Like a patient etherized upon a table

Being another dose of dailyness.

Blogging for a break from translation. It's going well, I started earlier than usual today and so will be finished here at 7 p.m. despite doing an hour and a half more than my daily target of five hours. That's actual constructive working hours, by the way: we self-employeds don't get paid for taking coffee breaks or stealing paperclips or discussing football around the water cooler like you office-worker types do.

The weather is changing: the day has turned overcast and windy, and the temperature is dropping fast. The forecast is to return to just-above-zero for the weekend. It's both a good thing and a bad decision, that I seized the opportunity to wear my leather jacket today for the first time in 2008: it'll be a while before I get another chance, but let us hope that I don't freeze solid on the eight-minute walk home.

It amuses me to watch myself becoming part of the neighbourhood of Rose Street, to be on nodding terms with the pram-pushing moms and their kids, to be recognized by the mailman and the UPS guy when we pass. I am glad that I made the decision to move my office here, and extremely fortunate that G and U are so seldom here. Their presence is far more distracting and interrupting than the view through the window; even when they leave me in peace I am disturbed by their actions and interactions behind me.

Spoke to a friend from London last night, who phoned up to invite me to his fiftieth birthday celebrations in three weeks. I am inclined to go, just for a weekend, even if both time and money are short at present. Makes me think again about my own upcoming birthday, and think that I should really consider doing something celebratory-ish about it. At the very least, I should delve deeply enough to establish why it is that I feel such a reluctance to celebrate, and deal with what I find under that particular stone. One step at a time, dear grasshopper.

[Updated a little later] I've just re-read "Prufrock," having googled it to be sure that I'd quoted correctly in this post's title. Damn, but it's good. I had forgotten what a fine poem it was, and what a superb voice Tom had; and I had definitely forgotten that it was rhymed verse. It's been many years since I last read this, because I gave away my copy of the Collected Poems and have never found a replacement.

Read the poem and the Wikipedia article, and enjoy.