Around the Building's Curve

The car in front of us pulled to the curb.  Two young ladies in evening wear step out, carefully on to the snowy sidewalk.  Dressed more appropriately, two other woman stopped the traffic with their orange batons and allowed the dozen people with whom I was waiting at the curb side a chance to cross the road.  We were all heading to the Jack Breslin Student Events Center at Michigan State University, (MSU) where today’s graduation ceremony would be held. 

Living in China, I’m used to crowds.  This was a big crowd.  The main hall is full.  The hallways are full.  Removing my enormous orange winter coat to reveal my light tan suit I noticed that the music, a large big band's worth of music, was live and I went to take a look at them seated down there in the enormous arena below me.  Back in the crowd, I asked one of the student volunteers where the best place to look for a seat would be and she kindly directed me about five doors down, around the building's curve.

That this was wintertime, mid-year graduation, might lead you to believe this were a smaller celebration but this stadium must have ten thousand people in it.  The flags of all the different nations of students in attendance are up on the wall.  I spin my head and to discern where in the circle the repetition of flags begins, as there are more flags than there are real countries. 

China is only one of the flags up there but it is the one I am most sensitized to. I’m sitting with my brother in law, on his first time to the States, my niece from Shandong, is down there in the crowd nearly beyond the zoom recognition of my iPhone. To my right is an older couple who might be from Michigan.  But two rows in front of me people are speaking Mandarin.  And over to the left too there is a family speaking Mandarin.  I’m conscious of my own voice when I speak Chinese to my brother.

The band is playing “Superstitious."  Well, alright.  I consider the young soloist and wonder about what big band jazz means to them and their generation.  It necessarily felt old and insincere when I was a teen.  Perhaps these days everything from the last century hits that way to the anyone who doesn't really bother to listen.  From the same youth chest I find thoughts of the Spartans who were tough and gritty and win the Peloponnesian War in the end, but are never seen properly heroic.  How do they distinguish the Spartan Spirit here at MSU from that historical tar brush that casts Athenians as free and Spartan’s as ferocious ants?  Does it ever come up at all?   The woman delivering the commencement address is referencing this Spartan spirit.  

Saturday, 12/16/17