Napalm is an area support weapon.
Graduation day came and went, and although I had really already moved out of Le Vivier on June 25th (happy birthday, Lord Louis, stay away from Irishmen and boats) Karin and I had a few occasions to stay there again before the final goodbye. For me, the night before striking out for Switzerland with our moving truck, to deposit several boxes worth of non-essential crap from her Paris apartment, thus giving me space to move my essential crap into the vacated space, was weirdest. Everyone had left for the grad trip or other pastures, and despite a fantastic dinner in Vaux-le-Penil, the sheer emptiness of my home for the past year was a bit melancholy.
Mom brought granddad, though. That made it all worthwhile. Having this awesome 96-year-old guy at our last house dinner, drinking and laughing it up, was a great experience. Thank you.
I couldn’t help wonder how much fun it would have been to attend the grad trip, speaking of which, but the days of relaxation in Switzerland and on my father’s farm in France, coupled with the gradual return to the real world engendered by taking care of untold amounts of dreary logistical toil, did a lot to ease the transition to normality.
Bite Me.
Graduation was a fun affair, if not terribly memorable. The gigantic, ever present white tent blocking up a significant percentage of INSEAD’s outdoor parking (no big loss there, took me weeks to get the sap dripping from the pine trees around it off my car — good thinking, guys) filled with students and guests pretty quickly, with untold numbers of parents jockeying for good camera shots of their babies, all grown up now. The exuberant energy from applause at every name that was called (“how the hell did he get a distinction?”) soon overwhelmed the air conditioning
The grad party, unfortunately held at the orangerie in Vaux-le-Penil (which, for some reason, tends to create awkward vibes at parties — maybe it’s the open space without much chance for refuge, perhaps just the fact that it’s about as non-intimate as you can get) was a nice way to ring out the old. Smoking a cohiba graciously provided by one of my soon-to-be ex-classmates and chatting outside the main bash, I didn’t even bother trying to say goodbye to everyone.
Continuing this postmortem roundup after recovering my blogs from their catastrophic summer crash (something that’s beginning to look like an annual affair), I will eventually get around to updating things as I think of something pithy to say. Until then, stay tuned, and see you on the other side. Life goes on, albeit infrequently with the sort of predictability we might have hoped for.
Fortuna, you cantankerous bitch, thank you for the interesting times.