To begin the story at the beginning, read "Part 1: Post 1: Beginning Again," published in January, 2013. To consult a description of the campus, read "Part 1: Post 14: The Greening of Campus," published in March, 2013.

Monday, December 31, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 2: Christmas and New Years


Merry Christmas and happy New Year.


Why don't we say merry New Year? Or, really, merry anything other than Christmas? I've always wondered. Anyway, I've been merrying along at June's parents' place, and while I'm glad we went, I'm even more glad to be back.

As I think I've said, we usually go to my parents' house for holidays and other visits because it's closer--this has been especially true since we've been on campus together, and it had been bothering June. In fact, I don't think we'd both visited her parents since before we were married, though they have visited us, and June spent a good long visit a home last February.

And it's not like I dislike her family. In fact, I rather like her parents. It's just that they're not my family. I don't know them very well, and when I'm at their house I have that uncomfortable feeling that comes with being the house-guest of near-strangers. As though one might do the wrong thing, be a burden somehow, and ruin it. That's not a great way to spend Christmas.

Also, June's family is Quaker, and they don't exactly celebrate Christmas. The idea is every day is supposed to be holy, so how can there be special holy days? It's not that the family ignores the day, but it's low-key, reflecting the virtue of simplicity, I gather, and not religious. Her parents put a small, hand-made tree-like object on the kitchen table Christmas Eve, and in the morning we had a large and unusually delicious breakfast and opened "stockings."

The "stockings" were actually large paper bags, each with a name on it, into which we'd all been dropping small, fun gifts (candy, jars of specialty pickles, wind-up toys, brain teasers, weird socks) over the previous days. The tradition is that each person gets something for everyone else and nobody looks in the bags until Christmas morning. I think it started out with the adults making up stockings for the kids, and then became more general when June and her brother grew up.

Anyway, Christmas night, June's aunt came over for dinner and we ate by candle-light, but it wasn't an unusual dinner otherwise.

It was nice, Christmas with my in-laws, but it was kind of minimal.

I missed real Christmas. I missed going to church and singing Christmas carols by candle light, I missed the hustle and bustle and glare of the holiday, and I missed both the giving and the receiving of real (and sometimes expensive) Christmas presents. Yes, the giving, too. I'll get presents from my parents and my brother's family, of course, and give them, too, everything's already bought and wrapped and waiting in my room, but it's not the same thing.

And as much as I missed my family of origin, I missed my friends on campus, too.

I wanted to know what Andy got for Christmas and to listen to his touching, almost childlike, theological soliloquies. I wanted to hear Ollie preach, which I still haven't done. I wanted to go tracking with Rick or run into Charlie unexpectedly, him no doubt barefoot and sarcastic in the snow. I wanted to sit in the Great Hall alone or nearly so and watch the afternoon sunlight glint off the silver embroidery on the ivory ribbons on the tree, and off the gold embroidery on the tangerine-colored ribbons, and the glass balls, orange, red, and yellow, like fruit, and the fantastic flock of blown-glass birds perched on the branches among strings of beads and popped corn and the little white LED lights, unlit, now quiescent, but reflective still. I wanted to go home.

I think June is a bit miffed at me for not liking being at her family home as much as she does. She takes it as a rejection of herself and her family, and it isn't that at all. She knows it's irrational, but she can't help it. And neither can I.

Tonight is New Years Eve, and a bit more traditional. We'll stay up and toast in the New Year with Champagne, maybe after watching a movie. Not a big deal, but similar to what my parents usually do. They'll be a party on campus tonight, and I wish I could attend, but the ache is a little easier, the day less emotional.

June found me a few minutes ago, looking morose, I suppose.

"Missing campus?" she asked me.

I made a non-committal, morose noise.

"You don't like coming out here to the real world, do you?" she asked.

I turned to look at her.

"Mine is the real world," I said. "It's this one that isn't."

"I know," she told me. "And that's a difference between us."

Monday, December 24, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 1: Yule

You know, sooner or later, there had to be bad weather on Yule morning.

I'd thought I'd experienced bad weather on Yule before. There was one year when the dawn was completely hidden by cloud, and the new day loomed rather than broke, and there were two years it rained. But on one of those nights the rain turned to snow and then stopped just before we went out, so we didn't actually get rained on, and when the sun came up, the world was white. The other time, we did get drizzled upon, but just as the sun came up--brilliantly, through a break in the cloud--the rain turned rather dramatically to snow.

In point of fact, the "bad" weather those years only served to make the dawn more dramatic and lovely.

This year, though?

This year the weather well and truly sucked.

It began with rain around midnight, first intermittent, then harder and harder, but I wasn't worried, because I unthinkingly assumed the storm would break before dawn. It didn't. Instead, it intensified, the wind rising till we could poke our heads out of the Meditation Hall door and hear broken branches falling in the Formal Garden and along the evergreen row behind the building.

Inside, the party continued. Every year, we hold an all-night party, and students who have otherwise left campus for the season, graduates, allies, and even some family (like the Sprouts) all come in and fill the Mansion with music and merriment. The Sprouts and the masters don't usually join us until the morning, they have their own party on the fourth floor, but some of the masters come down for an hour or so. This year, the party was no different. One advantage of having Kit here is that a lot of people play instruments or sing--she loves to teach music and does it well--so our parties tend to involve giant jam sessions. And the room is lovely and filled with food and drink and wonderful people and it feels like the center of the world.

