What do you mean by 'ethereal'?

Ms. HRP reads my blog, of course, and sometimes asks me questions about it. Today she asked me, "What do you mean by 'ethereal'?"

She was referring to my frequent posts about looking for an ethereal, gauzy, hippie chick by whom I could be infatuated.

OK, here's the deal: I don't know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it. I've met two women in maybe the past ten years who would qualify in my book as ethereal, or at least partly ethereal. They were both artists, and one was also a musician. Both had a spiritual bent, one Buddhist and one Christian. But they also conveyed this sense of being only loosely tethered to the earth. They were spiritually pretty well grounded, or so they seemed, but I had the sense that a stiff breeze might send either of them drifting away like dandelion seeds, gracefully and serenely floating over lawns and gardens.

Now, personally, I'm about as ethereal as room-temperature oatmeal. If they drifted like dandelion seeds, I'd tumble along like a KFC bucket that had blown out of someone's trash can.

So, perhaps ethereal isn't a good match for me. But as I always say, we can't help the kinds of people to whom we are attracted.

The point is, in any event, moot.