Mood: Musical .: Caribou Inside :.
Listening to: .: Ace of Base – I saw the Sign:.
Reading: .: Kidnapped :.
Watching: .: The Breakfast Club :.
Aloha!
So I’m graduated. The last weeks of exams and packing and wrapping things up went smoothly despite their inherent hectic nature. All assignments got in alright and were well completed. I got a lot of my packing done, but work I had to do for clients demanded my attention.
May 8th was my birthday. It was largely uneventful. I had planned to organize a huge party at my house and invite everyone from ISA, Gospel Choir, POC, all art majors and all engineers. I was reprimanded by Agaba for planning my own birthday party and was told not to do it. Not entirely argumentative since I had so much to do, I canceled the plans and left it up to anyone who wanted to do anything. I worked on the Wiiskichaan most of the morning and afternoon, attempting to install a combination switch I found that would enable to control the blinkers, horn and lights. All I ended up succeeding in doing, however, was completely disabling all of the above mentioned components. I’m going to have to take the thing apart again and map out the wiring. The entire electrical system was redone, so none of the wires matched what was in the beat up motorcycle manual I had bought. I was able to repair the bent up and broken headlight and signal light, so at least it LOOKS nice. (
Victoria Vanni, Agaba Bisengo, Inya, Hope Newcomer, and Kevin Markey took me out to Bangkok House that evening. It was very pleasant.
On Tuesday ISA MuKappa had a joint party for all those who had birthdays in May; and a couple people gave me cards. Inya came by (despite being rather sick with a cold) and gave me a gift. It was the most beautiful tie I had ever seen. She and I sometimes talked about different styles people wore when we watched movies together, and she was reputed on having an excellent sense of style in men. The tie was accompanied with a gift card for Boscov’s, with which she instructed me to get myself a shirt that went with it.
Thursday night Tamika took me out for dinner. I got dressed up in my new suit (not the tie, of course) and rode my motorcycle over to her house. We went out to the Firehouse on 2nd street. It’s about the classiest place to eat in Harrisburg, outside of Passage to India (which I’d been to too many times anyways). The Firehouse was a nice place, basically built around the theme of the Fire station it was renovated from. When we walked in, no hostess was in sight, so we seated ourselves. A few minutes later, a waitress came by and asked us politely if we had been served yet. We replied no, and her face turned cold and she reprimanded us for not waiting to be seated. She was pretty rude to us the rest of the night. I ordered the Firehouse sampler (basically a plate of everything they had that was fried) and Tamika had a plate of paste with shrimp and chicken. It was delicious, but for the price there wasn’t much to the meal. I’m going to look around the area some more when I live there to find some other places. Conversation was easy between us, as it usually is. We ended up leaving a full tip for the waitress. I thought about it later, and wondered at the mindset I had. My initial response was to leave a smaller tip as a kind of retaliation for her rudeness. But now that I think about it, in doing so I’d be no better than she. It is something that I try hard to do; to treat people kindly though they may not do the same to me. What I found interesting is how natural a reaction it was to circumvent these ideals when it came to something like tipping. I wonder how many other cultural things like that are built into the way I react.
Tamika and I went for a walk along the Susquehanna afterwards. It was a beautiful night and the breeze was both cool and warm off of the water. It was very dark, but the lights along the bridges lit everything up beautifully, and I was struck at how magnificent this quaint little city was.
On our way back to her room we met up with Nick Maclahn (a good friend of mine who is an MK to the Philippines). He was visiting at a party and just up in the area. He’s mostly a vagabond, hitchhiking for transportation and all of his clothes handouts. It’s all by choice, of course, he likes living that way. Tamika and I went to her apartment and watched The Ring, and Nick joined us for the first half. That movie is messed up. They could have given it a happy ending, but decided to really mess everyone up. I don’t like scary movies much; simply because I’m not easily scared, so it doesn’t bother me. This one at least was well done cinematographically, so it wasn’t lame. It was pretty gross at points, though.
