to have and have not

...I used to appreciate innocence, pureness, clearness. For years I thought that must have been the ultimate human perfection. One that we are losing, or, in some cases, never attaining, through the years.But these past weeks I realized something I was only suspecting in the past years: no, it is INTELLIGENCE, brightness that I appreciate more than everything else. And I remembered my fondness towards several teachers (in the most purely platonic manner........) during my many academic years, on all continents where I studied...Men of elegant and imposing appearances, but may be not in a classical understanding of beauty. But whose minds fascinated me to a degree that I was falling,literally FALLING for them, inventing unconsciously some physical attractions they might have had.....Like their gestures when lighting a cigarette and avidly aspiring the smoke...Or feeling aspired to the depth of their eyes that were suddenly becoming for me the deepest magnetic oceans!...