But then around four in the morning, Greg came down to find Kit and whispered urgently in her ear. She whispered back, and then they both went upstairs. A few minutes later, Allen came down and rather casually spoke to several of the senior novices. Then, one by one, they all slipped upstairs. Most of us didn't notice. I did. And June noticed me noticing.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I don't know that anything's the matter," I said. "But Allen just magicked up the students who were going to organize the walk up the mountain, and I don't know why."

"You don't?"

"Should I?"

"Do you want to walk up the mountain in this?" she asked.

Uh, no, I didn't. She had a point. My embarrassment must have showed on my face, because she laughed at me.

"Did you think a weather-witch was going to fix conditions for us?"

And the thing is, I'm sure there are weather-witches on campus, and I'm not certain their magic isn't effective. But I can imagine Charlie responding to such a proposal, and I don't think he'd like it. He'd say that the real magic occurs when we adjust ourselves to the world, not the other way around.

In the end, we didn't go up the mountain. It was too dangerous. Instead, we waited until twilight was well underway, and then walked out to the Edge of the World and stood there for a few minutes in the blowing 35-degree rain, turning our backs to the wind, our rain ponchos blowing up and flapping, letting rain in to soak our cloaks, until someone shouted "SUN'S UP! WELCOME YULE!" into the wind.

I imagine they relied on a clock to find the right moment. Dawn was not discernible at all.

We all turned and trudged back inside, and found there the entire master's group waiting for us in the Great Hall, all as sopping wet as we were. And they launched into "Here Comes the Sun," their traditional Yule morning carol, which definitely sounded ironic under the circumstances. We all laughed and clapped, and then Joy ordered us all upstairs and into warm showers, cautioning us not to come down until we were dry and comfortable.

When we came back down, there were the Sprouts and various other guests, and a hot breakfast with plenty of hot chocolate, and gift bags for everybody and presents to open, and we spent the rest of the day playing with our presents like children.

All the while, the temperature outside was dropping and, almost unnoticed, and ice storm was busy glazing the ground and the roads and the trees, and everything else. That was alright with me at the time, as I was at the center of the world, but our guests were trapped with us, and I'm sure many families traveling for Christmas had their plans interrupted.

Towards the late afternoon, the storm finally blew off and the sky cleared. Greg, invigorated by his mid-holiday nap (this year under the Yule tree, wrapped up in a blanket like a present) drew my attention to the sunset--the trees to the west of the back driveway were glowing with magic, unconsuming fire, the light of the setting sun shining in the rime ice on every twig in their high, massed crowns.

"That's gorgeous," I said, completely redundantly, but sometimes one has to.

"I've thought the weather gorgeous all day," he said, in his dry, somewhat formal voice. "The magic that gives us gorgeous weather consists in knowing the weather to be gorgeous."

He and Charlie are suite-mates, I recalled.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Interlude 7

 
Hi, all, Daniel-of-2018, here!

Next time I address you directly, I’ll be Daniel-of-2019. Curious how this convention of naming myself after the year—which is basically accidental, it just popped into my head a while back and I kept using it—makes it sound as though it is a different me every year. And I suppose I am different, though not very different. All the different mes have a family resemblance. Is this then, goodbye? Am I about to be replaced?

Anyway.

In recent years, I’ve flipped the schedule a bit, doing the eighth interlude after the holiday, but this year I’m doing it the other way and we’ll see how it goes. June and I spent Yule on campus, of course, then Christmas and New Years with her parents. Then we came home (campus) so she could go back to work, and I sat around feeling stupid.

After all, she had a job, and therefore a definite purpose, a reason for being where she was, whereas I occupied some nebulous middle ground between furlowed employee and student without classes. Exactly why was I on campus, paying room and board, instead of with my family?

It’s not that I literally had nothing to do, since I was still supposed to be working with Steve Bees and hammering out the details of my next years’ course of study, but none of it felt pressingly important and I missed my parents. So I went to stay with them for almost two weeks, most of which I spent missing my wife and worrying about how Steve Bees was doing.

So there will be about three or four weekly entries I’ll have to get creative about, just to give you fair warning.

It’s weird to think this is the last time I’m going to be heading into a new year of writing this blog. No, this story doesn’t go on forever. A year from now, I’ll be writing about getting ready to get my ring. After that? There are a few more things I’ll want to talk about, just to wrap up loose ends and bring my story up to the point where you came in on it. I don’t know yet whether that will take months or weeks or what, but I doubt it will take the whole year. And then the various identities I’ve taken on for the project the me of this year and the me of that year and everything else, will be at an end.

And I’ll just be me.

Monday, December 10, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 6: Making More Magic

I'd glad I have a good memory!

Last night, June asked me whether I wanted to help decorate the Great Hall for Yule. I thought she meant whether I wanted to joint the groundskeeping crew and the other volunteers who put up the tree and the other decorations all in one night as a surprise for the yearlings. I did it a few times as a novice, and really liked it, but last year I had a different assignment. I was supposed to distract my wife--she was a yearling at the time, and Charlie thought she couldn't be relied on to be oblivious (high praise, from him) so he asked me to step in.

Yes, I distracted her exactly the way you're imagining I did, and in the morning I told her that the newly-decorated Great Hall was a product of the magic we made.

And yes, this year when I said yes, I wanted to decorate the Great Hall, she said "good--I'll clear my schedule and take a shower." And I am a very lucky man that I didn't have to ask what she was talking about.

Except I really had wanted to join the groundskeeping crew for the night. It's not that I don't enjoy, um, decorating by magic, it's that, not to brag, but I get to do that fairly often. There's only one chance a year to be an elf making the holiday happen, and I miss being one of the groundskeepers here. But I didn't feel comfortable saying no to June. I didn't want to offend her.

I should say that yes, we've talked through what was bothering her over Thanksgiving. She is, as I suspected she might, getting resentful of how fully we've moved into "my" world, leaving hers behind. Which is not what we did, and she knows it's not what we did, which is why she didn't want to talk with me about it, but she felt that way anyway, and I think I can understand why.

So I suggested we spend Christmas with her family, since she gets a long enough break from work so she can travel, and while I'm pretty sure the issue is going to blow up again later, for now she's happy with me and, yes, wanted to magically decorate the Great Hall with me.

So, no, I did not want to beg off.

I was a little worried about developing some resentment of my own, though, and I didn't see how I could possibly be a very good lover if I was thinking something else I'd rather be doing. But one of the great things about this place is how accepting they are about sex. I mean, you can actually talk about it and the conversation doesn't feel crude or puerile. So, when I was brushing my teeth before bed, I bumped into Raven (she lives in a different dorm, but she's been seeing someone in my dorm and was visiting) and she asked me whether I was going to join the group downstairs, I told her my problem. She took it seriously.

"Well, we'll be working all night, why don't you just join us afterwards?"

"I don't know," I told her, "that feels...selfish, or something."

"That's because you're being selfish. You're thinking first we'll do your thing, then we'll do what I really want to do. Don't think that way. Think about how both can be for both of you."

"She was saying she felt a bit like an outsider, here, like being at school is my thing."

"Did she? Well, make her an elf. Tell her being a Yule-elf is like being a were-wolf and bite her or something."

No, I didn't tell June elfhood is contagious, but we did work something out, and the Great Hall was well-decorated by morning.

Monday, December 3, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 5: Instructions from June

No, I haven't found out what's bothering June.

She seems to be over it, at least for now. She's relaxed and friendly around me again, so that's good, but I'm fairly sure that whatever it is will erupt again unless it's dealt with--it's lot like I don't know there was an underlying issue driving that argument.

I asked Allen about it, when I happened to see him, but he just said "couples counseling costs extra," so I suppose he didn't want to be bothered. I talked to Ollie about it, and he had some interesting things to say, but nothing that ultimately proved helpful. I even said something to Eddie, who said "do I look like a man who knows anything about marriage?"

"What does how you look have to do with it?" I asked.

"I am way too cute to be monogamous," he replied. And then he went on for some length about how much progress Elmo, his dog, has made. This is the supposedly untrainable Elmo, and apparently he's doing very well, now. He has basic obedience down solid, knows a few tricks, and as his confidence grows his fear-aggression has backed off dramatically.

"I even have an idea for what kind of therapy task he can do," Eddie said, excitedly. "Elmo has a lot of energy. He needs to run every day, and he's not shy about asking to go. I'm thinking he can be a jogging partner for someone with depression, you know, the kind where you just want to stay in bed all day? Now I just need to find the right person to match him with."

All that's very good and all, but it doesn't help me with my wife. I kind of feel like I'm walking on egg-shells, not that I'm worried she's going to attack me, I'm just thinking about what random thing might trigger whatever it is next.

Finally, I talked to my therapist. Remember that I have a therapist? It's part of the program here, all candidates need to do at least one year of individual therapy, and while I had my doubts at first--I was pretty sure I don't need therapy--I've come to like it. I get to talk about whatever I want for fifty minutes a week, without worrying about whether I'm being boring or sounding stupid or something, and sometimes our talks help me sort things out. My therapist is a man about ten years older than I am who graduated from the school but didn't come back for his ring. So he knows all about the school, and we get along.

But he didn't help me much with this thing with June, except to ask, quite perceptively, whether I was concerned about my issue or hers. Keep the focus on yourself, as they said in the few Al-Anon meetings I went to as a novice.

So I went to bed last night, puzzling about all of this, and then June came in. She turned on the lights, undressed and then put on her pajamas (an unfortunate side effect of winter--it's too cold to sleep naked, now), went back out to the bathroom to fill a cup with drinking water in case we got thirsty at night, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She wrapped her fuzzy feet around by bare toes.

"Word out on the street is," she said, "you've been asking everyone and their brother's lover's cousin why I'm mad and what to do about it."

"Yes, I suppose so." Dang, foiled by the rumor mill. I wonder who talked?

"So how come you didn't talk to me?"

Monday, November 26, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 4: Feeling Gray

I don't feel like doing anything today.

The weather is gray and rainy, and the lovely snow we got two days ago--our first major snowfall of the year--has turned to gray, dirty slush. There are times, in weather like this, that I feel cozy, even contemplative, but today I just feel blah. I'd like to melt into slush myself, and perhaps I will.