I spent most of the day Friday packing. I took a break to go outside in the late afternoon, and Twi Jackson passed by the house. He stopped and rolled down the window to chat. He mentioned he was going to go get something to eat, so I said I’d join him. We went to Burger King. Setti also jumped in as we were leaving and sat in the back.
Rumors of something between her and Twi had been going around, but as far as I know Setti is still with her boyfriend.
Anyhow, she stayed very quiet in the back seat, and didn’t even order anything when we got to Burger King. Twi and I talked a lot. We got back, and dropped Setti off, then went to eat our lunch in the Student Union. Niambi and he had stopped talking two weeks previous. Twi always had an air of silence about him towards me, but I had long suspected that the two of us were very similar. I don’t make male friends easily, I simply don’t relate to a lot of things that the typical guys do. This year, however, I had found I bonded well with the African American men on campus, especially in terms of aspirations and what I was concerned with.
Niambi had been… spending more time around with me. She had taken an interest in my poetry, and even Inya had taken notice; confronting me about her being my new “flavour of the month”. Needless to say, I was a bit offended by that, but it got my attention. I gave her a couple rides on my motorcycle. She screamed her head off, even though I only drove her a couple feet… but she asked twice more for rides. I began to realize perhaps some of the time she did it to hurt Twi, because he was often in the area when she gave me attention. And I could sense it ticked him off. I’ve also sensed the rift between him and Niambi the past little while (they had gone out before). In any case, he opened up to me, and we talked for several hours in the Student Union about all kinds of things. I can relate a lot to him, because a lot of what he went through, I’ve gone through and he and I reacted in much the same way.
Baccalaureate happened on Friday night, and Gospel choir sang for it. Immediately before the performance, one the MC’s came up to me and asked me if I would sing the Alma Mater with them. I said sure. Right before the show started my parents arrived. The Baccalaureate itself was nice; good music and good message. We sang well also; it was a good closing piece to finish off the year of Gospel Choir. Tamika and I had gone to Reverend Thomas earlier and asked if we could stay with the choir after we graduated if we were still around. He agreed, saying he would love it if we stuck around. Gospel choir might be taking a trip to the Bahamas next year, and I would love to be a part of that.
The reception after the Baccalaureate was pretty boring, though. Because my parents and my brother Nick had come late, they had stood at the back for the entire service. The food at the reception wasn’t particularly impressive either. I knew that running them around the gymnasium trying to find the few friends of mine who had actually stayed for the reception wasn’t the best idea, so I looked around for Lisa instead. Lisa had invited me and my parents to a get-together at her parent’s suite. I found her, and then called over my parents. We all went over to her parents’ suite along with Kyna Waters and Derek Cohick (also both Art graduates). Nick wasn’t feeling so great, so he wasn’t very talkative. Everyone seemed to get along nicely, and we left after a bit because my parents were tired.
The next day was the graduation ceremony itself. Midway through us getting out gowns in order and getting in our lines, I realized (once again) how affected I was. I had showed up in a suit and tie. Derek showed up in a Hawaiian shirt which he proudly wore the collar of outside his graduation gown. I looked down at my own tie. I wore the tie Inya had given me… but I didn’t feel like wearing it. I felt unnerved. I can’t describe it fully; I just knew I wasn’t right. There were different parts of me competing. Half of me wanted to have a regal attitude that demanded the respect of others, and the other half wanted to be the savage that I had grown up to be; wild and un-tamable. I looked down at the bracelets that lined my arm. I have about 10 bracelets on my right arm, all various materials; stone, seashells, hemp, twine, wood, metal beads, woven string… All hailing from different places; Kenya, Cameroon, Trinidad, Ecuador, Bahamas, Nigeria… They were all gifts to me from different friends. I rolled up the sleeves on my white button shirt. It was an Italian shirt. Something I had rooted through countless Salvation Army racks to find. Priced no less than 75$ in a retail store, it was smooth; woven with strands of silver string evenly spaced to make a pinstripe that was invisible unless under light. It was the softest silk, gentle to the touch; that the softest breeze could send billowing—and I felt uncomfortable wearing it. I was slowly fitting in with the crowd, and I was repulsed. 11 years I had done that at home. I had fallen into the same rut again when I had gone out with Caroline; she had morphed me into every other bloke who went to Messiah; with a polo shirt, khaki pants, and short haircut. It wasn’t the look I needed to battle, but the state of mind.
