HEY! MR. BARNUM .... SAVE A PLACE FOR ME."
Good-bye...
good-bye. A glance, a last look, a deep sigh, a parting gesture, a fond or sorry remembrance. I turn my back on all that I knew for more than four years of my life. I divorce myself, I take final leave, I go away. I relinguish my membership - its status, rights, privileges and prerogatives - as well as its requirements, obligations, duties, and onerous discipline.
Good-bye cruel world...
cruel world. A fitting epithet for a sub-culture so demanding, so pervasive, so all-encompassing, so overwhelming that truly it is a world unto itself. Cruel is a hard word but strangely it typifies this stultifying yet stimulating, subjugating yet emancipating self - contained community. This world - within - a - world is an often arbitrary, impersonal, unsympathetic, insensitive, callous, rigid, goading and insistant taskmaster. Those who qualify, and can afford to enter its confines must subject themselves to its musty traditions, myopic norms, supercilious dictates, and sterile set of rules. Those who fail are cast aside by bean counters to make room for others eager for this ersatz, bittersweet, compressed, compacted process of cranial bombardment under duress.
Good-bye cruel world I'm off ...
I'm off. The mind and body have held together, endured, persisted, prevailed, overcome. And upon the reluctant recipient are foisted the fruits of this curious victory. The standards have been met, the tenure has been fulfilled in the prescribed fashion, the sentence has been served. And so I depart as I arrived: no flourish of trumpets, no fanfare but the frantic milling of countless interned individuals making their own way to or from the semi-cloistered campus. I depart for an unfamiliar world in which to prosper, to exist, to languish, or to perish. Much depends upon my preparedness to employ or disregard the learning and skills, understanding and insight, in sum, ... the experiences I have absorbed in this nourishing yet punishing atmosphere.
Good - bye cruel world I ' m off to join...
to join.
To adjust and accustom myself to; to take up residence and become a part of; to adopt and adapt to; to affiliate and submit myself to; to accept with willingness or aversion, anticipation or dread, confidence or doubt, gusto or regret, ... a walk-on role in Fellini's next film.
Good-bye cruel world I'm off to join the circus...
the circus. This vast, virginal and visionary, but at times, trifling, ravaged and blind; far-ranging, fast-paced and free, but at times, circumvented, torpid and dependent; predictable, pragmatic and promising, but at times, erratic, irrational and threatening; automated, affluent and amicable, but at times, primitive, impoverished, and brutal; cosmopolitan, controllable and contrite, but at times, xenophobic, explosive and unrepentant entity otherwise known as the Crowd, the Masses, Society, the Workaday World, Civilization, Humanity, Mankind, the Present, the Contemporary Scene, Living History, Planet Earth!
Good-bye cruel world I'm off to join the circus.
Hey! Mr. Barnum ...
Mr. Barnum. Everywhere and yet howhere, here and yet there, all-knowing and yet ignorant, all-powerful and yet helpless, dominating and yet inconspicuous, deliberate and yet impulsive, masterful and yet awkward, clever and yet foolish, loving and yet mean, intimate and yet aloof, indulgent and yet stingy, humble and yet implacable, real and yet fanciful. The explorer, the discoverer; the neighbor, the stranger; the friend, the antagonist; the supporter, the detractor; the champion, the challenger; the ruler, the usurper; the strategist, the pawn; the artist, the defiler; the defender, the aggressor; the originator, the destroyer; the patron, the competitor; the overseer, the laborer; the prophet, the disciple; the reformer, the conservationist; the miser, the philanthropist; the obstetrician, the undertaker. The captain of industry, the governer of nations, the moulder of men's minds. The voice of the past, the spokesman for the present, the wave of the future. The supernatural being, the benevolent creator, the giver of life and meaning: The reluctant God, above and within.
Good-bye cruel world I'm off to join the circus.
Hey! Mr. Barnum, save a place for me...
save a place for me. Make room, find a space, a niche, accommodate me. Give me identity, attachment, and belonging. Give me license to operate, ... responsibility, a role, a rank, occupation, distraction, dependence, independence. Let me make the transition. Give me time, something, someone and inspiration. Provoke me. Welcome me, embrace me, treat me as one of your own. Ask of me, give to me, take from me. Bind me and thereby set me free. Not knowing any better, I ask asylum in the world at large. I seek non-rejection. This may be the worst of all possible worlds and yet more dear than any other. I am ready. Integrate me so that some day I may exit this mad planet having spit in the eye of my executioner: reality.
( On graduating the University )