Pep talk.

This is it. Graduation day.

That seems so puny to say. But it is – graduation day. Everything is going to be okay. Writing that cuts like fire across thought and time but still is reactive to the moment? That’s graduation day. Time the revelator, revelating that this graduation day – hey-hey. Been a lonnnnnnnggggg three years. Pleasure. Pain. Rage. Insecurity. Pride. Fulfillment. Grace. Forgiveness. Pettiness. It all came out at this college, this bourgeoise institution of gatekeeping, this receptacle of higher learning (and shit), this complicit institution, this training ground, this jungle gym, this very expensive resume stuffer. This school.

Columbia University. Friend to Israel. Proponent of the world market. Rich person’s play pool. And, quite legitimate, receptacle of learning (and shit.) But I hope you hear that there’s some good stuff mixed in there. Because I love some of my teachers. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. I’m not going to try to write it down, that seems tedious. But at least I was exposed to many, many, many more modes of directing.

Wondering what my teachers think of me. Anxiety, because I may well want them to say something amazing, holding this graduation up to the standards of the last two, there’s no need for that. I’m going to have to have some kind of…flexibility today. Some openness to whatever may come, however it goes, however it feels. No emotion unwelcome (even if unpleasant) or denied, no experience wrong.

What am I talking about here? What am I writing? Is this some kind of pep talk for me? Perhaps. How will I get through the long day. I’ll get through it with my family. My fiancée. Her family. My friends. And my colleagues.

Is this cynical? Yes, probably. I’m allowing the thoughts to bubble. Consider me the coffee maker of my thoughts – I don’t need to do much, they’re already warm. I just let them percolate and drop out the bottom of the basket into the carafe.

No stories today. Nothing in me. (Well, a girl in a cape – for a second – a split second. And where was it going? Why do I think that means she was going to jump out of a fourth story window? And was she meant to survive? I don’t know. My brain is a strange place…)

Katie. And Frankie. And Matthew. And Ruthie. And Sammy. Five.

Mom and Dad. Here today to see me graduate from Columbia.

I wish I was someone else. Or I should say, thinking, unpleasant, self-doubt. Worry. But I sit here (this always comes…) in the sun-streaming room even though the sky is grey the sun is shining through, with my art on the wall trailing…along.

Why am I writing today? I might learn something. It feels good? It kind of does. I’m thinking of grey skies, green fields, horses. A knight who’s not a knight. A squire in a kinght’s armor and colors, riding fiercely across a green field under a grey sky. A stone with a circular hole in the middle, the shape in the hole of two half rings, almost together. When we put our rings together.

We make Captain Planet.

It’s not that I’m not a storyteller, it’s that I don’t seem to give myself permission to be one. Constantly trying to do it right, or not do it until I can, but that will never work. Nor is it an exclusive club I’m trying to get into. It’s an exercise, an experience, a way of living

Life.

The mother tree, branches spread out in all directions. Up near the top, her bald crown, the stripped branches. Someone is climbing. Me? Am I climbing that mother tree?

I’m gonna make it. There were times I said, don’t think too much, don’t worry, don’t do anything rash, just put your head down and make it to graduation.

I did. I am here. Here I am. And I could have not been I could have graduated next year but I didn’t .

I’m graduating now. And it’s just an … event. A demarcation of time. Apparently for my pride and pleasure. Can I make that number 1 today?

No extra smiles, less I feel like smiling.

No people pleasing talk, less I feel like talking.

No proving, no self-flagellating, no appeasing, less I feel like those things. A chance for me to appreciate my accomplishments.

Accomplishments I’m scared of, because they were hard, some of them, and what if I have no more?

Accomplishments I’m afraid to be proud of, less someone takes them away from me.

Hope not.

Nay, thinking, unpleasant, fear. That’s okay too. Unpleasant. But it’s allowed to be there. There’s something deeper. There’s a reason I’m doing what I’m doing. By doing it, perhaps I’ll find out.

Time ticks into the last minute here. Soon out into the living room to have lunch with Rebecca. Softness reigns, entering my center, my chest, smoothing what’s hard there. Breath, the liquidator.

Breathing. That’s all I’m doing. That’s all I have to do today. Breathe.

I smile.

Ferdinand Knab – A Fountain by a Lake in the Foreground – 1899