Koestler and Me Her name was Cassie, she said. But I never called her that. I always referred to her by her chatroom ID: “Koestler33”. I asked her if Koestler were her last name...to which she responded with a big LOL. So I suggested that it might be the name of her hometown...but all she said was “ROFL...NO...Bangor, Maine”. She had an incredible sense of humor...sometimes dry and biting...occasionaly whimsical...but always delightful. I remember once when she had suggested that many of today’s young people were ignorant in many areas including classic literature one of the twenty-somethings responded that she resented that. She (I’ll call her Ariel19) wanted Koestler33 to know that, far from being ignorant she herself not only worked in a law office but she also knew all the words to all the songs in “Oliver Twist.” Cassie’s reaction to this news was typical of her gentle sarcasm. She started off with a remark to the effect that she had been unaware that Charles Dickens “Dear Charlie” she called him “had taken to writing musicals” and ended with the suggestion that if anyone were wishful of denying their ignorance they would be well advised to avoid mentioning any connection with lawyers. Ariel33 failed to see any humor in this, naturally (young people so often lack the capacity to laugh at themselves, don’t you think?) and a feud began that has not ended to this day. The more Cassie tried to kid her out of her ill-temper the more outraged she became---something the rest of us found quite humorous in itself. As the weeks and months went by and Cassie and I discussed everything from the theories of Colin Wilson to an episode of BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in which Buffy’s sister “Dawn” tries to raise their mother from the dead. Which Cassie traced back to “The Fisherman and the Jinni” in the ARABIAN NIGHTS by way of Stephen King’s book PET SEMATARY and W. W. Jacobs’ classic short story “The Monkey’s Paw” all of which, she said, belonged to the “Be Careful What You Ask For, You May Get It” school of thought. As we discussed these things I began to realize that I was falling in love with her. Do you know what it is like when you meet a kindred spirit? A soul-mate? Well, it was like that for me. Oh, not all at once. It was gradual...so gradual that I scarcely realized what was happening until one day, right in the middle of an argument about the significance of Tom Bombadil in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (the book...not the film...Tom doesn’t appear in the film). A discussion that had several people in the chatroom quite hot under the collar because, while THE SILMARILLION makes it quite clear that the Elves were the Firstborn of Iluvatar, in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Tolkien states clearly that the Elves called Bombadil “Iarwain ben-Adar” (Oldest and Fatherless) which seems to mean that he walked in Middle-Earth before the Elves were born. Well, the discussion got hotter and hotter with some people beginning to sound like Eruvian Fundamentalists (which is what Cassie called them) who were practically screaming that “Iluvatar made all things and He made the Elves first its right there in the Book!” And Cassie trying to explain that Tolkien (in a letter dated 1954) had stated that Bombadil would remain an “intentional enigma” simply because the mythos BEHIND LOTR had not been fully formed in his imagination when he wrote FELLOWSHIP. Well, as I say, somewhere in the midst of all this I suddenly realized I was in love with Cassie and I sent her a Private Message to tell her so...at which point she suddenly went off-line. Thinking she had been booted I waited patiently for her to sign back in...but several hours went by and she did not return. Discouraged I finally signed off and went to sleep. Several days went by and she did not come back on..nor did anyone else in the chatroom talk to her...it was as though she had vanished from the face of the earth. She had certainly vanished from the Internet. “Is it possible,” I wondered aloud. “Is it possible that she was so hurt by some past love affair that now she flees from any sign of affection?”