VALEDICTION

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” 

— Henry David Thoreau

“Good morning!”

The greeting thundered through the atmosphere and startled Mura Kami, until she realized the sound was generated by her own vocal chords amplified by a vigorous sound system announcing with rigorous and close to brutal force and precision, to several scores of graduates, their progenitors, and significant others gathered for their graduation ceremony, that in front of them stood a multitude of one.

Mura Kami was her given name. Mura: to reflect the practicality of her spirit. Kami: to deliver the spirit of her ancestors. She saw herself as a human being first, then as a woman, but never as ethnic as her name might suggest; not out of disrespect or shame, but out of a certain naivete that made her see herself, and people in general, as human beings first, and then as whatever their speech or demeanor reflected that might reinforce or contradict her initial perception of them. She had memorized this assertion to repeat it to people who asked why her adoptive parents had given her that appellation; instead of Cindy or Wendy, to go along with the surname of Smith.

The sonic boom of her own voice vibrating through the air had a sobering effect on her senses. Mura Kami noticed, as if heard for the first time, the implacably demanding presence of the gathered crowd which consisted of mostly young, mostly white and vaguely familiar faces, whose features, from the vantage point and considerable distance where she stood in relation to them, seemed to vibrate like a swarm of insects feasting on a pile of freshly released dung.

For a brief moment, which in her mind seemed to have lasted ions, she hesitated. She raised her eyes from the torturous white pages that reflected the brilliance of the noon-time sun, to look beyond the swarm of faces into a vacuous infinity which seemed to reflect the burden she felt in her guts, and chest, and mind, that pressed her spirit on-and-off, like the after image of the pages floating in the air and appearing and disappearing from her sight with every blink of her dry eyes.

Mura Kami lifted her eyes from her notes. The printed cheat sheets sat neatly arranged on the podium in front of her, pinned down by the open palm of her trembling hand to prevent any gust of wind from robbing her of the precision of her pithy words she had labored to produce, and was ready to deliver with the right tone, at the right time, with the right amount of pathos to the expectant crowd of parents, siblings, and significant others.

She rolled her eyes down slowly, with the temerity of a prosecutor about the debacle the defense attorney’s shoddy arguments, and regarded the pages that she had neatly emblazoned, with just the right amount of words, sentences, and paragraphs, no more, no less, than the occasion had inspired and demanded, which she intended to deliver to the impatient crowd of eager young people, tolerating parents, impatient siblings, and drooling babies. She stared at the loud, pesky, persistent, palpable words she had carefully put together the night before; the longer she looked, the less they seemed to reflect the truth embedded in her heart.

She paused. She thought about the task she had embarked on, which consisted of channeling the energy of her universe, using a few well chosen words, manufactured to communicate abstractions: exemplary of what humanity, of what the virginal expectant graduates, should strive towards, after severing that final chord that would release them from the comfort of the academic womb to the discomfort of the known world.

This realization shocked her mind with the force of a thousand bolts of electricity. It penetrated the very marrow of her bones and transported her, like a shimmering spark, beyond her visible horizon. The electrifying buzz of randomly emitted murmurs from the throng, mixed with their incessant and demanding looks, pressured Mura Kami to tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her god, any god that might be listening.