--Whenever you are in a public place, be it a restaurant, coffee-shop, or department store, maintain at all times an attitude of politeness and deference. This will inevitably attract the attention of a like-minded young lady who will admire your quiet acquiescence to minor inconveniences and your cordial good manners with other patrons/shoppers/coffee-drinkers should interactions with them transpire. Your continued forbearance in the face of incorrect orders, wrong sizes, or long waits for refills will ignite a flame of passion in the improbably beautiful woman sitting alone in the next booth. She will look up from her copy of Dubliners, watch approvingly as you smilingly accept more sweet tea, and then quietly resume your meal. The unspoken tension between the two of you will come to a head after she intuits the generous tip you will be leaving, the mediocre service notwithstanding. You 'forget' to pick up your copy of Aristotle's Physics. Breathlessly, she catches you before you leave, returning your book. "Change is the actuality of the potential qua such," she will say. You in turn will remark on Joyce's architecture of ironies in "The Dead." Your fingertips will touch as she passes the book back to you, with her name and phone number written on the bookstore receipt you use as a bookmark. Decorum prevents either of you from doing more than exchanging pleasantries at that time, but you will have three children and each publish a novel. Congratulations.
--Accomplish herculean feats of harmonic and rhythmic sophistication in a solo saxophone rendition of "Central Park West" by John Coltrane at the open-mic night of your local coffee shop. You will approach the microphone with an attitude of one who is being indulged by his audience, who is being forgiven in advance any of his musical shortcomings in light of his earnest desire to communicate beautiful things through his imperfect medium. Announce the tune with due emphasis on the greatness of the composer. A group of college students giggling around their resident acousti-strummy singer/songwriter (who will perform later) quiets down as they sense your rootedness in a musical tradition that is older and 'deeper' than any they have yet encountered. Your rendition begins boldly, but with a sense of architecture in the opening cadenza that hints at your orderly musical thinking. By the time you have made it through the melody and begun your solo explorations, the usually effervescent nursing major in the giggling group will be appraising you thoughtfully. Your eyes are closed the whole time, so you can't tell, but she is obviously deeply moved by your fourths-related patterns which successfully bridge the constant shifts of tonality by the interval of a minor third. When you incorporate the "Cry Me a River" lick to move from D7 through G major back to the original key of C# major (on a Bb instrument, remember), thus seamlessly eliding both harmonic areas, the seduction will be complete. After a chromatic exploration of the final ii-V-I in an extended cadence to the melody, you will simply say: "John Coltrane's Central Park West" and move to sit down, gracefully though humbly acknowledging the applause. She will pronounce you cute to her companions, one of whom will approach you as you put your horn back in its case. It is the lithe and dark-haired friend of the future nurse who strikes up a conversation with you. She is aware of the horrible high-school irony of being sent on an errand of inquiry by her cowardly yet smitten friend. You share a laugh. Obviously you are uncomfortable in this situation, but dutifully make conversation with this young future nurse, with whom it turns out you have nothing in common. Her raven-haired friend mitigates the awkwardness of the conversation by demonstrating a surprising affinity for mid sixties Miles Davis. After a rocky start to your relationship, your children will end up being a bass player, a drummer, and a lawyer, in that order. At the wedding, you will credit her friend the nurse as having introduced you, and everyone will laugh. Congratulations.
--Read profound works of great erudition in public places. As you silently take notes on the love poetry of John Donne, two other bookstore patrons will be working their way through Philosophy and Religion towards the Bibles and eventually, the Starbucks Cafe. As they walk by, the will hardly notice you, but upon returning with their half-caff soy lattes (Grande, Tall, respectively), they will notice your careful note taking in the margins, and will spy "John Donne" on the spine of the book you are reading. There are also books by French philosopher Henri Bergson and a Henry James novel on your table, indicating that as soon as you have dispensed with Donne, you intend to tackle other subjects with equal aplomb. They will sit down two tables away, one reading Vogue the other perusing a copy of Alasdair MacIntyre's History of Ethics. It is almost closing time, so you begin stowing your books back in your unpretentious messenger bag and prepare to leave. The two women leave at roughly the same time. Vogue-reader is consoling MacIntyre reader over a recent (two weeks ago) breakup with an oafish MBA who has no intellectual curiosity. She is somewhat consoled, and in subsequent conversation, you (Guy-Reading-Two-Tables-Over) are mentioned casually, though nothing is thought of it at the time. Over the coming weeks, your continued simultaneous presence in the same Big Box retail bookstore and ritual of silent mutual contemplation will eventually erupt into a conversation when she trips on her way back to her table, spilling latte both on your copy of Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and her copy of Mansfield Park, which she has not yet purchased. Gallantly, you pay for her book and politely defuse her effusive apologies and racking sense of guilt. She is an excellent cook, though she expects you to also at least try. Your spaghetti recipe is a modest success--ingested without disaster on your fourth date, and she eventually shows you the secrets of genuine pasta sauces handed down from generation to generation in her loud but lovable Italian-American family. You will have four children. Congratulations.
--Talk directly to one (a woman). No one knows what will happen if you try this. You will probably strike out. Its probably best to maintain your posture of inoffensiveness and keep reading big books.
