Daily Blague

What's the difference between trying to impress and trying to seduce? The first is Anglophone, the second French, but what, really, is the difference? The result is the same: success means that you have made yourself attractive, appealing, and interesting to the object of your behavior.

I am still trying to convince Kathleen that I am a very bright man with lots of interesting things to say, even if they're about frankly stodgy topics. Why? Do I want to impress her with my brilliance? Or do I want to seduce her into paying attention? Am I getting warmer?

At lunch the other day, I held forth about the Council of Nicaea and the heterodoxiy of the early Church, as reflected in the Nag Hammadi library, a trove of alternative gospels that the Vatinicanists thought they'd got rid of - until 1945. The effects of the gospels' rediscovery, only hinted at in The Da Vinci Code, will take a few generations to percolate. This is what I was talking about after lunch, as my old friend perched his head on one arm and gave me a big, open, Labrador grin. I couldn't believe that he was remotely interested in my hobbyhorse. But I'd seduced him. I know that because he long ago discarded the idea that I would ever impress him.