Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below:
CEREMONY OF THE GRADUATES
Somewhere, USA:
The arena is a vast civilization all enfolded with its personal ethos.
Chatting herds of families and extended families and kin and friends and neighbors and bonded groups and stragglers and roaming restless kids and huggers and bussers and handshakers and symbolic gesturers and signalers and pre-graduates and tenured instructors and security guards and parking lot triagers and clusters and loners and hand-phoners and players and playuhs and gigglers and speechmakers and organizers and wanderers and handicapped trudgers and screamers and whistlers and program-fanners and howzyermomenemers and school-spirit-commercial-product-consumers and…
Those who stiffly strut, who wobble forward, who stumble the concrete metal stairs, who flip and search the commencement program pages, who double-hop the stairs, who carefully navigate one step at a time, who cling to steel banisters, who slide banisters, who descend while dreading the eventual ascent, who seek their companion group, who gaze with intimacy only at a flat screen, who can’t wait for lunch, who can’t wait for the new world they will enter timidly and bravely, who sit forlornly midst a sea of orange plastic folding seats, who await the pomp and circumstance created solely for this impending momentary moment…
At last, the ceremonies are concluded. Circumstances have reduced the pomp to a dull roar. The real, the important, the meaningful can commence. Now it’s all about friendship and family and love and camaraderie.
What else could possibly be more important at this moment in time?
The next graduation ceremony awaits
© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast