Ruins

The ruins. We might come into our own in the ruins. They might make sense of us, the ruins. Bring the best out in us, the ruins.

All our lives, we were preparing to live in the ruins. All our lives, laughing in what we knew would become the ruins. Amusing ourselves in the ruins of the future. With our ruins thoughts. With our ruins humour.


They’re spiritual ruins, of course, not actual ruins. Few people can see them as what they are: as spiritual ruins. Few people feel the phantom limb. But we know what we’re not, what we lack. We know what the university is and is not. We feel it, despite everything. We know the academic Fall.

We have instincts, of a sort. We have moods. We have … melancholies … and dreads … horrors, even. That’s how it registers with us. That’s how it echoes through us – even through our stupidity.

And we lack a great deal. Everything – pretty much. But we feel it.


A campus without the humanities is a ruin. A campus without the humanities is a hollow campus.

And it’s hollowness echoes out in our stupidity. Our stupidity is where the humanities should be. The empty heart of the humanities is our heart. The empty brain of the humanities is our brainlessness. Is our stupidity.


We need a ruins-leader. To lead us through the future ruins. To lead us through the ruins to come.