Rain
A couple of years ago I posted lots of dolls on I Cite. Today I liked that this one showed up under "rain." It rained the entire graduation. Cold and wet. I was so glad not to be the Colleges' president. Other faculty shrugged and said that's why he gets the big bucks. I'm now done being the chair of the faculty, a bureaucrat. It sucked so much, like perpetually trying not to step in shit. Only after it's done does anyone say something supportive (and I just learned about about a future student with familial ties to both the Supreme Court and organized crime; this is so cool).
Anyway, back, to graduation: we (the faculty and trustees) were under a tent. The graduates and families got soaked. Oddly, none looked like wet rats. The utility of the mortarboard and polyester of the gowns. I liked that graduates invited us to their parties. It seems to me that earlier in my career I was invited to more, but maybe that's because the fraternities liked that I wrote on aliens. Or because I was younger.
I finished the grading before the ceremony today. And so the melancholy and assorted displacements and cathexes have dissipated. And here, too, is a loss, although perversely I can enjoy my symptom and store my attachments and losses into a file for future publications. Some who are dear to me loathe this aspect of my personality, my distancing or incorporating which is odd when you think of it insofar as these are actually opposing directions.
The best: partying with physicists. I love them. One can be a Stalinist with them. There's such a thing as truth. Prove me wrong. Really, I can't say enough about my admiration for physicists. One just built a turkey blind in his yard--in the city. They don't mock my survivalist paranoia but instead advise me on how to install solar panels in the roof. And one was parliamentarian while I did this faculty business. And he totally saved my ass as I had to chair the last meeting of the faculty (we voted the degrees for crying outl oud--hundreds of students may not graduated, ok I exaggerate... this reminds me: a neat part of my recent trip to NYC was overhearing some guy on the street say to some other guys: "so, ask me about how fast zombies are, like can they run or what?).
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