The Cadre -

6 April 1999

This Is the end.

here are five clumsy [sss in this room,

two tables. Five desks more or less used for work and writing, but you wouldn't know that for looking at them. They’re covered with the remains of a year in this faction of the student press: our bot- tle money, broken disks, snippets of paper from eve- rything. It’s like reading the rings ofa tree and find- ing how old we are. Or how wise we’ve become.

This carpet. It’s stained with run-off rain and melted snow that seeps into the office from some- where. We haven’t figured that out. Or whether or not asbestos lines those pipes

They remind us of our ex- tended student journalist family, where it’s not unu- sual to slide the journalist ahead of the student (that’s what we all are, journalist- students, I guess). We find them funny, find ways to make ours better. We learn and try things. We debate their uses of nudity -- full frontal and otherwise, their cover designs, their flags, their mastheads, their gut- ter widths. It’s a reminder of how we're not alone, of how we’re not the worst no matter what anybody else tells us.

Aesthetic principles abound in here. Every- thing seems more beauti- ful with a little crayon, a

feine in generic colas when the elevator shuffles back and forth between mission control and the third floor of UPEI’s Main Building, circa 1862. These noises are the reminders of the life that this campus has some- where, buried deep in

It’s probably some- where around here that a supposed to jerk tears wi the heartfelt anecdotes of the sleepless nights and 40 hour work weeks on top of school that made it all worthwhile. I'll save some

in the back right corner of _ neater stack of stackables. criticism rolls off my the Inner Cacia. We're We tape things to the walls back like beads of water. probably really sick from to make it more personal, It could be that they're this. The smells leftover in to take the edge off. Be- tired of complaining. It here are unholy pizza that tween the snakes, the post- could be that I'm tired of was good the first three ers, the mice, it's almost listening. But I am not yet times and that mold thanks _ pretty inhere if you breathe _ tired of telling. : to the carpet. 1 your mouth. The So, goodbye Main We've got these posting of the artifacts 06. Goodbye, newspaper — chairs. None of them started out as silly office. Goodlucktothose — match and only three are eyecatchers to take the who come after me. — worthy of sitting. One has sterile out of the wall. You're bloody well going _ its legs busted off, one’s Nowit’sabigmassofnos- to need it. wheels don’t roll, and a talgia. Sentiment-poi- fairly large proportion have _ soned history showing the Peja ge ao al ena males them. You have to ong , : dibs to get a good seat, and still here. Some have run Karen Rawlines, even then it’s only tempo- screaming. editor-in-chief rary. in Saaaaiichc of the »_ neaghemabee ing, there's a coffee o morning, the night mailed to us by our b this asylum. It keeps us ers and sisters in arms. awake more than the caf- _ My grade four teacher wrote me a note once: — ——-

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