My Beautiful Mind

Music swells in the living room and I hear the tack-tack of keys. There is a path into the room littered with typed pages, X-ed out, paragraph by paragraph. It's cold and sunny outside and blossoms are blowing from trees in a compost-able confetti through the wind onto the side-walk as birds sing a happier more full song. In the living room. Ivo is hunched over the blond-wood desk, squinting.
I love an academic. I don't mean this in the sense that "I love a parade", or "I love a good Margarita on a hot day". I mean that I love a particular academic. Sometimes this particular academic wonders if he truly wants to be an academic or not. Then spring rolls round and Ivo joyfully sticks himself at his desk reading, writing and editing. He seems to enjoy the pain of holing up as others go blinking into the new spring sun. In some sort of tantric-delayed-gratification-thing Ivo seems to delve deeper into his work in the spring only to then truly enjoy the reward of a summer vacation.
Ivo and I began to date in the spring time. We spent an odd amount of time together for his methods of working. We took long afternoon walks in the lengthened afternoon sun and he came to Loui's to lunch even though, I am sure, that his conscience tried to tell him to stay in his room and work, work, work.
After a couple of weeks, I saw a different side of this lovely young student. "I've got to get down to business and write my project." he told me. And thus, I learned this new side of the man that I would come to love in a wife and husband kind of way. (Back then I just thought that he was the most.)
"I don't know the order yet and I have far too much information for just one paper. I've done so much preparation. I don't know how it should fit or which parts are necessary."
He then papered the walls with notes. The walls of his dorm room were seriously covered floor-to-ceiling with notes and sources. This is Academic-man. Without a cape and with glasses as part of his costume he arrives in Spring to make sense of moths of work. He hums along to Schubert. He ignores all idea of schedule that his alter-ego "athletic fun smart guy" and finds a strong large cup of coffee at 9 pm an appropriate idea. He shall go again soon. He may even take a small holiday when we are in Russia. However, for now, he is here in my living room, reminding me of the first notion of a different side of this man who I thought was swell 4 springs ago.