Shakraquiddick!
Before we get started, I have a couple of things to say about Aaron Shakra which may seem out of character, and which have kept me from being all mean-spirited about his last few commentary pieces as I am now exhorted to do…
However, that said, we are left with this.
So now, as it’s finally over, I struggle to exist in the moment I’m experiencing.
I am still convinced that Shakra is the quintessential student columnist. His writing is a closed system upon which the outside world barely impinges – and when it does, it does so in unpredictable ways, as when he discovers that he has a literature paper overdue. He represents the very worst tendencies in all of our writing – towards grandiloquence, obfuscation, melodrama, narcissism, and cant – to such an extent that it would not surprise me to learn that the whole thing has been a spoof. But even if it is, it has been a valuable one. Believe me, folks, there’s a little Aaron Shakra in all of us.
And, as he wanders off into the sunset, what do we have to conclude the rants about Society, materialism, militarism, feminism, and (more often than not) haiku?
Because after all, these stories are merely conception, a narrative I construct to order my experience, to mark beginnings and ends. When I take time to breathe, I know better.
Well, quite. Happy trails, sir.
Perhaps these words will linger a while longer, as ashen sage smoke swimming amongst the places where I once existed, leaving traces of who I once was. Perhaps some will remember.
I think we will. And that ain’t sage, incidentally.
Very magnanimous of you.
I haven’t heard a single song by Jim White. A former model/taxi driver that plays “hick hop” and is struggling to recover from a band saw injury? I will be picking up a copy of No Such Place later today.
Also: Tom Waits is still not dead.