3 posts tagged “prufrock”
I've given about ten minutes worth of thought to how I would like to spend these last few moments of my twenty-ninth year. I thought it would be nice to:
- Reflect on the last nine years, and figure out one important thing I learned each year (you know... the kind of important you can actually recall and articulate in a few minutes);
- Get another stanza of Prufrock under my belt (I have 44 lines left to go);
- Curl up next to my wonderful husband and sleep off a deep post-game weariness that I seem unable to shake.
Year 20: If I had a legacy, it would not be me. It would just be a legacy. In all probability, I would have very little control over what it was, and what it would mean, and to whom.
Year 21: Working in fashion retail is kind of like indentured servitude. Also, a 30% discount doesn't make something "so cheap it may as well be free."
Year 22: Sometimes, everything someone can be just isn't enough. Sometimes, love just goes away.
Year 23: There are some things that you just need to get out of your system. One way or another, they will have out.
Year 24: The death of someone you truly love can fundamentally change who you are. It can make you understand how very long forever is, and how much love you have that you might not have known about.
Year 25: You are given a space to fill... only so wide and so deep. It's daunting figuring out how best to fill it, especially since you don't know its dimensions.
Year 26: Everyone should try living in the city.
Year 27: When you meet the right person, you really do just know.
Year 28: Weddings are a total racket, and where your old world and new world meet can be a very scary place.
Year 29: It's important to feel down in your bones that time isn't waiting around for you, but it's totally okay to give yourself an extra week or so to memorize 44 lines. It's even okay not to get another stanza in before you go to sleep.
Obviously there's more... so much more... but a gal at thirty's door needs to get her beauty rest.
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."
Last night I attended a good friend's 30th birthday dinner at his local sushi joint up in San Francisco. Many pounds of sushi and sake were consumed, all washed down with delicious dark chocolate cupcakes and soju dispensed from a mini gas pump. As a gentle reminder that it was indeed a party, one of my other good friends slurred many hilarious things very loudly and then threw up on the floor. All in all, the evening was a win.
Incidentally, last night also marked the one month countdown to my own 30th birthday. As I lie in bed this morning somewhere between dreaming(*) and waking, the imminence of it slapped me in the face. Whenever I mention the upcoming event to people, their response is a (not altogether funny) joke or a conciliatory lecture that thirty really isn't so bad. The latter folks are entirely missing the point, and the former folks always get the same lame joke in response: "thirty is the new twenty."
My notice (and perhaps mild apprehension) of thirty doesn't spring from a fear of losing my youth and vitality, or some cockamamie notion that all of my best years are spent. In fact, I'm excited for something different, even if it's mostly on paper. I think of it much like joining a new club, where my fellow members drink better booze, live in bigger houses, have restaurants to recommend, and make altogether different and more interesting kinds of mistakes. The point is that my thoughts aren't the kind one might expect after watching too much Sex and the City(**).
Rather, my proximity to thirty reminds me that time continues to race down a steep slope, and that five/eight/ten/twenty years can easily pull away from anyone who thinks that there's plenty of time. I'm certainly guilty of that charge often enough. It blows my mind when I consider that ten years ago...
- I didn't know my husband
- I was still a hopeful college student on the East Coast
- My grandfather was alive
- California seemed like the last place on Earth I'd end up
- I'd never heard of the Silicon Valley,
- I had no idea that my current industry and career existed
- I didn't know any of my best friends
- I wasn't legally allowed to drink
- I'd never lived alone
- I hated wine
You'd think that in ten years I'd manage to realize my peristent goal of writing a book, even if it was a bad one. You'd think that I'd have gotten around to having the dog I've always wanted, or scheduling that elusive follow-up visit to the dermatologist. You'd think I would have pursued my odd dream of singing in a self-parodying cover band. In short, you'd think there'd be more time somewhere amidst all that... time.
Five years ago, I made a list of 30 things to do by age 30. It contained exactly the kinds of things that a twenty-five year old would put on that sort of list: learn to play guitar, become fluent in another language, go back to school. It also contained some pointedly "Elaina" things: ask my mother about my father, get my teeth straightened or get over the fact that I have crooked teeth, make a Thanksgiving Day dinner. I've done just over half of them, mostly in passing, as I decided a few years later that many of them weren't really worth doing.
Only one undone item has survived, and I'm determined to get it done in the next 31 days: memorize T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I remember thinking when I made the list that five years was an eternity to accomplish the things I'd set out to do. "And indeed there will be time," I thought. Turns out that five years simultaneously manages to be an eternity and a flash.
While I already fully understand and appreciate its truth, perhaps memorizing the poem will stop me from realizing its truth over and over again.
* Incidentally, I was dreaming of making a large marshmallow, zucchini, bacon, and egg frittata.
** Incidentally, I have been watching too much Sex and the City. It's a slippery slope.
I can't quite figure out if it's fear or discernment that keeps me from doing things. I've either become a very discriminating or completely terrified adult. Regardless, I spend much more time thinking than I spend doing.
"You come most carefully upon your hour..."
w.s. -- Hamlet -- (1.1.6)
"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be..."
t.s.e. -- "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" -- (111)
