American Graffiti

I am so sad about the end-of-term feeling that's around right now. I just don't feel like we students are really wanted, since all the preparations have already begun to make Reed a student-free place. It's Commencement on Monday, which is basically the graduation ceremony (the event at the beginning of the year was Convocation, and the thing at the end is Commencement, makes no sense at all), all these great white tents have been put up all over campus. Strange having your campus and your home transformed right under your feet for a reason that has nothing to do with you; makes you feel like having a attention-seeking tantrum. The whole place is getting cleared out too, and this includes painting over all the walls formerly covered in graffiti. I was very fond of the Reed graffiti, it was mostly amusing but sometimes even quite moving. I especially liked the infinite variety of grout puns (there's a Facebook group), and the "who do you love?" wall in the bookstore bathrooms ("I love a boy who wears baggy pants", "I love someone who lives far away", that kind of thing). Noticed today that they've covered over my two favourite habitually passed pieces of graffiti, both in the creepy staircase leading up and away from the bookstore corridor: "You cannot defeat Robogoats! Robogoats will delete you!!"; and, further down: "Angelina Jolie, she got some big ass." I used to read them out superstitiously as I walked by.

Well, this afternoon was my last deadline for college work. I wrote four short papers today (no wonder I don't feel much like typing any more) and they were all really quite passable. I'll spend tomorrow in the print studio doing some stuff just for me, but really I'm all done. It's undoubtedly a relief to be done, but the parts of my brain that were being occupied with papers and prints are now free to think about sad things. I'll now try to shut up those brainy bits with pizza and alcohol.