It would probably help if I had something definite to do today, but instead I have nothing scheduled, no deadlines, and a long list of things I ought to do sooner or later and no idea which to do first.

We've just had Thanksgiving, usually a happy time, and I guess I enjoyed it, but my memory of the evening is somewhat marred for me because of the tremendous argument June and I had afterwards. We usually don't fight, so I suppose we don't have much practice fighting well.

We had a good time, so far as I can tell, helping to cook the meal a my parent's house, playing with our nephews and niece, and mildly stuffing our faces with good food. Then, as has become traditional, Allen and Kit--and this time, Lo--came over for dessert and coffee and a small dance-party erupted. Allen, I should say, is not a skilled dancer, but he makes his attempts with such unabashed joy that he might as well be. Kit spent much of her time dancing with Ruthie, my niece, not only having a good time but also showing her some moves.

The problem was that on the ride home--back to campus, I mean, June went oddly silent. Her few responses to me, and even the others, seemed distracted, clipped. I think the others noticed--Allen and Lo are both psychologists, after all--and they dropped us off with a rather perfunctory good-night. Allen gave me a significant look, which I didn't understand until later.

For the rest of the evening, as we put away our share of the left-overs and gradually got ready for bed, June kept picking on me. I know I should write out the whole scene (showing, not telling, as a good writer should), and probably would if I felt better, but suffice it to say I couldn't do anything right, and when I finally got tired of it and demanded she tell me what's going on, she said something that didn't make any sense:

"We always go to your parents' for the holidays!"

Which is, first, not literally true, and second, hardly my fault. Her parents live much farther away, and June's new job pretty much ensures that we can't take off enough time to go visit them very often.

I argued back, but that wasn't right, either, and we ended up shouting at each other and I still don't really know why.

"You're blaming me for things I didn't even do!" I shouted, finally.

"I know!" she yelled back, as if this, too, were my fault.

We went to bed soon after, unable to resolve anything, and slept on opposite edges of our narrow bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night, though, without saying anything, she rolled over and wrapped her long, warm arms and legs, and her cold feet around me. In the morning, we enjoyed each other, and then I slept again. When I woke next, she had already left for work and the rain had started.

Monday, November 19, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 3: Instructions from Ollie

I went running with Ollie this morning after breakfast. It's that time of year, now, when running before breakfast would mean starting in the dark. The leaves are off the trees and some mornings the grass is frozen and the puddles in the roads on campus are white with ice. But it wasn't that cold today, and though the day dawned cloudy, the sky turned brilliant blue and gold later on.

We ran without speaking much, but afterwards, as we were stretching in the Green Room, I told him about my conversation with Charlie and my new assignment to list what I need to learn and do before I earn my green ring.

"I don't understand," I said. "I have no idea what I have to do, why should I? I've never been a master."

"I haven't either," Ollie pointed out.

"Yeah, but you're getting your ring this Brigid. You're further along in the process."

"Ok, try this; why do you think this coming year should be your last? Are you eager to be gone?"

"No," I said. "I want my ring because I want to stay. It just feels like it's getting to be time."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. This is not the first feeling like this you've had. How does it feel? Where does the feeling come from? Think! Reflect!"

He had a point. I've been learning how to answer such questions for years, now.

"I'm different that I was when I started the process. I'm on the other side of something, now. And I'm getting restless with what I'm doing, so maybe it's time to do something else. Also, my workshops are well-attended, I get good reviews, and I offer workshops in subjects nobody else does--I have something unique to give, now. And Steve Bees is making progress. I'm able to help him. I feel like I fit in better with the masters than with the students, so maybe I'm close to being one of them."

"Ok, so, why aren't you getting your green ring with me at Brigid?"

"No one's suggesting I should," I said.

"I just did. Boom, magic spell, you're getting your ring this year. What's your reaction?"

"No!"

"Why?"

"I--"

"Daniel!"

"I don't feel ready. I feel scared thinking about it. I worry that there's something missing, something I don't know about, yet."

"Well, there you go."

"Yes, here I am. Here I am not knowing what I need to do to get my green ring."

"Exactly. Rephrase that. What's the one thing you don't know yet about being a master?"

"How to make another master."

"Now, why was that so hard?"

"It wasn't, but that leaves me back where I started, in need of information only the masters can give me."

"I'm not so sure," said Ollie. "You're a part of this community, you know what it needs in terms of leadership. Would you hire yourself right now? If not, why not?"

I thought about this. It's an odd paradox that as self-conscious as I am most of the time, I'm still not very good at thinking about myself from the outside. How would I rate a prospective school employee with skills such as mine? I was tempted to tell Ollie I'd get back to him, but that's what I'd told Charlie, and I was ostensibly having this conversation with Ollie in order to come with an answer I could get back to Charlie with. I stared at my sock, mid-hurdler's stretch, for a while trying to put off coming up with something.

"What about you?" I asked. Yes, I was stalling. "How did you know you're ready?"

Ollie laughed at me and released the stretch he'd been holding.

