Little Black Train

I am sitting in ethnography class listening to a division III radio documentary of a girl who is trying to understand the facets of her father’s death. Is it a mourning tradition for those who lose their father at Hampshire to eternally academically dwell? Are we simply trying to make sense of it?


My final project is forming around perceptions of miscarriage. I assumed it was about birth. I am realizing the opposite. Why am I focusing on the shock of death in the waiting expectation of life?

Experiencing awareness of mortality at Hampshire leads to a specific type of division III. All of us in the club, no matter what we say we are studying, no matter how random and scattered our projects may be from each other, are researching the exact same thing. We are all working on trying to learn how to understand. We cannot move on to the rest of our lives without this knowledge, and I suppose a year long educational thesis is a way to start.

We’re all at different stages. There’s Anna, who cannot get through two sentences on impending death without falling into pain and looking about desperately for somewhere to put the tears. John, who quietly keeps a photo of his father by his bed and doesn’t seem unsettled in these moments until you see his hands. There’s Josephine, whose temperament leaves her with a solemn generalized gaze to the floor and the exploration of pain through the running away from running away.

I look at them and I understand. You can’t know it till you know it. We are all viciously, resentfully, thankfully bonded together by our collective grasps in the dark to not let our pain obscure our lives. Our division III’s are part of that.

I suppose the time has come to discover where I stand.