{ An Intellectual Affair }

I woke up the other day to realize I was entangled with not one,

Or two,

But three men--

With the list growing by the week.

They had not left my side since the day that I met them,

And I was not eager for them to leave.

I had grown accustomed to their company,

Addicted to their presence.

I was in over my head.

These men had seduced me with their fervent words,

Captivated me with their rugged perception,

And explored my depths as no one had before.

I

Am involved in an affair of the most epic kind

With men who stand as pillars supporting Western Civilization.

They have won me over body, soul, and mind.

I have grown to need them with each passing moment of my dull existence.

I crave the light they have given my mind's eye.

I am intoxicated with the love I have for these men who are indifferent to the desires of this world,

These men who gave up the opinions of a fleeting populace to gain what they could not lose once they stepped into eternity.

They have caressed my curiosity with their cravings for more.

I am in love with their love of wisdom.

It is not their knowledge that has caused them to steal into my heart but their understanding,

Their ability to search my core without ever having met me,

Their talent of telling me what constitutes who I am without touching my skin or gazing into the miry blackness of my eyes,

Their alluring posture as they turned their gaze upon things not of this world

And dreamt of the things of which dreams are made.

I am wholly lost in their teachings.

I knew something was not normal about this when I read the Phaedo,

When I read of the death of one of my beloved,

When I let the words depicting his final moments of life seep into me as his thoughts had done before.

I knew when he drank the hemlock I had let my heart become too much attached.

And when he died, I cried after shutting the pages.

I have a problem.

There is nothing natural about the sensation when I read a good--

Syllogism.

There is something odd about the way I feel alive when I read about the quest for--

Justice.

And there is something most certainly wrong when I desire nothing more than to sit across from these men and listen to the words that descend from their lips as they tell of the way they think life fits together.

It is these me who have entwined me in a story that feels so much larger than the hum drum rumbles of modern thought.

They are

Socrates

Plato

And Aristotle.

And I--

A silly girl with no sense of the normal--

Have lost my heart to their teachings in a beautifully, epic affair.