Graduation

I marched

I shook a hand, held an empty red folder, smiled at a camera that stole my soul (so I'm told)

And done. Two years over. A Master of my native tongue.

Dressed in the black robes of a false priesthood, I saw ceremony, enacted ancient rites

The convocation was not my education, the paper is not my knowledge

Nor is the referent the signified.

The Cartesian dilemma made manifest

Initiated into the mystery of material opacity

Admiring not the represented, but the art itself

Communicated by signifiers, I took a deep breath, embraced my friends

I smiled, and in spite of myself felt an elation of sorts

Enter the new world

Same as the old world

now radically recontextualized

I am a graduate graduate

I am a Masters of Arts

I blinked twice and remembered it was Spring