Why they think its funny to call graduation commencement...

This whole semester thing gives me anxiety.

Maybe it's all the stuff that's suddenly due (term papers, projects, presentations, my birthday).
Or maybe it's tension-headache muscle-memory from years of pulling all-nighters for finals. (none of which I have this year)
But most likely it's because come January the playing field is suddenly wide open and I don't know where the hell to throw the goddamn ball. Or what my ball even looks like.

Is it a cabbage? Or a sleeping bag in a stuff sack? Or a monkeys fist?
Where will the object land? Somewhere off the coast of Cuba or in a loamy field in New England or in a sandy patch in San Diego or back to my distant roots in Northern California/Oregon where I've felt the ancestral pull for years?

Or will the cabbage fit in a backpack and wander and WWOOF with me and bury its seeds in far off soil?
Will the monkey's fist stay in San Diego attached to a line attached to one of the many sailboats bobbing in the bay?
Will that sleeping bag keep me warm next to a campfire, next to my new friends sharing songs and stories and gluten-free vegan campfire brownies?

Or will the that ball be a flame and all I need to do is close my eyes and concentrate on the flickering outside my eyelids and breathe and know that wherever I throw my efforts and love, something,
perhaps the whole field,
perhaps the whole field and the surrounding fields and towns,
perhaps the whole field and the surrounding fields and towns and the whole world,

or perhaps just a splinter of myself
(they are all the same)

will be illuminated.


Or I'll light the goddamn park on fire.

Either way I'll learn something, now won't I?

Shanti.