"I'm different," he said. "My real reason for coming back was to become a better therapist, to integrate love into my professional practice in a way that isn't exactly encouraged in secular training--and isn't limited to Biblical framing, either. I know when I'm loving and when I'm not, so I know I'e met my goal. My clients say I'm helping them. Allen says he's taught me what he can, so that means it's time to move on. But you, you want to teach here. That's a whole other kettle of wax."

Yes, he said kettle of wax.

"You don't?"

"Come on, I'm a Baptist preacher. There's no way there's a place among the Six for me."

"How do you expect to get your ring, then?" I asked. Remember, to become a master, you have to pass a job interview. You won't be hired if there isn't an opening, which obviously there usually isn't, but you have to be, in principle, qualified to teach here. So if Ollie was sure he couldn't,...?

"That's what I have to figure out between now and Brigid."

"I need to know more about how this community works," I decided. "How it actually runs. I need to identify one or more areas of mastery where I can accept mastery candidates and outline a basic teaching approach--not that I won't have to alter my plans every single time! I need to develop teaching plans for one or more of the required courses. I need to get a sense of what my role in non-academic areas might be." Hearing myself talk this way, about actually being a master, made my insides go all fluttery. "And I need to talk to the other members of the candidates groups and with the novices who know me to find out if anybody thinks I'm missing something in terms of skill or character."

"Sounds like you've got it," said Ollie, clapped me on the shoulder, and went into the Great Hall and up the stairs, on his way to shower. He left me standing in the Green room by myself.

Monday, November 12, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 2: Instructions from Charlie

"Did you enjoy spying on the sprouts?" asked Charlie the other day.

I jumped. He'd come up behind me in the Great Hall. I was just coming down the stairs, and I think he must have come out of the Meditation Room, but I'm really not sure. All I know is that suddenly he was behind me, speaking.

"I wish you'd stop doing that," I said, and turned to face him.

"If that were true, you wouldn't be learning how to do it, would you?"

"No, I suppose not," I admitted.

He smiled a little and then raised his eyebrows, a question.

"I liked it," I admitted. "Does that make me a voyeur?"

"Depends. Did you get off on your power? Do you enjoy seeing what others would have you not see?"

"No," I told him, after a self-reflective moment. "Did you?"

He chuckled. I should explain, in case you've lost track, that he was referring to my watching the sprouts Samhain--and that while I did tell Kit that I'd done so, and several others heard our conversation, Charlie was on the other side of the fire and talking to someone else at the time. He shouldn't have known about my snooping--unless someone told him, or unless he was conducting his own snooping.

"No, as it happens," he explained. "I wasn't watching, I deduced where you had been and why when you arrived at the campfire late. I do not, generally, get a kick out of spying--but enjoying violation is not necessarily evil. You're a human being, and you have the ability, sometimes the responsibility, to choose based on something other than liking. Anyway, I don't watch when I can't be seen. If you had half the situational awareness all the time that you now have now, I wouldn't be able to sneak up on you and I wouldn't be able to spy. What leads you to believe the inside of the Mansion is not a good place to have your naturalist hat on?"

My head spun. Charlie doesn't usually talk about "evil," not named so directly, anyway, and then to pivot into criticizing my situational awareness?

"When do you daydream?" I asked. I think I sounded a little resentful. I rubbed my head, as if it really had spun, somehow.

"Hardly ever," he answered. "Why should I? Real life is fantastic enough. I don't need an escape. Creative, unstructured thought is another matter, though."

"I don't understand."

"You will," he told me, "when you get there. Now, you wanted to know about next year?"

"This is you finding me, then?" I asked, since he'd said on Samhain he'd find me so we could talk.

"I'm here, aren't I? And so are you. So, I found you. What do you want to know?"

"Well, how do I do this? If next year is to be my last one as a student, what must I do this winter to make that happen?"

"Do you think this will be your last one?"

"Yes, I guess, yes?"

"You guess?"

"Yes. I mean, it feels like it should be, but nobody's said anything to me."

"And nobody will. Mastery is a role you apply for when you're ready. You have to decide when you're ready."

I looked at him. He looked back at me.

"How do I know?" I cried, a little desperate. "Or do I have to just know that, too?"

After years of being pushed around, manipulated--with my active permission, but manipulated nonetheless--by Charlie and the others telling me to do things and never telling me why, and now all of a sudden they weren't going to tell me anything at all?

Charlie half-smiled at me, a knowing look, and I had a flash of weird compassion for the man. I could see, equally and wholly, my own position as a frustrated and somewhat confused student, and his position, a teacher trying to push and guide another through a difficult, sometimes painful process, without ever being sure he was saying or doing the right thing. Being able to appreciate his perspective did nothing to illuminate mine.

And when we started the conversation, I thought my question was going to have a straight-forward answer.

"You know more than you think you do," he told me. "You're Steve Bees' master now in all but name. You know how to do this. If you were your own master, what would you tell yourself?"

"Is this how it's going to be, now?" I asked. "I just have to figure out everything myself?"

"No," he told me. "You just have to take yourself as far as you can. Then I'll help you when you get stuck. Write yourself a plan for the next year, your last one. Give it to me, and if I see anything you need to add or subtract, I'll let you know." And he clapped me on the shoulder in a friendly way.

"How do I do that? Tell Sharon?"

"You got it."

