The fact that my name is Jake made it hard for me not to relate to The Sun Also Rises. The most fascinatingly literary people I know, however, needed no such coincidence to pull them in.

Yesterday, one of those people got metaphorical about Lady Brett Ashley. He's decided he's finished chasing her. He's done idealizing the love interests in his life. He's ready to stop inflating people into magical fiction and searching them for the perfection he decides must be there.

He's looking instead for a slow burn opportunity, a girl he can explore with an open mind, discover and love step by step, moment by moment, bigger and bigger.

And that girl, the new one, by definition, can't be a Lady Ashley.

Lady Ashleys don't do slow burn. They connect fast, connect with intensity, and leave such huge early impressions that imaginations explode with flashes of what might be.

Lady Ashleys are trouble. Exquisite, irresistable trouble.

But maybe there's a flaw in that analysis. Maybe Lady Ashleys themselves are works of that friend's imagination (and mine and maybe yours too). Maybe Lady Ashleys only come into being when we, with our imaginative afflictions, paint them into existence.

And maybe realizing that can curb the chase. Maybe we don't have to let Lady Ashleys exist.

But maybe this is false confidence, a hopeful but irrational sense of agency in a world ruled by Lady Ashleys. Maybe both my friend's metaphorical proclamation and my optimistic suspicions are but predictable moments of futile resistance against destinies mapped to the zags of the chase.