Have you ever been infatuated or otherwised mildly-obsessed with someone from a distance?

There's a woman whose profile I came across on Salon Personals a few years ago, that ripped my world apart, set it on fire, took the ashes and rubbed them gently into my body. It was so beyond real. So alien-ly good. She even loves Muppets and was at the one-of-a-kind MuppetFest. I wrote to her, figuring that a woman of this greatness deserved a unique response. Our "introduction" was in the form of a mock-rejection letter. She liked it, apparently: "Lure me with rejection will you?" and sent a link to her orgasmically rich website. But her follow-up emails were sparse, despite my attempts to be clever, or even just ordinary. I don't know if she lost interest due to something I wrote, due to meeting some other guy, due to the fact I was in San Francisco, or what. Impressed her briefly, at least.

Now I'm in LA. I'm reading her blogs again, and my heart just melts. Pang pang pang, like an urgent call to a cell phone left on someone's desk . It's not so much that I "want" her or even "love" her. I'm captivated. She's overwhelmingly interesting. It's surreal knowing she's been at the places I've been to here in LA. We were both at the Chris Ware/Ira Glass event. Did we pass each other? Did I see her? She's been to the Arclight around the same times as me.

Will we ever meet? And would that be a good idea?

In some ways I wish I had not read Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan... for that mood of being rejected/teased and otherwise neglected by other human beings for no percievable reason, has haunted me ever since.