And the wood stove, which we had just lit for the first time this morning, ticked slowly as it cooled.  In the forest, the corner of it I could see out the window, through a screen of dirty-looking cold rain, the last of the season's falling leaves loomed a dull, almost transparent orange.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Samhain

Nothing is certain but death and taxes, they say, and even death, it seems, is variable.

This year, they've added marigolds to the Samhain decorations.

Marigolds are those orange and yellow flowers that do well in late fall--they're also a big part of Dia del Muerte, which yearlings often think we celebrate around here, but we don't.

The issue is that Dia del Muerte is the Mexican Day of the Dead, not the neopagan one, and the difference matters for questions of cultural ownership. Like most things, this didn't make sense to me at first, but Steve Bees has explained it several times and I might be beginning to understand. It's not that we can't do anything that wasn't done by our own ancestors, it's that we can't take anything that wasn't given to us--and Dia del Muerte hasn't been given to us. We wouldn't know how to do it right.

It hasn't been given to us because nobody of Mexican cultural heritage has come here to give it. No one? I don't know if that's literally true, that NO ONE from that culture has ever been a student here. It seems hard to believe. I mean, the United States has a sizable Mexican-American population. But it's true that very few of them come here. It's odd, and it's another thing I didn't used to think about--if we're as welcoming and open-minded as we like to think we are around here, why are we so consistently white?

In any case, no, we don't celebrate Dia del Muerte. We celebrate our own Day of the Dead. And yet this year we had marigolds.

Marigolds in little pots on the tables of the Dining Hall, marigolds decorating the displays and alters of the Great Hall, and finally marigold petals sprinkled over the little wooden bowls lining the walkways of campus on Samhain Night, each bowl filled with water and a little floating candle, and the whole campus lit up like stars.

Another year over, a few more lives done. Hats off to dead folks, as we sing every year in the candle-lit Chapel, smelling of bees' wax and autumn leaves.

At the end of a ceremony, as I've said, the masters leave, abruptly, if necessary in the middle of a sentence, and while they all attend the reception out by the bonfire with us, they do not appear as masters again until Brigid. At least not officially. I caught Charlie in that gap, after they came down off the stage but before they vanished, and asked him whether next year was likely to be my last as a candidate and whether I needed to do anything over the winter about it.

"Cutting it a little tight, aren't you Daniel?" he asked me, with a half-smile.

"I'm not used to having this question," I admitted.

"We'll talk later," he told me. "I'll find you." And then the bells rang and he left.

But before they rang, Allen found me. He was evidently looking for me, and on finding me he grasped my shoulder and fixed me with a knowing look. Then he smiled and turned away, off to find somebody else at the last moment, perhaps.

Then we all streamed out, on our way to the bonfire, and I dropped back a little, stepped off to the side, and vanished. I can't quite go invisible as well as Allen can, but I'm working on it. If I'm outdoors, especially in poor light, I can generally place myself where others do not look, and I decided I wanted to watch the sprouts in their annual abduction--they take an adult, usually one of the masters, though anybody but a yearling will do, and hold the unfortunate for ransom, paid in candy and expanded privileges. Here trick-or-treat is rather more like trick-and-treat. They took me once, but it was kind of hard to figure out what was going on as the victim of the procedure.

So I stepped off to the side, and with my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see bodies, large and small, moving along, outlined by flickers of light from the distant bonfire and the occasional flare of a flashlight. As the crowd pouring from Chapel Hall stretched out, I saw the smallest bodies move in and cluster. I expected to see somebody go down in the middle of the cluster. I didn't.

Instead I heard a whisper, though I could not make out the words and decided to move nearer. I learned later that the whispering voice said "Mr. Greg, don't talk, we've caught you."

After the rest of the crowd had walked on by, the children spread out something on the ground and asked Greg to sit down on it.

"You bandits are seldom so considerate. To what do I owe this unaccustomed courtesy?" Greg asked, almost whispering himself.

"It's 'cause you're old, now," said a very young sprout. "We don't want to break you by accident."

"Little ghoul, I've been old since before you were born," he said, sounding both stern and amused.

"Yeah, but now you're older," said one of the others. "Please, no more talking. We've kidnapped you."

And they tied his hands and feet, laid him down, and did something else to him that I couldn't see. When one of them ran off to negotiate, I worked my way around back to the fire.

"Oh, Daniel, I thought they'd taken you," said Kit, quietly. "You haven't escaped, have you?"

Escaping would be bad form.

"They didn't take me, I spied on them," I explained.

"Ah. What did you see?"

"I won't tell, spy on them yourself next time," I said.

And then the sprout appeared, costumed as some sort of animal, and announced they'd taken Greg, so we all did our part begging and pleading for his return and then finally negotiated and agreed to pay the ransom. When they carried Greg out I saw they had not only carried him in an old hammock, because they had bound his feet, they'd also wrapped him in an old blanket and tied him in there. They had drawn all sorts of things on that blanket with a red marker, making their victim look ridiculous, as they normally do, and added a few leaves for decoration. We had to un-tie him.

"Why the blanket?" asked Charlie.

"They didn't want me to get cold," said Greg. "Didn't June complain of being cold last year?"

"Well aren't you getting special treatment?"

"It's because they think I'm old."

"You are old."

"They are intelligent children."

