The mistake T.S. Elliot seems to have made...

They discussed gossip to the background of Noticiero Univision. Tales of appearances from the recently deceased Don Chente shrouded reports of deaths in Juarez. He was such a great man, said one. Indeed, replied another. Well, aver si no se nos aparece y nos jala los pies; they all laughed and chuckled.

Outside, the ice-cream truck played “It's a Small World” as the children asked the ice-cream man for popsicles and candies. They all sang and jumped around, repeating the lines, “it's a world of laughter...a world of fear.” They each dispersed, and after the ice-cream man left, everyone happily returned home, happy at the fact of having eaten an enjoyable frozen treat.

I pretended to read on the couch and nodded in and out of sleep.

When I woke, I realized I was somewhere else, even though everything was familiar, yet it was familiarly strange. What do you, reader, suppose I mean, you may ask. Well, take a book, a film, or even an experience that occurred to you (unless you are of the supposition that you, the “subject” (a term I used carefully since subjectivity can merely be objectivity veiled in the sheath of objectivity, but I leave that matter for another time) make things occur, then just suppose you made something occur). Either way, something happened, whether you were the causal agent is another matter, nevertheless, something happened. You internalize the event, and thereby render this an experience, or in some cases a “moment.” Upon revisiting, if indeed it can be re-visited, this moment/experience in time, you will find it skewed by what events have occurred post-initial moment/experience. You may come to find that the book you read while an adolescent, once a tale of fantasy and cheer, is now, transformed, into a tale of horror and awe. Strangely, nothing has really changed except you, what happened? This is what happened to me during my dream. I came back, but everything was strangely familiar, and simultaneously, strangely transformed.

The children outside, now, started playing robot. A game wherein the object was to walk and talk as closest to a cyborg. One of the young boys came out of his house with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other.

Young women looked like clownish figures with cake of make-up, deadening their skin with color and covering up their blemishes, if any. The young men chasing after these women seemed to me to be possessed by an obsessive compulsion, bordering madness and/or some other degree of a psychological disorder, as they were driven mad, with a neurosis of addiction far worse than any drug I had ever seen. Mania! This obsessive behavior that transformed a mere coffee date into a bizarre circus. A reptile on one side and a clown on the other! To imagine! What a spectacle! Sitting across each other, having coffee, each reflecting a facet of each other yet bubbling with desires none could say to each other.

How was I, myself, reader, in the coffee shop? How did I make a leap from the couch to the local bistro, you may ask. Well, that is another thing that puzzles me, for if you would recall, now, earlier I mentioned this idea of causality, whether one can be an agent in a space, or whether things occur to him/her. A predicament echoed earlier by T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock. Indeed, how did I dare disturb the universe? And indeed, did I after all? Or was it mere illusion? The mistake T.S. Elliot seems to have made regards the fact that he believed one can presumably disturb the universe. A major phenomena. In this day and age of hyper-ego-tripping and hyper-stimulation, can there be an agent that even thinks, do I even think? I'm not too certain of it, since as I write these ideas they too have been filtered though a syphon that's been carefully crafted, indeed, crafted, which implies a creator of the craft, somehow, sometime, somewhere. Silently and invisibly, paranoia? Indeed, I would also place myself under such category, but even that is being too kind, the paranoid feels certain of his paranoia, and I cannot say the same of my delusions and of this very likely, self-induced, conspiracy. So I return to the point of disturbance that T.S., old T.S., might've made in the idea that Prufrock even had the nerve to ask whether he dared to disturb the universe, but the great thing about that poem is that he seems to grow old in place, and his life compresses into a pressurized capsule of carefully crafted text. Did he indeed make something? and moreover, How did a cup of coffee and a couple come to invade the space in my head and only to find themselves transformed even further into digitized tid-bits that will someday disintegrate, perhaps re-invigorate, through the fate we are all pre-destined to meet? Questions that continue to disturb me, reader, as I enter the new year and ask myself, what shall I do (indeed can I?) to disturb the universe.