In Love with Trains | Tony Judt - The New York Review of Books (Volume 57, Number 4 · March 11, 2010)

According to the literary theorist René Girard, we come to yearn for and eventually love those who are loved by others. I cannot confirm this from personal experience--I have a history of frustrated longings for objects and women who were palpably unavailable to me but of no particular interest to anyone else. But there is one sphere of my life in which, implausibly, Girard's theory of mimetic desire could be perfectly adapted to my experience: if by 'mimetic' we mean mutuality and symmetry, rather than mimicry and contestation, I can vouch for the credibility of his proposition. I love trains, and they have always loved me back.

Just ran across it in an old copy of the NY Book Review.  Unfortunately, only the preview is available on the website (unless you pay for the rest).  Let me know if you are interested, and I can scan and send you the rest of the article.

The point is not to be right, but to get to right.