gone

this is the one where im supposed to talk about all that college has meant to me, etc. ideally, it should sound like colson whitehead or jonathan lethem has written it. someone like that. but for me, those guys arent very good. so i dont really know what that leaves me with. anyway. feels good right? anticlimactic, though i suppose thats the norm for me with these sorts of things. meta- this will not be.

as i write this, im actually more preoccupied thinking of what song/video or whatever to put at the end.

i actually got a pretty good idea for it, just now, but hold on.

i dont really know how to frame this. lessons learned? stuff i was supposed to do but didnt. still havent read the statue, nor been in fort hill. the latter because i hate calhoun, that could be the reason. what i go back and do it over? which part? hard to say, itd be a bit dull wouldnt it, all those same classes over, half of which i pretty much already had in hs. thad be like doign it over 3 times then wouldnt it? certainly thats the case for the first two years. also, my liver probably couldnt handle the do over. also, predictably tuition would increase and my scholarships wouldnt, so id have to pay them money. probably wouldnt be too thrilled about that. so no, i probably wouldnt do it again, but at the same time i certainly wouldnt do it any differently. maybe ill eat those words in a dozen years, or less. or more.

its funny, for someone as fascinated by origins, endings and paradigm shifts as myself, i really don't acknowledge what should be perceived to be my own. well because, quite frankly, i dont really think tehy are. i mean what is college supposed to be? vocational training? you give diplomas to dogs when they graduate obedience school. the similarities between that and this are striking. for me seeing radiohead the first time was more significant, hearing burial the first time, seeing horsefeathers, crossing from germany into the czech rep., and really about 100 other things were too. maybe it was that time when i saw a noble laureate and no more than 50 others came. but hey, we have a football team. and frats.

what book was i reading when i came to campus freshman year? lets think, cause this might actually be the only way for me to effectively bookend this thing, and perhaps maybe cause this post to take on the order of something less than than the most obnoxious case of exceptionalism since well, i just thought of a million things. i was reading at least two things. the first was extremely loud and incredibly close by js foer. its fitting that im reading his latest at the moment. circle of life and all that. it be perfect for inarritu to write that into the movie he hasnt yet made, but certainly will, after i meet him at sundance. anyway, its a notable book. and very important in the sense that through it, i was able to realize most people at clemson would not be reading the books that i read. its because that novel makes you look around at people. also it throws a little trauma at the reader but that wasnt important to me at the time, later it would be though. i was also reading the fall by camus. thats a very good book for kids to be reading the first week of their freshman year. because when faced with what we are told are limitless opportunties, all you really are in fact living in is isolation, imprisonment, and these are the realities of existence, collegiate.

wish this was more prosaic, call this a rough draft.

i want to end this on a quote, but instead of somebody elses, ill do my own. i think ill get it right, though ill be corrected if it isnt.

dammit i cant quite remember how it went....

"college-something white people above a certain income level have to do"

not poetic, hardly accurate. but at its core, there is a bit of something to that statement.

rite of passage? for me when i think i rite of passage i think of vikings or stravinsky, both really. and when i think of college i dont htink of vikings, or stravinsky. this is bad bad logic, but im sticking with it.

so, what gets the privilege of being the last song selected by me as an undergraduate? probably something deserving, but winner of the title it is-what was i listening to first day freshman year?

i actually assumed my own existence extends until tomorrow, and with camus being a central part of htis post, well, apparently i havent learned anything. im just tired, ok.

not going to lie, probably was this

or/also

and other stuff. but this is good.