[song: Just Move by Uneaq]
To sum up my experience of this milestone,
I would say that everyone else seems to be a lot happier about it than I am. After all, it really marks the end to something I loved. I even told some people I was in mourning. They took pictures of me anyway.
"Goodbyes always make my throat hurt...I need more hellos..."
-Charlie Brown, 1967
In order to cope with my loss, I decided I would find new sorts of classrooms.
For example,
I started playing the glockenspiel, I ordered one off the internet. I think the sound brings clarity to my life. I mostly improvise, but have thought of a few jingles to play over the PA of the sailing beach. Now that I'm a supervisor I can do things like that. I have made it my goal to be able to play Mozart's "The Magic Flute" to speed by the end of the summer, at which point I will treat the sailing patrons to an impromptu classical music concert, preferably on a Sunday evening when all the boats are pulled in and drinks are being poured.
When I brought my glockenspiel to Montreal for my graduation week, the staff missed playing with it so much that they sawed a park district owned kayak paddle into 5 pieces hoping to make a xylophone of sorts of their own. So we can add the xylophone to the list of trends I've started down at the beach, including drinking pirate juice, inserting sailing puns into conversations with patrons and the girls wearing skirts to work.
In order to continue my education I also started scuba diving lessons, which have me excited to explore the world. Underwater is perhaps the coolest visual field we can access; at least the most colorful. Not to mention it feels as though you're floating in zero gravity. What surprises me is that many people don't even consider what it's like in the other 2/3 of the world. When convincing me to take his class, the scuba instructor had me at "other-worldly".
I've been reflecting a lot on how college has shaped me as a person- where I was at the beginning of it and where I am now. One thing that has come full circle is my faith and interest in fiction, which I stopped reading at school in order to make time for all the dense, theoretically challenging texts I had to read for my degree. I lost myself a bit in all that, for if you would have asked me at my high school graduation what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a children's book author. If you asked me now, I would say I have no fucking clue. But I suppose I learned that's what growing up means. Realizing that "knowing what you're doing" is bullshit that adults put on for other adults so that they can convince themselves that everything is "accounted for". I don't intend to fall into that trap. So I'm reading fiction again, where no one is trying to say anything empirical and we can be honest with ourselves.
If Disney on Ice doesn't work out, I figure I'll skate on a cruise ship, scuba diving off the coasts along the way. If not, I'm thinking the Netherlands, Australia, something far. Something new. My recent dream is to work at the Heineken Museum in Amsterdam. Combining my passions for beer and art for the betterment of society.
"Dr. Patrick: How can you joke--and look so serious?
Lizzie Borden: It's a gift."
-Blood Relations
But really, I'm starting to realize that this graduation thing isn't the end, but the beginning of a new chapter. The beginning of MY life, one in which I don't have to ask anyone what to do, or tell them, for that matter. I can go wherever I want, see whatever I want, go with the real flow of things. Move from country to country, paycheck by paycheck. Live with random people. Join new communities. I can take opportunities when they reveal themselves to me, and it will only be up to me, and we will see how good of judgment I really have. It sounds all cliche, it sounds like what your parents and uncles and professors tell you. But now I'm finally feeling it; I'm writing it, goddammnit, I'm bringing it into being.
