That line of T.S. Eliot was a favorite of mine in my more desperate times as a college senior. So when I am feeling desperate more than 50 years later, I know it did not come as a consequence of old age. The distractions are different, but my readiness to put up with them is probably in my DNA.

I am putting November 6 at 2:30 p.m. on my calendar,  to hear an expert on calming technical distractions (Alex Pang) speak to a Princeton University Atelier lass on “Contemplative Computing: Reclaiming Attention in the Age of Distraction.

Pang wrote The Distraction Addiction, with one of the subtitles “Taming the Monkey Mind.”

I just wonder if, after so many years, my distractable simian mind even wants to be tamed.