I was thinking the other night about appearances, specifically in reference to those we love. When we meet someone, they are as defined by a pimple or a haircut or a sweater as by anything else. When you come to know and love someone, it is as though a lens zooms in and these same things become merely ancillary to the person underneath. Then, when you are no longer so closely joined, thing begin to pan again: once again, you can make a moral determination on someone based on his hair or his clothes. We look for them in someone's ex girlfriend, or an old partner. Failures in this realm become a petty victory; you lose all the blindness - and focus - of love, even if you've reacquired it with someone else. Why can't we translate that property?