I suppose Nora hanging out
with the beekeeper is not all that different from me tagging along with Charlie
when he works, except that I don't go on and on about it. Nora does have more
time to tag along than I do, though, because she's not working and because
she's only taking half as many credits. I forget if I've mentioned it, but Nora
is on a six year track, because she hasn't finished high school yet.
It’s not that she’s not smart
enough, of course, it’s that there are some assignments here that require
skills she doesn't have yet, so she takes a lot longer to finish her homework.
But not all of her homework assignments are like that, so she often has a lot
of free time. She's using it to hang out with the beekeeper and also with Kit.
I expect she'll choose both of them as masters, if she hasn't done it yet.
She's reading up on bees, she got her own bee suit for her birthday, and she's
particularly interested in the wax. She made last week's batch of candles by
herself, and now she's trying to figure out how to make scented candles. The
wax belongs to the school, so she has to find someone willing to use
scented candles for some legitimate school-related purpose before she actually
makes them. Kit just said she'd use the scented candles in one of her classes,
and this is why Nora is talking non-stop about bees and candles today.
She seems really young, talking on
and on excitedly like this. Sometimes I forget she's really a high schooler.
Other times, she says or does something, and it's like she might as well be
twelve. But then, I probably sound about the same to a lot of the older students.
Nora doesn’t need to choose masters
yet, even though she seems to be doing so. They set the deadlines for such
things based on when you’re supposed to be done, not based on how long you’ve
been here, so the longer you’re here the longer you can wait to choose. Arthur
had to choose in his first couple weeks, because he only has one year here. Of
course, he only had to choose one master, because he tested out of everything.
For full-course students, you have to choose both your spirit master and your
athletics master by the beginning of your first fall semester, but the others
can wait a year or two. I think those are first because they usually take
longer.
As I’ve said, I chose Charlie as my
spirit master. I didn’t need an athletics master, but I now have him for that,
too, at his suggestion. I’ll probably choose him for craft master, too. I don’t
need an art master, and as far as I know Charlie doesn’t teach healing or magic,
so I’ll have to choose somebody else for those. Most of the other yearlings
have already chosen at least some of their masters, too; the leanings, the
hints, I noticed a month or two ago, when we argued about who of our teachers
was Dumbledore, have developed, crystallized out, into real choices.
Andy has organized his studies
around something he calls “radical Christianity,” although, oddly enough, his
spirit master is Greg, who isn’t Christian. I think he’s going to ask Kit to be
his athletics master, so he can study yoga. He still sometimes gets almost
manically excited about things, and he came back to the dorm a few weeks ago
after a workshop Kit taught (“Beyond the Asanas,” I think it was called) just
blown away by the idea that yoga is not just a series of stretches but also a
way of living that includes kindness and generosity. He’s also adopted the care
of all the campus bicycles, studying bicycle maintenance with Chuck, the
maintenance man. I had thought that his interest in the bicycles seemed
unhealthy—remember that he first came to campus in order to steal one of our
bicycles, which he returned after he got clean. It was like he couldn’t let go of
that guilt. But he seems really happy fixing bicycles, and he’s really good at
it. He says that sometimes a debt that cannot be paid, a wound that cannot be
healed, is a gift.
“Fixing bicycles makes me real,” he
said. I don’t know what he meant.
Joanna is studying both Wicca and
yoga with Kit, and stays out late on full and new moon nights in order to meet
in ritual with Kit’s teaching coven. She’s
already making ritual objects with Kit, that’s her craft, and she says she’s
going to ask Charlie to teach her leatherwork and beading. I usually don’t
think of him as an artist in that way, most of the time, though of course
writing and landscape design are both arts, but I’ve seen his quiver, simple
and practical but fringed at the top and bottom by rows of large, unique beads
threaded through with leather thongs, and he made it himself.
Three of the women named Raven are
working mostly with Kit, three are working mostly with Allen, and one with
Charlie. I’m really going to have to come up with a way to differentiate them
in writing—we use context, for the most part, or last names, which I don’t want
to share. Dan, who shares my name and my age, is studying Zen Buddhism with
Karen and music and dance with Kit. One woman, Sally, is studying New Age
spirituality and horsemanship with Joy. And on and on.
I’m starting not to really
understand what my fellow students are saying. We used to all have these great
conversations together, and I still get to have conversations like that, but
not with the same people as often. We’re all doing different things and getting
excited about different ideas. It’s like we don’t even share the same language
all the time now.
A few months ago, when we argued
about who was Dumbledore, I thought that maybe we were really arguing about
which teacher was most central to our experience of the school. We disagreed
because we each saw the school differently. I said, at the time, that it was
like we were each going to a different school, in a way. Now, it seems I was
more right than I thought I was. And I wish I wasn’t.
[Next Post: Friday, July 5th: Fireworks]
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