So we had fun eating and drinking around the fire for the rest of the evening, a big group of us, nearly two hundred strong, counting everybody on campus and several visitors and allies who had come in for the occasion.

Towards the end, Allen found me again.

"Did you appreciate my goodbye?" He asked. I had. Very much.

"I thought that's what you might be doing," I said.

"Given that we're talking now," he said, "what of me did you say goodbye to? Are you sure you're ready to be only my friend and not also my student?"

And, you know, he's right.

Monday, October 29, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Interlude 6

Hi, all, Daniel-of-2018, here.

The "vanishing" of the masters I wrote about last time no longer occurs--and if it did, I would vanish with them, being a master myself, now (a thought I still sometimes find deliciously odd).  We have no need of that particular tradition, because while we again have students, we don't live with them and are not available to them except when we choose to be--so we no longer need to choose not to be.

On balance, I think it is better for the community that the students live together and that we live with them, though doing so does create boundary problems we then have to solve, such as by vanishing and by using secret stairways and so forth. But even aside from that, there were advantages to the vanishing itself.

The withdrawal of the masters at Samhain, often in the literal middle of a sentence, symbolized and made emotionally real the losses of death, without which the Day of the Dead can come to seem merely spooky or picturesque, especially for those who have never really lost anybody. It created a frustration, in some cases an anger, a helpless recognition that all conversations, if carried on long enough, end without our permission and before everything has been said.

The withdrawal also reminded us, "us" being the students, I mean, that the school community was us, that we were its heart, and that although the masters comprised its other heart, we did not exactly need them. They could go and the school remained.

Finally, the fact that the masters left meant they could return, filing into the Chapel at Brigit, candles dark until we lit them, familiar and yet exotic, elfin, eerie, with hoods drawn up and that strange, small bell ringing....

I miss that, and I miss being able to provide that, though in truth I never was able to process in at Brigit when the school still had its campus, because I did not join the Six until afterwards. But I have processed in, for variations of the ceremony, and knowing that it is not the same, I feel sad for those students who don't get what I received.

And that, too, is part of the strange magic of Samhain, because all things pass, nothing endures forever, even the excellent things that should, and yet there is an underlying reality that ever returns.

The river moves but does not move. Lives end but life continues.

Monday, October 22, 2018

Mstery Year 2: Part 6: Post 5: Friendship

"I don't want to seem emotionally needy," I told Allen. He nodded gravely.

"Then I'll remember that you are needy even if you seem otherwise," he assured me.

"That's not what I meant!" We were talking one of our semi-traditional walks across campus, usually short conversations where one of us, usually me, catches up to the other on his way somewhere. Allen was headed towards the Mansion before dinner and seemed a little uncharacteristically solemn. He was tired, I suppose, from a day of classes.

"Have you ever heard of protesting too much?" he asked. "Anyway, I am a therapist, I'm well aware people have emotional needs. It's OK."

I tried not to bust up in embarrassed laughter. I got it together and tried again.

"Well, you're all about to vanish for the winter in a week or two," I said. "And, um...."

Remember, after Samhain the masters drop out of campus life until Brigid. Some leave campus entirely, others, like Charlie, just get very hard to find. They make themselves so available to us when they're working that when they aren't working they make themselves totally unavailable to compensate.

Allen stopped a moment and turned to me.

"Daniel, it's really all right that you care about me. I'm quite pleased about it, actually. It's OK to miss people you like when they go away."

Allen is well-aware that I don't like talking about my feelings, especially with other men. I'm afraid I'll look stupid. I'm afraid of embarrassing the other person, or something. It's just not something I do. But....

"No, that's not it. I mean, yes, I'll miss you, but--" I blushed to say it. There's a real fear, admitting to something like that, and I don't know what it's fear of. "But, I mean, you leave to get away from the students, to get away from us. To rest. But I don't want you to have to rest from me! I mean, um...."

"You want to be my friend."

"Yes."

"You are. Daniel, I can't un-student you while you are, in fact, my student. And I'm glad you are my student. You're paying me to do work which I enjoy and which you can benefit from. That's a good thing. Our relationship is shaped by the circumstances of our knowing each other, but so are all other relationships. Do you remember what I told Nora when you and she first got here?"

"Huh? No."

"I said you can't pay me enough to talk with people I don't like."

"Ok, I know that," I told him. "I just feel kind of rejected when all of you leave."

"Because you're emotionally needy." We were walking again. I laughed, a little ruefully, acknowledging his words. He continued. "Any idea what emotional need you're experiencing?"

I'd never thought of it like that.

"To belong?" I guessed, as though he would know how I felt better than I. He laughed.

"Yes, I suppose that could be it. The thing is, you're...amphibious. All of you candidates are. Partway between being students and masters. In a way, you're both, but in a way you're neither. I can't imagine it's ever comfortable. I didn't much like it, when I was a candidate."

"Do you have this conversation with all the candidates, Allen?"

We'd come to the door of the Office, his stop.

"No," he told me. "Because I'm not friends with all of them." And with a little nod he stepped inside and left me in the fading light.


Monday, October 15, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 4: A Matter of Personal Style

So, Hawk is a woman.

