I have no idea what to write.
It’s almost too on the nose — my first writing deadline in some six months and I can’t for the life of me think of where to start. It’s made even funnier by the fact that I’ve been planning my graduation column for years: writing down theses and tidbits every couple of weeks when an idea pops into my head. But now, having procrastinated to the last possible moment, I’m out of ideas.
My time at Cornell invites the doubtfulness. I only spent four full semesters here, entering as a sophomore transfer, taking a semester in Dublin and graduating a semester early. That also makes me six months removed from graduating — I’ll be walking next week, but my diploma arrived by mail in February and I haven’t set foot in a classroom since December. Some of my earlier ideas feel stupid from the period of unemployment, or the hellish political environment Cornell has since been subjected to. Writing this from Ithaca, I cannot help but feel already out of touch with my alma mater.
There was a moment, some time after the encampment, amidst but not yet fully embraced by a series of massive life changes, when I think my grad column would have been the best it could possibly be. It was a moment of looking at roses through rose colored glasses, where both the world and the viewer (that is, me) were overwhelmed by the bursts of radical possibility. Just a year later the opinion feels out of fashion, but I genuinely believe that the encampment was and the months that followed were magical.
I’ve written before about that idea, that the revolutionary politics of ’68 felt farther away in ’72 than they do today. When there’s a foot on your throat, it doesn’t particularly matter how the fight was going ten seconds prior. And when protesters are being actively deported and imprisoned, it’s difficult to make it matter that just a year ago so many were willing to join the cause. Even with the caucuses of the resistance elderly hitting downtown Ithaca each Saturday, it becomes hard to imagine a mass movement of legitimately audacious solidarity arriving again anytime soon.
I can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason for the writer’s block. We’re graduating into a moment that isn’t merely malaise (or perhaps fascistic terror); rather, it’s a bleakness buoyed by the soul crushing fear that the horrors won’t ever end. If there was a light at the end of the tunnel last May, we’ve been taking a bullet train in the opposite direction since. “It’s always darkest before the dawn” serves as a cold comfort when you can’t see your hand in front of your face. And there’s only so dark it can get, only so much the walls can close in, before the claustrophobia begins to get to you.
I know I sound like a panic-stricken lib, and I can’t help but wonder if I am myself just building a straw man to triumphantly refute in my conclusion. But I’m sincere when I say the absolute horrors of Trump’s presidency have started to gnaw at me. Never in my life have I been so utterly distraught by the callous disregard many have for their fellow humans. And again, just as those life circumstances helped make a brilliant moment feel that much more wonderful, I’m aware that the brutality of the job search isn’t giving my brain much space for calm in a cruel national climate. Looking back at last May, it legitimately does feel “different,” whatever that means.
I never wrote that perfect graduation column; we play the hand we’re dealt. The onetime belief in a personal and political puzzle that’s just waiting to be assembled exists just beyond my fingertips, or maybe even a bit farther. In its place, I’ve stumbled upon this strange writer’s block, forcing out these half-hearted expressions of cynicism, a Bergman pastiche for loss of revolutionary faith. If I were to wager a guess, I’ll say that I prefer it this way. We take the black pill to guard against uncertainty. A cruel universe is, after all, more tolerable than an unknowable one. And, absent the perfect one, an equivocating myopic snapshot grad column is better than an unwritten one.
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Max Fattal is a graduate from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. They served as the associate editor of The Cornell Daily Sun on the 142nd Masthead. They can be reached at mfattal@cornellsun.com.
