in gardens all misty and wet with rain

Richie Rich signed an e-mail to me this morning with the moniker Hungry like the wolf, because he really does think we're living in an Office Space sitcom. I guess that's what happens when you get married, have already put an addition on your house, and haven't had kids yet. So now I have that ridiculous song in my head, and it's driving me mad, especially since Duran Duran songs make absolutely no sense. It's like listening to the Teletubbies bouncing through your head all morning. Not that I didn't listen to Duran Duran all the time when I was younger. But hey, I used to listen to J. Geils Band singing about a girlfriend who turned out to be a centerfold, and never had a clue what I was singing along to, so those were innocent days where I didn't question everything so much, clearly.

This makes me irrationally unhappy. Mostly because I think any show that can make good use of the Charlie Brown Christmas theme and The Final Countdown deserves to be on the air as long as humanly possible.

Last evening and this morning, the fog has started to exactly bring to mind The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I am TS Eliot's bitch, incidentally, although that might have already been evident from my sidebar, come to think of it. But I remember that this poem was the first one that really stopped me in my tracks. I can still recall reading it on a piece of mimeographed paper and actually pausing to catch my breath. I can remember the weariness, the perfect weariness in the delivery of the poem the first time I heard it read out loud, by an intern at a summer school. Weird how so much of it still holds true all these years later:

Do I dare
disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

Prufrock is the ultimate poem that captures inertia, that captures that conflict of wanting to do something and also coming to grips with your insignificance. Sigh.

See, I do love the fog. I love how it shrouds everything, softens all the edges. I like the comfort of the warm, wet blanket when I'm walking on the street. I can hear Van Morrison's Sweet Thing lacing through my head. And should I leave, I will miss that most about this place.