Graduation Speech, by P.T. La Ronde

GRADUATION SPEECH

By P.T. La Ronde

O classmates, classmates.

As we leap toward the future, will we abandon the past? Will we remember these years for the rest of our lives? We lived it up; now will we ever live it down! Ha-ha, I don’t care. I write to you from bed, where I lie recovering from some disease.

I keep slipping in and out of a delirium, and I am having trouble with this speech:

Graduation: you got what you wanted, didn’t you.

Didn’t you? And now there you are: sitting in the shade under a great white tent.

The grass has never looked greener. And there you are on the other side!

Welcome to this ceremony, friends. This is a special time for all of us.

For them and for us: for we’re all here, we’re in it together,

and that’s no coincidence.

This event is about the past, and the future.

That’s what the man said: an ending, but also a beginning:

Well, bullshit. It’s nothing special. Just another day in June. There will be a day like this down the street tomorrow.

So first of all: stop planning things. Consider how dreadful they can be.

In a few years I will blame you for that, but first let’s see if we agree.

I hate the government. I won’t get into specifics, just to say they took away

my scissors at the airport. Without just cause, that’s how I feel about it.

And speaking more broadly,

I just don’t know anymore.

I would betray my education, my ambitions, my class—of 2004—in a heartbeat

for a little boredom, a little peace of mind. Do you feel the same?

Or is that disingenuous.

OK, I will be honest.

It is hard to imagine liking you, 20 years from now. I already don’t like you then,

and I don’t see how that will change.

You must understand: at 32, some with jobs, some between jobs,

now you think it’s OK to think/say things you wouldn’t have said. “Honestly…”

I don’t want to hear it.

You will have the rotund ease of living you anticipated, that’s obvious.

You are married to yourselves, you look like each other, but it’s not that I mind.

It’s not the complacency—oh no: it’s the sinking feeling.

Now you are being too honest.

Slipping away… always already slipping away…

We all should have read some more philosophy, that would have saved us.

Read it sophomore year, later is too late.

But really, predicting, forestalling the apocalypse tuckers me out.

Why bother with that way of thinking?

My speculative imagination wants something to make it feel important, but that’s hard.

And who cares what ends up taking place when we’ll have stopped paying attention.

At least I know that age will improve me:

not wiser, but more vital. More exercise.

Better sex, better reflexes. Age can have that effect.

I may never read as much philosophy… or understand it as well…

I might lose my sensibilities. At least I know it won’t be a care to me then!

And at 45, you will be winking at each other. It is repulsive now,

but it will be a comfort then.

I guess that’s all.

I’d like to express-mail you my box of maudlin experiences, but I’m not sure they would arrive in time, or if the box would make it through inspection.So I’d like to close with something that one of our friends wrote before she disappeared: a love letter.

Here’s to things I can’t understand.

Dear Silly Philosophy,

Embrace me, you warm thing.

Feed me, my soul is growling.

I’ll swallow you and you

Better swallow me whole.

Everything!

Take me somewhere, take the whole thing,

endlessly lead me on.

You are the best-looking chance I have got.

20. The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing

other than the essence consummating itself

through its development.

--G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

So much of this is beyond me:

the light, the dogma, everything.

Still, I want to end my days writhing breathlessly in your grasp.

Please respond soon—

I am growing impatient with you.

Passionately,

Yours.

-- Madeline Elfenbein