Reunion

Institutions are for the institutionalized.

Forty fifth college reunion this summer.

I had an idea, with my dear friend, A.,

who matriculated with me but took three

years to write his senior paper, to give

something back...not to the school, rather

to our class...to create an event, a mini 

reliving of that open and wonderful time

of our lives that changed us all forever in

such a diversity of ways. We thought we

could get some like mindeds together,

play music, read poetry, perform 

spontaneous theatre, give lectures on

Buddhism and plumbing, in short, show

how we have contributed to the world 

beyond money, beyond another bench

somewhere in the Arb dedicated to the

class of such and so.

A. looked at the reunion page of the 

website and saw that everything had

been carefully planned. There would be

no surprises...no one would raise their

hippie flag atop the student union this

time. Even the past had been sanitized

to reflect an ideal of cultural sameness

that cannot be a living thing. 

I wrote half my senior paper on mescaline.

I wrote the other half the way I knew they'd

want it...I knew the gauntlet well by then, and

all I really wanted to do was get out of there 

and into the real world that I was not prepared 

for, except to the extent that I knew that it too 

was a game with rules. When I got my paper

back, the comments reflected this exact point

of view. The rest of my life I learned to follow 

my heart, not my rational mind; that tool good

for grocery lists or sending a man to the moon,

but useless either to experience the world or

understand the experience.

So, no letters after my name. I had some

professional licenses, some good theatrical 

reviews, a book of poems published in an

obscure country on the other side of the world.

Some might have said I taught meditation well.

I like the epitaph on a tombstone that Vonnegut

coined:     "He tried."