Hmmm. Firm.

Word of the week from COD.

I was listening to my uber-favorite podcast, BBC Radio Wales' "All Things Considered" - not to be confused with NPR's version (I think I may have said this once before), while going about my constitutional amidst the autumnal splendor of Danada/Herrick Lake preserve. The mellifluous Roy Jenkins, as soothing a voice as can be heard on the radio, was interviewing some old geezer who had kept a diary on a daily basis for more than thirty years; it might have been fifty, but I forget. Seeing as how the "blog" is the contemporary version of the Letts Schoolboy's diary, the medium that the interviewee had begun his diarying with, I find it unimaginable that I could maintain such a regimen. For one thing, there is a degree of narcissism involved in writing something in a form for others to read. Being one visited occasionally by self-doubts about the value of my thoughts, that narcissism is occasionally defeated. And then there are the times that one simply has nothing to say.

Dulcie looks up from the kitchen table over her glass of Punte Mes (I have introduced her successfully - perhaps too successfully - to the delights of Italian bitter aperitifs, which all started with the search for Fernet Branca inspired by James Harrison Patterson) with the question, "Did I know that T.S. Eliot wrote Prufrock when he was only 23?" Since among the immortal lines there are bits such as "I grow old, I grow old..." I found that fairly amazing. On more than one occasion do I find myself identifying with the poem's hero. The tea and cake and ices lines: definitely been there. At the moment though, my trousers are not yet rolled. For the moment. Later, who knows.

Given that the youth of today read about five minutes a day on the average for pleasure, I wonder how many have heard of T.S. Eliot. Let alone read anything.