“Fueled By Filthy and Fury (Kapitel Zwei): The Curse and the Covenant”
By Mike Imprixis
Written Nov. 16, 2005

“Because you didn't come here to make the choice.
You've already made it.
You're here to understand why you made it.”
-The Oracle in “The Matrix Reloaded”

I once made a post on the StonyBrookSucks message board about a Curse brought upon this campus by the ghost of Ward Melville, the man who donated the land upon which the university now sits. I did this on April 30, 2004, a short time after Bill Schwalback, a friend of mine at the time and then Vice-President of the Commuter Student Association, was arrested for disrupting a USG Senate meeting. A lot has changed since that time. I still believe that some sort of evil resides on the campus, the Evil Power Source mentioned in my previous article. How I’ve dealt with being touched by that evil has changed, however.

I was angry when I wrote that post. Angry at the System, at the waste of talent this conflict between factions in the student government caused, at the feeling of helplessness that I’m sure many of you are familiar with when you look around and see how much caring comes from those who run the university. It was anger that had been brewing for quite a while, from other times in my life that I’ve felt rage, and that finally found release. It seemed at the time, however, that this anger came from nowhere and drilled into my brain, where it harvested on my will and lived inside my skull, warm and fat.

I’ve been gone from Stony Brook now for almost a year and I’ve tried to make sense of where this anger within me comes from. I thought of it as alien. I still remember writing about the Curse of Ward Melville. I saved the post. Part of it went like this:

“Ward Melville had bought all the buildings in [Stony Brook], fearing that they would be reduced to rubble by the steam roller of suburban development gone rampant that we know exists on Long Island. He owned the property upon which our beloved University now stands and decided to donate it. He did so however with certain understandings which included a uniform look to all the buildings, no building being built over four stories, preservation of green space and trees, and a few other guidelines so that our campus may look like a college campus.

“The first thing the state built, the legend goes, [was] the sump that is visible from Nicolls Road. It is also one of the biggest sumps on Long Island I may add.

“It was downhill from there. The majesty of ivy covered buildings was replaced by the Javits Bunker, the sinking Union, the Physics Building poised to kill us with falling rubble, the now gone Bridge to Nowhere and the Tree of Woe by the Physics Building (climb the stairs from the Sports Complex and there you will see an evergreen tree. . . look at it and you will know whence came it name. . . ). This doesn't even include the clearing of trees as if they were so much detritus. Our school logo used to have a tree. Now we have stars? Maybe the stars represent that feeling of dizzyness you get when you see your bill and actually consider the fees tacked on like so many blood sucking fleas on the back of an old dog.

“Now you tell me, if your eternal goal in life was to preserve a town's sense of place and then this crime against good taste occured, wouldn't your eternal spirit wish harm on those who occupied this land?”

When I first wrote this, I was fed up by what I thought was a system that used up students towards its own ends. I saw that Bill had been arrested for all the wrong reasons, I thought at the time. I always knew that considering the conflict that had been going on for years between factions in the student government, some sort of violence of this nature would be the inevitable result. The Curse itself reeked of destiny, of a predetermination that could not be avoided. When I first considered writing this column for StonyBrookSucks, I wanted to lead off with a slightly expanded version of this rant. I had believed that it was an inevitable fact that once you came to this campus, you were doomed to misery.

I never considered choice.

I still wrestle with the idea of a predetermined fate versus a life guided by free will. I mean, if the land is cursed because of this bad karma and if there is an Evil Power Source, what hope is there to getting a good education and an enlightening college experience at Stony Brook? Then I remember how I also wrote about The Tree of Woe.

The Tree itself is not that remarkable to someone who doesn’t stop to notice it. It stands at the northeast corner of the Physics Building by the stairs that lead down the road to the Sports Complex. If you look at it, however, you’ll notice that because the Tree was planted too close to the building, it has to bend in order to feel the light of the sun. It’s remarkable how life always finds a way to overcome the sheer idiocy that can be produced by the human mind. Someone, or some committee more likely, thought a tree would look good in that spot. The growth of the Tree didn’t matter.

Luckily, nature has a plan even if mankind doesn’t.

The Curse is an excuse but the Tree is a covenant made between the students and whatever deity or force runs the universe. It’s God (or whatever your name for Him happens to be) saying, “I know there’s some evil crap in this neighborhood but if you can adjust, if you can hope, you’ll do fine. You’ll grow.”

My whole time at Stony Brook, I believed in the Curse but didn’t truly understand the nature of the Tree. I was once friends with a very deluded fellow, a man for whom the Evil Power Source waits for because he’s such a rich source of darkness and so unwilling to hope so instead he drowns his sorrows in Rémy Martin. If he reads this, he’ll know who he is but I’ll just call him Victor Creed. I thought of him as a friend for a long time, and when I brought him to see the Tree, I lamented on how bent it was. Victor has gone on to be a waste of human flesh, indulging in a lot of drinking on a beach somewhere near the City. The Grinch would envy the size of his heart. He’s someone who found the Evil Power Source and felt connected to it. He never was able to recover from his separation from it, and probably never will.

I will say this however. In true Taoist fashion, after I shook my head and pitied the Tree, Victor said, “At least it’s still alive.”

If even a misguided person can see this, then there’s obviously hope for us all. It’s just up to us to choose between the inevitability of the Curse or the covenant of the Tree.

If you’d like to find out more about Ward Melville, visit your local library. I welcome feedback.