He sat in a poorly lit corner of the furniture crowded coffee house.  His apparel would become outdated if you described it.  Pen in one hand, and a black notebook in the other he bent over his work.

She was at the counter, chatting with the barista, biding her time until she noticed him.  The attraction instant and subconscious.  A primal understanding, here was a mate with talent.  The way young girls swoon over pop stars, or the girl at the bar goes home with the guy that clears the pool table.  She approached the table and sat.

He glanced up from his work, immediately taken in his own way, physically reacting to his own unconscious understanding of her quality.  He felt fueled and inspired by it.  Whether or not he realized it, sitting across from him was the only reason he practiced his art.  His designs the human equivalent of carefully pruned plumage.  He smiled at her, and went back to work, with passion and drive.  He could work the rest of his life sitting across from her, the power of woman so subtle and strong.

She sat and watched him work for a while, without saying a word.  Enraptured in the way he would look up every now and again, making her wonder, is it a portrait?  Or maybe a poem.  Perhaps he’s writing a screenplay.

Is it about me?

“Can I see?”

He clutched the notebook close to his now palipitating chest.  This was his work, what would she think?  It is a big moment, but he has courage and confidence.  He smiles, and pushes the notebook across the table.

She looks at it slowly moving it from side to side.

“What is it?”

Perplexed with a sprig of disappointment she looks to him.

“Code.”

—Sometimes I wish I’d been a painter.  My work isn’t the Picasso of PHP, but perhaps an AI graduates fruit still life.  The shame is, it’s hard to gain a good feeling of accomplishment without recognition.  And recognition can’t come without some sort of understanding.  I can spend weeks on a piece of code and the only thing noticed is the UI.  It’s like being the Bass Guitar player in a rock band.  Or writing poetry in Esperanto.  Few and far between are there those with enough subject matter knowledge to ridicule or praise your work.  Sure, friends and family provide acknowledgment and love, but they are biased and generally unqualified.  Like your red neck cousin complementing you on your choice of wine (Livingston I presume).  I want to hang my functions and classes on a wall.  I’d love to hear the real experts say it sucks.  We all want to be admired.

Though, I guess it could be worse…  I could be a plumber.

I met a girl in Prague the other day, and we had dinner, a bottle of wine and really interesting conversation.  The chemistry was good too, but it was just a night as I had to leave the next day.  It’s been my experience that the chemistry analogy is quite effective (as analogies go) in representing the compatibility of two people.  We all have our own unique properties, and can make a guess as to what they are, but since there is no real way to fully analyze our emotional makeup, there will always be a big unknown X factor.

We watch others around us mix, some mixing well, others separating after time, and still others exploding and burning violently.  We can take the knowledge gained from witnessed experiments and our own experiments in life and hopefully avoid getting burned too bad, but we’ve got no clue, even if the math doesn’t seem right sometimes the result is quite surprising.  With 6 billion+ (are we at 7 billion yet?) people out there (and thereby more then 3 billion possible chemical combinations depending on how you swing) there has to be hundreds of mixes that will lead to a positive result.

So I felt bittersweet saying goodbye to the girl in Prague, wondering if I was blindly walking past another match.  But what about the girl who winked at me in the restaurant, or the one I bumped into on the metro?  It certainly would be a lot easier if people just wore name tags identifying them as your soulmate.  Thinking about this I made myself chuckle in the Prague National museum, walking around with a little hand held tour guide.  Punch in a number and it will tell you about the exhibit you are looking at.  Found myself thinking how much easier if the cute girls at the museum had numbers.  “22:  She’s currently available, but has bipolar mood swings that start to show up at 2 weeks, and kicks like a mule when she sleeps, move on to next exhibit.”

I’ve decided that as long as I enjoy every person I meet, regardless of whether or not the chemicals match, it’ll be just fine.  It will be like looking for Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket; even if I don’t find the ticket at least there was a bar of chocolate inside

Happy trails you two!

Truly a match made.  Love and care for each other and don’t sweat anything else, because the only true happiness in life is to love, and be loved in return.

Fast Tube by Casper

And an excuse to add romance and art to my tag list.