Today, after the senior's last day of school, we got to put our handprints up on the hallowed walls of Uni High. The whole day was pretty weird and surreal--it didn't really get through to me that this was our last day until Uni period--but senior handprints really reminded me of what we have been doing in class recently, and really all semester.
See, the handprints were a much bigger deal than just writing your name next to a handprint on the wall. That may have been how it was once, but it's much different now. For one thing there is the idea that what you put on the wall will stay there forever and go down in history, that people will notice it. Second, you're expected to somehow infuse your personality into the handprint, because people who notice the handprint will associate it with your personality.
It reminded me a lot of what Lee is doing in Libra. He thinks that people will notice the things he purchases, places he goes, and organizations he runs. So he leaves a trail of false names like Hidell to be discovered because he wants us to interpret the past in a certain way, just like we want people who notice our handprints to observe them in a certain way. The historic diary, too, is a kind of senior handprint: a document he wants people to discover and interpret in certain ways. Lee is constantly aware of making history in a way that I was today but rarely am in regular life. In this way, the senior handprints were truly postmodern.
Thanks for reading my blog all semester and it's been great having class with everyone!
. . . as long as you signed your real name and not some pseudonym like Hidell.
ReplyDeleteI've been noticing the handprints a lot lately, thinking about this class moving on and what it means to finally add yours to the collage. There was a time, early in my career at Uni, where the handprints were "history" in a rather abstract sense, ghosts of students I'd never met, traces of the culture that preceded me here. But now that they've moved into the first-floor hallway, they've also started reflecting names (and images, individuated markings) of students I've known personally, who I remember vividly, and who I miss. It's more *real* as a history for me--I'm reminded of really cool, interesting, smart students who I no longer see every day.
So when you guys leave these behind, understand that, some random day in the future, I'll be walking by in the hallway and my eye will alight on your name and print, and I'll be reminded of Jonny Yockey and what an awesome presence he was in four consecutive classes of mine. You've made your mark on this school in so many ways, and the handprint just makes it official.