Lunge-story:

At some point over the course of a long and pleasant evening, I mentioned the fragment of Archilochus that reads poll' oid' alopex, all' echinos hen mega: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." As Isaiah Berlin notes, this may mean nothing more than that "the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense," that is, to curl up protectively into a little ball. "But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general." One is either a hedgehog, who tries to relate everything to a unitary inner vision, or a fox, who pursues many contradictory ends without trying to reconcile them into a coherent system of thought.

She and I, of course, were tempted to discuss whether we were hedgehogs or foxes, but left the discussion, I believe, unresolved. Later that evening, emboldened, perhaps, by this conversation, I made an awkward romantic lunge, only to be met with passive resistance from the sleepy lump on the sofa, who merely curled up and wished me a good night. Content with what I'd hoped had, at least, been a flattering pass, I gladly collapsed in the other room. A few days later, I received a message reading, in part: Well, yes, really, I had a nice time with you on Thursday -- and I suspect that you may have thoroughly learned by now that I, more than most, am like the hedgehog, in that I know just one thing, and it happens to be the very same thing that he knows....