, comfortable memory that speaks more about myself than anyone else. Just like all the rest. And I still look for a copy of Don Quixote to buy, but I haven't yet found one that is satisfactory... I need a used one, unabridged, with yellowed pages (but not too yellowed), a torn cover and the rich dampness of a book that's been thumbed through a thousand times, that's been crushed between others and thrown on a couch more times than it could count. I need a book with character, something you could buy with a quarter, or find in a cardboard box surrounded by old westerns, contrived mystery novels and bad romances... I need a novel that is quixotic, not in it's content, but in it's appearance, because sometimes you just have to judge a book by it's cover.