J. Alfred Prufrock and Me

by Xenda Lindel; presented July 10, 2005

 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

                        by T. S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells;

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . .

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

 

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have know them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee-spoons;

I know dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

 

So how should I presume?

 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

 

                        And how should I presume?

 

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table or wrap about a shawl,

            And should I then presume?

 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?. . .

 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

 

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep. . .tired. . .or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

 

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one settling a pillow by her head,

            Should say:  “That is not what I meant at all;

            That is not it, at all.”

 

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

            “That is not it at all,

            That is not what I meant, at all.”

 

No!  I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautions, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

 

I grow old. . . I grow old. . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

 

Shall I part my  hair behind?  Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.

 

I do not think that they will sing to me.

 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

 

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

******

            Well now, you have met J. Alfred Prufrock, and many of you have met me.  What is it, I hope you wonder that J. Alfred and Xenda have to say to us today.  You may know I discovered I was “severely depressed” this Spring.  It crept up on me unnoticed but I found myself loving to think about Prufrock and as in my early years, was quite sure I’d not hear mermaids.  So I began a list of the wonders in my life and reasons to stay alive.  These were ideas and experiences quite unknown to T. S. Eliot and to J. Alfred Prufrock and specific to my life.  Some of these will resonate with you.

            Waffles are sweet and delicious when I make them fresh in the morning and spread honey under fresh strawberries or frozen mixed berries.  I eat them with lots of hot coffee.  Sometimes the waffle is an afternoon treat.  Prufrock should stop by one day.

            Football pre-season games start soon.  I can barely contain my excitement.  I respect football because it’s no easier to learn to play the game well than to learn to sing operas or to dance on one’s toes.  The preparation for all of them is honorable.  And the piece de resistance is watching well prepared men run backwards while others are trying to stop them; to watch these well prepared men run backwards and look and throw that very small ball toward an empty space down the field where another well prepared man is running; hoping to be under the ball when it comes toward the grass; so this second running and well prepared man—even if he has to jump three feet into the air with only one hand extended; so this well prepared man can catch the very small ball.  With instant replay, there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

            I’ve become intensely interested in the physics of the cosmos and learned that massive star surveys are digitized and placed on the Internet—because there are telescopes that can do this.  Then—and it is worth being alive just to know this—a project based at the University of California at Berkeley is designed so people with PCs around the world can analyze the signals for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.  The project is called SETI@home.  What a deal!!  “The massive data from the Aricebo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is chopped up into tiny digital pieces and then sent via the Internet to PCs around the world, mainly to amateurs.  A screen saver software program analyzes the data . . .when the PC is not in use.  Using this method, the research group has constructed the largest computer network in the world, linking about 5 million PCs from all points of the globe.”  (from Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku)  Certainly not claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.  And whether we believe there may be extraterrestrial intelligence, and I don’t as it happens, the idea of five million PCs all over the earth delights me.  Five million personal computers playing with information collected by an enormous telescope in Puerto Rico.  Sounds like global cooperation to me.

            On the 12^th of April I saw a Goldfinch on my walk around Grays Lake.  Later this Spring I watched Baltimore orioles play in the bushes.  Since then I’ve seen deer, Baltimore Orioles, Red Wing Blackbirds, and once after a Blue Heron made several low passes over the lake, I saw him eat his catch.  The fish wiggled in his throat as it went down.  I’d not thought of that.  Before I was sad and before I knew about my cholesterol and before I knew I could walk around Gray’s Lake every day I had never seen a tiny truly golden Gold Finch nor the bright orange of the Baltimore Oriole.  Since then I’ve put a Gold Finch feeder on my list of things to buy next Spring.  Maybe I can lure them in to join the rabbits robins cardinals blue jays and butterflies in my back yard.  This will be way better than yellow fog or smoke curling around the trees.

            When I walked, frequently I saw a woman who carries her left hand in her right and slightly drags her left foot as she crosses the bridge.  She left her cane in the corner of the bridge rail where she started.  Although I don’t know, I’m guessin’ there is a stroke in her past.  I’m not guessing about her courage and determination.  My lady doesn’t walk any further than the end of the bridge.  She told me she stays near the rail so she can use it for balance.  She moved slowly.  She’s probably not worried about whether to presume, having her own overwhelming question each day.  Sometimes I told her she is courageous, other times I just smiled and said good morning.  She has seen the eternal footman hold her coat and it was she who snickered—I bet.

            And Prufrock couldn’t have known about SliME—subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems.  Subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems are made up of what could be 100 trillion tons of bacteria living beneath our feet—from the surface of Earth to its center.  “Thomas Gold of Cornell has estimated that if you took all the bacteria out of the Earth’s interior and dumped it on the surface, it would cover the planet to a depth of five feet.  If the estimates are correct, there could be more life under the Earth than on top of it.”  (Bill Bryson in *A Short History of Nearly Everything)  I wonder if the makers of Lysol know about that bacteria when they tell me Lysol is a “fact of life” on television.  I’ve come to love the bacteria in my house.  My bacteria are my friends.  I’m keeping my own personal hundred quadrillion bacterial cells.  (They go with each of us and our ten quadrillion human cells.)  I figure the Lysol users will clean themselves out of existence in a few generations and leave the earth to those of us, or our descendents, who like the natural part of it the way it is—dirt and all. 

            Kinda makes me want to eat an extra peach and walk a little further on the beach.

            Prufrock must not have had children nor grandchildren—must not have seen the tiny people grow to be small and then larger and then friends.  Carter told us once, (Carter is my grandson) that he was not short, he was down low.  Not a bad way to solve the “small” problem.  He’ll probably be a politician. 

            There must have been no a four-year-old dance recital for Prufrock nor, indeed, perhaps Eliot.  Seeing dozens of four-year-old girls in pink tutus may not be worth an entire life, but it adds a bit of sugar to the measuring coffee spoons.

            On the subject of our little ones, a best memory for me—one which goes with coffee in the morning—is a day that Carter and his mama came into my kitchen about 7:30 or 8 o’clock, shiny and new with another day and Carts looked up at an adoring grandmother to say, “Us hungy.”  We had a perfect breakfast, whatever it was.  Maybe the mermaids have been singing already.

            Ah, all the good stuff.  . . . .  I like what we sometimes call the bad stuff too.  I like rainy weather—the sun shines every single day in Cheyenne, every single day, which contributed to my return to Des Moines.  I like blizzards and shoveling the snow after.  I like not liking summer’s heat—not liking pain in my joints—not liking arrogance and pretense.  I like getting on one of my soap boxes once in a while just to be sure I can still harangue.  I like disagreeing with people I trust to be honest and stay themselves—I like a good fussy argument.  You know, I also really like not liking someone and I revel in those who don’t like me.  I just don’t care whether everyone thinks I’m wonderful. 

            So there.

            For a short time while I was learning to live a different kind of life, I noticed my life is worth the living if only for those people who love me—not necessarily for those I love.  The folks who love me want to see my smile, feel my energy, get a hug or a laugh or a quilt.  Sometimes they want to chat; imagine that.  This is not to say I do not need and want to be with the people I love.  It is finally to acknowledge that I too am loveable and have worth to some of you, and you are worth my living on and on and on and. . . . .  You get the idea.

            Then, just to tout the wonders of First Unitarian and its members, I know there was no small group ministry for Prufrock and Eliot, no Margaret Jane, no Carter, no Susan Kramer-Jones, no First Unitarian Church with its capitol campaign, its committees, and each of you.

            And so I’m glad not to be a pair of ragged claws.