I thought about the girls who had given me the bracelets. At the Baccalaureate, one of the things Dennis Hollinger had mentioned was the importance of choosing who you surrounded yourself with, you had to find people whom you admired the qualities of and learn from them. I thought about Inya. I wasn’t sure I was looking objectively enough. Sure, she had shown me friendship and maybe even love fleetingly, but what about the rest of the time? Was she changing me in the way I wanted to be changed?
I began to realize much of the inherent problems that existed within ISA MuKappa were due to the privileges that were given to the international students who came to Messiah. Messiah College is a pretty expensive school as schools go, so anyone coming to it from another country had to be pretty high up on the food chain for their parents to be able to afford it. I, on the other hand had come from a relatively impoverished family, whose income was based largely on the donations of our church friends down south. Naturally, I had a bit of a different mindset. Niambi and Nick had pointed this out when I pulled up the Baccalaureate on my motorcycle in a suit; my hair wild. They described me as the dark mysterious man; much the character portrayed in movies. I thought about it later, and I agreed with that.
The ceremony was sweltering sitting out on the soccer field; and though occasional breezes brushed our brows every now and then, we practically melted under our gowns. We pored over the order of events booklet, searching for people we suspected were seniors but were never quite sure in order that we might cheer for them. Finally they called up the school of the arts. I followed the line up, and I felt… like I hadn’t in a while. I was me, and I could do anything that was me. They draped the neck piece around me, and my name was called.
“Benjamin Joseph Young Savage!”
I smiled.
President Sawatsky sat in his chair, looking much worn out. Ignoring the procession, I looked out into the audience.
Suddenly, I whipped off my cap and gave a loud whoop, jumping in the air. The crowd cheered, and I leaped over to President Sawatsky. He beamed at me, and shook my hand. “Well done, sir.” He said.
I walked over to the Provost Kim Phipps and she handed me my degree. “We’re going to miss you, Ben.” She said, and gave me a hug.
I returned to my seat, and everyone gave me high fives. As we walked out Lox, Saxton and Bondorew cheered for me.
My parents and I went back to my room and we finished cleaning up and packing, and then left. We drove to the Lathrop’s first; they agreed to park my motorcycle in their garage while I was back home. After that we all drove back to Connecticut. My parents had a bag of graduation and birthday gifts for me in the car. My sister had made me a mug she had thrown herself with a Celtic design in it, and my mom made me a pot with a Naskapi design on it. There were a bunch of cards with money in them too; they’ll put a dent in the debt I owe.
We got to Connecticut late Saturday night, just before my sister arrived back from her prom. She and her boyfriend are still going steady. Sunday morning we went to church at the Alliance. Steve Misarski preached, because they still did not have a full time pastor. Steve is a good friend of my family’s; he came up and helped with the renovation of our house in Schefferville. He had just come back from a trip as a military chaplain, and it was obvious that it had changed him quite a bit. He showed a deeper value for time, passion for his ministry, and also a more enthusiastic approach to worship. He had regularly held gospel services in Iraq and it was rather interesting to see him hit this relatively conservative church.
We went out to see Beth’s senior show at Norwich Free Academy after that. It was pretty impressive. It was obvious that some kids really didn’t give two rips about art and didn’t try, but there were enough excellent artists in there to make it a truly excellent show.
Early Monday morning my Dad and I started out on our trip.
We had a bit of trouble at the border; because my Dad has a Canadian permanent resident card but also was driving an American vehicle and had an American drivers license. They didn’t like that very much, because it looked like my Dad had two residences. They agreed to let us go if we imported the vehicle, though… so we did and went on our way. We stopped in St. Foy last night, and as we speak we are approaching the Tadoussac Ferry crossing the St. Lawrence. I’m going to go take some pictures.
Peace, Love & Fleur de Lys.
