Bell Fountain Retreat
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
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I woke to light as harsh as the internet. The screen, I thought, find the screen and kill it. I rose to hunt the offender. It was three a.m., the dark hour of the soul, or as we call it in the 21st century, any hour that ends in “o’clock.”
There was no screen: the glow of fresh snow lit the night. I couldn’t turn it off. 2025 had scrambled and stolen the seasons. Summer lasted until late October, followed by two weeks of fall. Now white light flooded my room like the inverse of a shadow.
Winter was early. I felt stuck and circumscribed, like living inside an app. I avoid apps when I can. The ones I have line my phone like little prisons. “Walled gardens,” they call them, like you can stop to smell the roses and the hills don’t have eyes.
Sometimes I think how the flat earth movement gained popularity when the apps did. A flat earth seems easy to step off and leave behind. I picture a flat earth rotating like a plate in the microwave, laden with comfort food ready at the beep. Safe and shallow, warm on command, instead of an iron magnet drawing heat from a relentless star.
It’s 3:30. I’m restless at night because I won’t get to be restless in the day. I won’t walk it off like I’ve done for months. In summer, I looked for birds; when the birds migrated, I looked for turning trees; when the trees shed their leaves, I found a new place to wander, new friends to see.
But I can’t go and make my visit. My friends are in the graveyard, and Bellefontaine Cemetery is closed for snow.
* * *
Bellefontaine Cemetery is a historic site of sophisticated grandeur that fades the moment you hear a St. Louisan pronounce it “Bell Fountain.” It’s not the worst example of Missouri French: “Ver-sails” and “Bo-Dark” (Versailles and Bois D’Arc) win. But it’s a contender.
No one says “Bellefontaine” like I do. “Bellefontaine” fuses my past and present into an involuntary barbaric yawp. My St. Louis fake French combines with my Central Connecticut Polish-American accent: yes, that is a real thing, a niche accent studied by linguists. You can read about it in The New York Times.
My Polish ancestors passed down their glottal stop, leaving me incapable of ...
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