Brian P. Ibsen – 50th Reunion Essay

Brian P. Ibsen

College: Pierson

I feel I graduated in 1968—got my first passport, was present during “les évènements,” practicing the French learned from Professor Capretz. I used the Russian from Rurik Dudjin in the Soviet Union. My return for senior year was a surprise, so I squatted in the attic of Wright Hall with a homeless kid until I got a single under the roof at Pierson College. It was there I applied to be a conscientious objector.

The patterns of the rest of my life emerged. I finished my history degree with a pot pouri of courses, worked nights as a uniformed guard, subbed at Lee High School, and wrote a play imagining a unified Vietnam with prosperous cities and superhighways. I existed mainly in my own mind while searching constantly for experience that would wake me up. Living life as an urgent portfolio of work and play—I did it then and I do it now.

In April 1968, during the long weekend after Dr. King’s murder, I wrote “You’ve Got to Love the People.” The main character (white, I assumed) lived in an ivory tower and made himself descend. I keep trying. Lately I am trying to get out of the tower of old age:

GAUDEAMUS IGITUR

Having moved so many times, before

as well as after New Haven, Yale has become

my touchstone, to which when I feel

the urge to return, I go, wander, and sink

into fantasy of what might have been

a point in time when I could have chosen

differently. I’ve only now realized how anxiety

is in my every moment, how it goads me

to do differently, to make choices quickly

to keep moving no matter what. Back then

I would take long walks stepping over cracks

in New Haven sidewalks, between readings

or repetitions, memory geared to my pace –

Whalley or Goffe, Broadway to Howe to Chapel.

If they had gotten in, my sons would have done it

differently, as I would have done had I had

their advantages. And they were different from me

in their colleges, their lives, but they had a home

in Dorchester, Mass, until I blew that up

to look for something more, which I’ve found.

So many changes which don’t avail – enough

to write my life as an un-directed study.

The me that I am was made at Yale.

The “sixties” were about transgression. I formed a philosophy in reaction to Vietnam that continues to guide me, even if I cannot explain it without transgressing in all kinds of ways. Those history courses on Africa, China, Islam, and the Balkans still help. I chose directed studies because I had no idea of what I wanted. My jobs have given me curricula to fill my days, but my mind remains restless. My course is charted in conversations, like the ones in the Pierson dining hall, with no clear direction but which nevertheless get me where I am going, where I’ve gone.