Morning at the Window (T.S. Eliot)

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, 
And along the trampled edges of the street 
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids 
Sprouting despondently at area gates. 
The brown waves of fog toss up to me 
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, 
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts 
An aimless smile that hovers in the air 
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

***

The predominant themes in this poem are isolation and sadness about a society that once was, the loss of meaningful connections. You can say that about many things really, and I suppose that’s also applicable to my state of being at this point. There is a personal and social dimension, indeed but the personal side is put under the glare in a more heightened sense. There was never a time in my young adulthood when I was sure of where I was going. It was a back-and-forth between what I thought I wanted and what I could get at that specific moment. Most of the time, I just drifted, damned mighty lucky, some might say, if one were to look it from the future looking backward. But what is that life anyway and was I right to leave that behind? Have I not become Don Quixote, being reminded now almost every second by my internal Pancho that “if you build your life on dreams, you who have the moonlight in your hands, has nothing there at all”?

Snap back to reality. I am pondering a measly dissertation that could or could not finally usher me in into a new kind of life. It is essentially a piece of paper that supposedly mines mankind’s treasure trove of knowledge with the object of leaving it enriched than when I found it. I don’t really know about that part, the enrichment or enhancement part. But this is the life I chose for now. And so with all the kettlecorn popcorn, instant coffee mixes, savory stir-fries and pasta that can keep my brain running until the day I majestically hand it in for school approval, I will try my darnedest to roam this campus and leave a mark on it (or maybe inside the library) to make it as different as I can than when I first arrived in it. Maybe that’s not such a bad goal for now. Sooner or later, I will finish - “and half a prayer, half a song – thou has always been with me, though we have been always apart.” And then everything is illuminated.

Book I’m reading: Halfway through Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1998 reprint)