Five Stories.

For some inexplicable reason, I was chosen to be one of the student speakers at the 126th Commencement of The Taft School on May 29th, 2016, otherwise known as 'graduation'. I've been at Taft, which is in Watertown, Connecticut, for about nine months after having spent four-and-a-half years at my old secondary school, Maru-a-Pula, which is Gaborone, Botswana. It's been an interesting academic year to say the least. Here's what I had to say:

"I am going to tell you five stories.

Story No. One:

It’s lights out and you’re not in your room. You know for certain everyone else is asleep. You’ve crawled into the artificial gleam of the bathroom stalls, having creeped out of your bed sheets without waking up your roommate. You are lonely, you are tired, you are hungry, you are sad and the world is some irretrievable thing that you can find only here, with your razor pressed against your thigh. You are a dream you are a nightmare you are human it is snowing outside. You remember that walk to the Health Center when the leaves were still burning and flickering orange and red and yellow between the trees and between your feet. You remember how difficult it was to get into your stride while everyone else walked with some sort of purpose with some place to be.  You remember how the mirror tells you that this hopelessness is yours and yours alone, but the mirror can only see what is in front of it. It can’t see everything else- the subtleties of the magazines with people who you cannot possibly look like because their three-dimensional imperfections have been air-brushed into 2-D swimsuit covers; the supreme difficulty of picking the right options at the dining hall because eating well feels like a war of guilt and regret instead of a basic human dignity; and finally, the crude unfairness of feeling that these are your solitary and singular visions and reflections which no one else can see. Yet you are everywhere, nameless but familiar and common and special. You are something, you are someone, you are alone, you are not. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are whole and not just a story.

Story No. Two:

You are new. Maybe from somewhere far away and strange and perhaps even unpronounceable. You walk a little funny, you walk a little slow. It looks like a college, it looks like a castle, it looks like... You are misty-eyed and wonderful and flabbergasted and the polished, grey-brick prep-school pathways smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon.  It seems very big. You seem very small. You try not to think of stranger-danger PSAs when one of your teachers first offers to have lunch with you. You leave that lunch not with the hope that maybe that teacher will grade you a bit less harshly but with the hope that maybe you can have lunch with him or her again and laugh about that one time in college when he or she did that crazy thing that briefly made you wonder if he or she is really meant to be a teacher - though, everyone is young once upon a time. This is your once upon a time, you think, as you walk across the polished grey-brick prep-school pathways that smell musky and old and vaguely of cinnamon and you feel like anything can happen. You are invincible, you are limitless, you contain multitudes.  You are the blue in the sky, the green in the leaves, the red and blue in the school logo- you are proud and happy and romantic and gay and strong and young. Your eyes gleam a little as the sun sets and the stars dance.


Story No. Three:

You haven’t slept for three days straight- at least not quite- you don’t know if what little you’ve had actually counts. Your laptop is in front of you. Your fingers grind away at the keyboard as your write your umpteenth thesis statement this month and prepare to organize your thoughts into five neat paragraphs- you decide that the third paragraph will focus on irony. You are good at this. Your teachers know this, your parents know this, your friends know this; you do not. The cup of coffee in your hand gives you the illusion that you are ready and confident to beat this world into submission, but you are too fast, too steady, and too carefully placed into your corner of this life. You find you cannot fight the revolutions of the world because you revolve with it- and so day turns into night as one paper turns into the next as one quiz turns into the next as one test turns into the next. At the library, you do not explore the bookshelves; you do not wonder, you do not wander into some other journey whose map and compass is not on your syllabus. You sit in your cubicle, you put on your headphones and you do what you are told. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- but things aren’t quite feeling right and you can feel it stirring ever-so-slightly in your chest. You look at your schedule and note the necessities. You are not at fault- this is just how it is- you are breathing but not living. The bell rings. You walk out the library.

Story No. Four:

You are on stage.  You dance a dance that no one else has ever danced before. You sing a song that no one else has ever sung before. You make a speech that no one else has ever spoken before. The boys with the collars holler in approval and the deepness of their voices has a resonance that makes you dance with a certain grace. The girls in their spring dresses scream out your name in a way that makes you sing a little smoother. The faculty with their class-folders look at you with a very specific sort of pride that makes you speak with a voice you never thought you had. You are on stage- not some other shadow of self-pity that you thought was you, not some other whisper of self-consciousness you believed was you- You are on stage. And, because of that, the following things don’t matter: that someone who doesn’t love you has touched your hair again because of the way it kinks and curls and revels in its nappiness; that someone who doesn’t love you has denied you of your right to shout I am brown I am wonderful or I am I woman I am free or I am African I am proud or whatever it is that makes your heart beat the way it does... You are on stage and you are loved and you are needed and that stage just happens to be all of this world- where the only curtain that can stop you from being you is your own. 

Story No. Five:

It is the evening of the senior dance at the headmaster’s house near campus. You are with another commencement speaker and you are climbing something that you shouldn’t be climbing. There is a wooden board purposefully entangled with chains blocking the beginning of the stairs. You slide over it and make your way up the highest structure on the stands in the football field where they put the overhead lights on. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You and the other commencement speaker joke about how tragic and funny it would be if the both of you fell to your deaths two nights before graduation. You think it is exceptionally inexplicable you have been chosen by your classmates to speak to them and for them and about them- you are nevertheless honoured and grateful and happy and anxious and proud. At this high point in the football field, the both of you gaze at the distant light of the school windows at night and you breathe in and then sigh. It is both the beginning and the end of the world, you think as you breathe in another breath and then sigh another sigh. It is dark, it is wonderful, it is spring. You ask each other if you know what you will talk about yet. You both say no. You look at the distant lights of the school windows- each window containing its own little story- and you think: You have no big lessons to say you learned, you have no grandiloquent life advice to offer, you have no ancient wisdom to impart- and you are tired with reciting platitudes. All you have are stories to tell and people to tell them to. You are certain that these stories are enough, for people will take from them what they will and what they must and what they need.  You are certain that these stories are enough, for you will take from them what you will and what you must and what you need.

I love you all. Thank you."

***

Photo credit to Rob Falcetti and The Taft School