The Overwhelming Question

Some of you may have noticed a pattern emerging here through the uncanny amount of references to T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”- the name of the blog itself, as well as the title of my one and only post thus far. At the risk of stating the obvious, I absolutely love this poem- I wrote out each stanza in a different color and hung them on my wall last year with forbidden double-sticky tape. I paid twenty  one dollars and seventy five cents worth of dorm room damages for this poem. For those of you who haven’t read it, here it is: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html.

Hardly motivational refridgerator material, right? A lovely, tragic, beautiful contradiction of wasted potential and human isolation. A hallmark of the Modernist movement.  An infinite list of poignant questions left unanswered, asking “And should I then presume? And how shall I begin?”

After months of ignoring suggestions to create a blog, I find myself faced with the same overwhelming question: what in the world do I have to say? It may not seem like much at first glance, but take it from a person who freezes in horror when the ice breaker of choice is “tell us something interesting about yourself,” the overwhelming doesn’t begin to cover it…so I’ll add daunting, intimidating, and formidable into the mix. Perhaps it’s the “interesting” that ties my tongue. After someone who says “A dolphin once saved my life,” the only thing I have to offer is “I love Italian food.” Fact. I doubt a mere chronicle of the mundane details of life would be “interesting.” How many cups of coffee I had last night (4), the number of pages of reading I did for my classes (336), or the number of life forms in my apartment right now (6- me, three other roomates, a betafish named Gatsby, and a flapjack plant named…you guessed it, Flapjack) are not topics of earth-shattering, mind-blowing importance. I can actually feel you falling asleep as you read this.

So…what’s my point? I’m so glad you asked- thanks for pulling me back from the edge of that other tangent I was about to embark upon!

My point is, this blog is one way of answering Prufrock’s overwhelming question. Even if my humble musings on life and literature don’t ever disturb the universe, IT IS WORTH IT AFTER ALL. I, for one, dare to eat a peach, and I don’t care to cut this matter of living off with a smile- I dare to do something as utterly insignificant and predictable as adding another blog to the millions of others dangling like satelittes out there in cyperspace. Like many other college students out there, human voices have awakened me and I’m simply trying not to drown.