From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Back in the day if you were getting a liberal education at the University of Illinois this poem was part of English 123 which was part of your literature and arts requirement where you would meet the dour and somewhat bitter J Alfred and his creator, the unpleasant Mr Eliot.
But it was cool man, it opened with an image of a patient etherized upon a table which was pretty far out. This guy is wandering around in 1910 London and wishing that in his youth he had bit deeper into the apple of life when he was young, or even now, if he could gather the gumption, which he can't.
See there is this stream of thought that if we were just left to our natural courses, why we would bite into the apple, let its juice dribble down our throats, and pound our chests and go out after Eve or whoever. But Society, Modern Society, with all its rules and strictures has taken us away from nature and that's why we, we Old England middle class twits, walk around London muttering about our unfulfilled desires.
Something like that is what we were taught and so our generation opted to let it all hang out, and you see where that got us.
I believe that wearing your trousers rolled meant that they had cuffs which I am also guessing was the sort of thing old guys did in T S Eliot's time.
I have memories of a movie trailer I saw maybe fifty years ago where I am pretty sure it was Jack Lemmon who is talking to somebody and he is saying something like when we are young we are handed a big cup and we can choose to drink it dry or we can let it just spill onto the ground, and then he adds, looking aside "And do you think time cares?" which is one of those dramatic lines that if you think about them doesn't make any sense.
I never saw that movie. I think it was Save the Tiger, which I am streaming through now but have not come to that part.
But anyway that cup thing has remained in my mind. I should have drunk it down, gotten married, had kids, and they would have had kids and they would be sort of around, so I would be in contact with youngsters at my advanced age. But maybe not. Who knows?
Had to look up Dunning Kruger, and I think I am exempt from it because of my strong opinion that everything is more complicated than it appears to be, so I seldom attempt anything that seems like it might be difficult. Which certainly would include getting in the ring where I could get hit in the head.
Sorry to hear about trouble in Mangoville. And while I am giving a minute of silence
in honor of that pore little fellow who perhaps did not get as full a cup as his neighbors, I am wondering how they are doing.
I am puzzled by this Richard J who is casting aspersions on your coffee habit.
And though I am a not a doctor I too doubt this sleep apnea mania of late. It just seems like something that is paid for by insurance so that docs are always trying to get you to do it, just because I guess. Wouldn't the hypothetical wife know if you had it?
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