27 posts from November 2007

University of Pennsylvania

I can’t remember the exact date of my college graduation. But I can remember everything else.

Ominous gray clouds on a blustery May morning belied the excitement of thousands of intelligent bodies in black dressing gowns and square hats. In such a crowd, we all found ways to distinguish ourselves. There were tassels and bright colored scarves bearing the names of honor societies, academic clubs and special affiliations woven brilliantly through an otherwise somber tapestry. We gathered in a sea of faces, distracted by our own expectations. So many took it all in at once snapping pictures, hugging and laughing as we waited for clouds to break and the procession to commence. I could see no one but him. Just off to my right, standing fifteen feet from us the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania, stood a University employee who had been waiting for this day since my first library card. 

Once I found him, I couldn’t take my eyes from him. My father. I remember thinking that I had never seen him smile as broadly as he was. He snapped me, how I wished for a camera to snap him, but the image remains indelibly imprinted in my mind.  He was wearing a suit, like every other proud parent, but atop his head was the same baseball cap he wore every morning on his way to work at one of the campus libraries. The library system he would call his employer for over 25 years. He stood with his coworkers, the folks who were like an extended family of aunts and uncles. As the procession began down a wet and slippery Locust Walk my father moved with us. Grinning. Eyes welled. Accepting congratulatory slaps on the back from friends he had grown up with in the outlying neighborhood.  And he didn’t take his eyes off me until we were forced to separate at the entrance gate to Franklin Field.

So often, I am met with quiet disdain for my Penn pride. Snobbish, privileged Ivy League kids with their portentousness and lack of grace. My pride is often mistaken for a sense of entitlement, but I understand the reasons behind the eye rolls and murmurs when I observe so many of my fellow alumni. Still I feel angry. Because they don’t know the Penn that my eyes gleam with pride for. They do not know why I proudly display that alumni banner. They don’t understand why my Dad and I trade Penn merchandise year after year. I promise you, it’s not for the reasons most would think.

My graduation day was not mine, it was my father’s. His moment of affirmation. My Dad didn’t attend his graduation once he completed the degree program at Wharton. He was working a full time job at the university, raising two children and trying to start his own business. There was no time for celebration. Bills needed paying, life needed living, kids needed tending.  I didn’t see his actual degree until my freshman year at the same institution. It was surreal at that time; his pride. He had an abundance of it, pride and appreciation of me. He struggled with letting me see it, but occasionally I knew how to find it like a child who finds what looks to be a secret treasure.

My Penn was not affluence and privilege. My Penn was two generations of hard work, endurance and perseverance in the face of countless people who said it couldn’t be done. It would be impossible for a man with a GED, home from war, to matriculate into Wharton, with a young family and a full time job. Eight years of night school later, my father was a Wharton grad. So while I complained about getting chased home every day by slick pretty girls who wanted to whip my ass, my father shrugged and said, get it done. When my first round of SAT scores didn’t cut the requirement, he shrugged and said, get it done. When he dropped my political science textbook into my lap the summer after I completed ninth grade with the command that I outline the entire book over the summer, it was get it done. And when I received my acceptance letter, the message was the same. Get it done.

We rode to the University everyday in his beat up Dodge Caravan. We talked about my classes when I dropped in on him at the library, or met him for lunch. He told me stories of the Penn he remembered on our drives back to West Oak Lane each evening. We had a shared experience that belonged exclusively to us. Many nights I sat up in my back bedroom studying and fearing his wrath if I ever faced academic probation, wondering if I ever wanted this dream. Some times, I didn’t. But he instilled in me a belief about our legacy at the University. His as a student who was told no, but always managed to keep pushing until someone said yes. My mother as the granddaughter of Julian Francis Abele, one of the chief designers of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and first African American graduate of Penn’s school of architecture. And so I persisted. And so I prevailed. As my father did. As my great-grandfather did. As many other people from various economic backgrounds and social statuses, did.

That is my University of Pennsylvania. It is blue collar. Determined. Strong. Willful. Persistent. Unwavering. My University of Penn pride rests in the eyes of every employee on that campus that makes a sacrifice in the hopes that one day their children will reap the greater benefit. It lies in my memories of summer camp, running down Locust walk with thick pigtails flying and no comprehension of what made me any different than the students I watched studying on the broken button in front of Van Pelt library. It is in the smiles of the people on that campus who raised me, looked after me and loved me as one of their own.

Am I proud to be a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania? Yes. But before you assume you know why, perhaps you’ll want to know my story.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

I will also interpret where possible...

1. Lamento (No Morro) - Sergio Mendes.
This has no words that I am able to interpret, which probably means I've said too much. But since when has that ever stopped me?

