THE POWER OF TWELVE

In a cruel twist of fate similar to something from Sleepless in Seattle, the most hopelessly romantic man on the planet failed to recognise the most golden of opportunities last Friday, October 12th. (Mind you, he never thought he'd ever see this person, so kudos to him for realising it belatedly.) Despite a 12 second encounter with "The One," and a sweet smile that could have melted a pesky iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic in 1912, and after 12 years of urging Francesca Johnson to open the bloody door and get off the damned train and stay a while (whether Tapei looks pretty or not), the startled man did not in fact respond quickly enough. The elevator doors closed, leaving him, like Edward Scissorhands, all alone in an empty castle, lamenting what might have been:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

--John Keats