2. Loving You (Interlude) - Tony Toni Tone.
Again, brings up no issue, other than this...what the fuck is the point of interludes and such? I always wanted them to either end a lot sooner, or be a track. It's kinda like a kiss and tongue. You're either in or your out. In the middle is just...stupid.

3. Celebration - Kanye West.
While the bloom is off the rose with me and 'Ye...this album I do so love. What am I celebrating? My own joie de vivre. It's a celebration, bitches.

4. Best Man - Faith Evans.
An indication it's time to do some further scrubbing of my music collection. </vomit> No offense Faith, but I either love your songs, or want to torture people with them. Kinda like that tongue thing.

5. Congratulations - Blue October (featuring Imogen Heap).
Okay, that's just mean. That is all.

6. Vals of the Maldrake - Javier Navarrete (Soundtrack to Pan's Labyrinth)
Sinister, like my mood will be if I get any more funny jokes like song 5.

7. Ordinary Pain - Stevie Wonder.
You're dumb to think I'd let you be
Scott free without some pain from me
Heard your song and took a chance
But to your music I can't dance
Go tell your story 'sob-sad'
About you blowin what you had
Since one ain't good enough for you
Man...you better go ahead and tell it. *shakes head*

8. Pay to Play - Lenny Kravitz
I don't believe in what you do, I don't believe in what you say...Okay iTunes, you're redeeming yourself. Nice turnabout.

9. Do It To Me - Usher.
*fans face* In front of everyone? You're not even my type!

10. Gotta Make It Through - 4.0.
Yes we do. I loved the harmony of this Boys to Mennish group. I am still sometimes a sucker for four part harmony...even though R&B has grown increasingly unimaginative to me. I don't mind ending on this one.

I would also like to add that I never use shuffle because it almost always plays stuff I'm not in the mood for.

Okay this is weird...

Someone that I mostly admired and respected in the virtual space seems to have blocked and booted me on most of the virtual communication channels that I currently use. Perhaps this is a bit of the chickens coming home to roost, as I am known to quietly excommunicate people from my life when I find something unhealthy about my interactions with them. I shouldn't care...I'm puzzled as to why I am frankly considering this was not a relationship I invested considerable time or energy in. So I'm wondering how I might have offended as impersonal as it's been.

• Was it my massive use of the word fuckery?
• Did I offend this person with my excessive use of snark?
• Are my tweets and posts suddenly banal?

Granted, people come and go. I understand this, interests come and go. But to block? Wow. That sends a pretty strong message. And like most cardinals, when I am told "do not enter" I immediately want to know the reasons why. I like to know why I am disliked, nearly to the point of being preoccupied with it. Not to debate my worthiness, but I'm simply dying of curiousity. I'm fascinated by negative responses. I've eternally struggled with not knowing the WHYS of things.

The innurnets iz a strange community. Like any other, I suppose. I feel strangely proud of my new blocked status. Must mean I've said or done something especially provacative...or stupid. Both are entirely possible.

What's your alma mater?
Submitted by Lies.

University of Pennsylvania

"Mars retro in Cancer generates a confused emotional state, placing those most affected at the mercy of the environment... Because Mars in Cancer normally generates a bold, independent and fearless nature, during the retrograde phase when nature is turned upon its head we should restrain the urge to exercise undue or tyrannical authority over everything and everybody within the home...This position makes the temper rather uncertain and there is a tendency for people to get restless being inclined to change occupations.

Beware domestic troubles at home, frequent if not violent scenes and quarrels, child and spouse abuse, etc. It also indicates accidents by fire in the home due to carelessness or lack of past preparation."

- Astrology on the Web

I mentioned this in an earlier post. You know I love exploring the fuckery that is retrograde. Maybe it's the slew of things going on with me (the unrest of family burials, the edge of depression that holidays bring, my truck shut down over the weekend)...but I find my usual proper perspective waning.

I am angry. About historical things, about future events I can neither see nor predict...I am finding myself getting perilously close to picking fights that will only disturb the sleeping dogs I've agreed to let lie. I want certain people to make an appearance, so I can say things that may guarantee their disappearance from my life for eternity.

I am surprised by my blood lust. I know I can be uncomfortably direct, on any given day...but this desire to say things that I know will have crushing effects is exceeding my normal awareness that ugly words only bring regret. I want collateral damage.

If it seems I've been absent, it's because I am. I'm sitting very deeply in the back of my cave, burning cedarwood and hoping I can remember that these times pass. I'm waiting for clarity to push past my fog and bring a quiet storm. Right now, I'm that pat of butter that's been spread too thin.

Mars? Get going. Because life doesn't have a reset button for me to press once I've gone and said too much.