I forget if I've mentioned Hawk before. If I did, I would have called him a man, because that's what we all thought she was, but now he....I'm getting tangled up in pronouns. I know I'm supposed to use female pronouns, both now and to refer to the past, in order to reflect who she really is, but we haven't been seeing who she really is, and what we have been seeing--and the effort of seeing what we're seeing and trying to persuade our eyes to see something else, now that we know better, deserves description, too. As a writer, as a chronicler, perhaps, I feel torn. Whose reality do I portray?

I've never seen this sort of transformation before. I've only known Eddie and Security Joe as men, and I knew Security Joe for months before learning that he'd ever presented himself any other way. I'm not sure what to make of it, what I'm supposed to think and feel, what it's ok to say and to not say. I don't know Hawk very well.

She doesn't actually look any different, not in any obvious way. If she's taking hormones, they haven't had any effect, yet, and most of the time I see her in uniform, and the uniforms are the same regardless of gender. And yet there is a subtle shift. She's more relaxed. She smiles more, I think.

I saw her the other day, flying a kite on the Flat Field, standing out there in the wind, body braced against the tugging on the line--the kite was very big. I walked over and said hello. For once she wasn't in uniform, though I was. She was wearing a white turtleneck sweater over white women's slacks, and she looked, I swear this is true, like an Eddie Bauer ad. She's thin, with an oval face and ash-blonde hair cut in a sort of androgynous...pixie, I think the word is. Somehow, dressed that way, flying the kite, she looked taller, bigger than she normally does. I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Is Chloe having an off-day?" I asked. Chloe is the name of Hawk's hawk. Hawk is a falconer and is training a young goshawk who lives in the barn--as does Hawk, much of the time, the human/animal bond being important to maintain. Hawk who trains the hawk also lives in Hawk Dorm. Birds everywhere.

"Chloe's fine," she told me, "but fed-up at the moment, and the wind is a bit strong today."

Fed-up, I knew, meant sated and therefore unwilling to perform for food rewards.

"That took courage, your announcement, the other day," I said.

She had stood up in the Dining Hall and said "I'm not sure how else to put this, so, newsflash, I'm a woman. And if you want to know how that works, Google is your friend, because I don't want to talk about it." And sat back down.

"Thanks," she told me.

"Anybody give you any problems?"

"No, everybody's been really welcoming. Of course, I haven't been off-campus dressed as a woman, yet. Kit's taking me on Saturday. We're going shopping. I'll probably end up looking like a glam witch, with her influence, but it's a start."

"How long have you known," I asked. "Forever, or...?"

"I told you I didn't want to talk about it."

"Sorry."

The wind became unstable, choppy, and she fought for a few seconds to keep her kite aloft.

"I suppose I'll have to have sex with Eddie, now," she said, a faint resignation in her voice.

"What? Why?"

"All women on campus do, don't they?"

"I don't think all of them do, just most. You can tell him no, you know."

"Oh, I know, I'm just thinking it might be one of those things, you know, like wearing make-up or high heels, that just comes with the territory."

"Aren't you gay, though?"

"Hey, yeah, I am. I'm not used to saying that....I'm gay. A lesbian. Yup, that's me. But I suppose I'll at least consider it, if he asks. I mean, if I'm going to try out men, I could do worse, you know?"

"I think sex is supposed to be more than 'could be worse,'" I said, feeling a bit defensive of masculinity in general. "But I've had similar thoughts about Rick. But I'm married and anyway he won't ask."

Did I really say that? Yes, yes I did, because Hawk laughed.

"Speaking of which," I added, quietly, "here comes Eddie."

I knew because I'd heard his dog start howling a few minutes earlier, meaning he'd just left the barn. Then I'd heard a squirrel scold in the Formal Garden, which could have meant an animal, but that squirrel doesn't like Eddie since he often has a dog with him and sometimes idly throws rocks and sticks. Finally, I'd heard a splash in the fountain in the garden in front of the Mansion--a habit I knew Eddie has whenever he walks by it. But Hawk had noticed none of those things, and seemed rather startled by my announcement, especially when I turned out to be right.

"Eddie, what's wrong?" exclaimed Hawk, because he, too, was out of uniform, and his bare arms were purple with fresh bruises. He had straw clinging to his clothing and hair.

"Bit of a disagreement with my dog," he said, dismissively. "I came looking for you, Hawk. I thought Chloe might have been frightened by the noise. She might need you."

"Oh, Jesus. Thank you. I'll go check on her." And she began reeling in her kite.

"I'd thought you might have come to flirt with the new girl," I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hawk crack up with embarrassed laughter, as intended.

"Not yet," Eddie explained, in mock-indignant protest. "I figured I'd give her at least a few days to get used to things."

Hawk, still laughing and shaking her head, had her kite collected.

"You just wain until we run into Rick," she told me.

"Why Rick?" asked Eddie, as we turned back towards the barns.

"Long story," I told him.

"Eddie, how did you learn to dress?" Hawk asked.

"You'd have to asked my parents."

"No, I mean, how'd you learn to dress like a guy?"

"I looked at other men and copied what looked good on them. Also, I watched a lot of old movies. I think it's easier for guys, though. Our clothes are simpler. And, frankly it's easier with hormones. For me, anyway. There were people who refused to see me as anything but a chick no matter how well I dressed."

"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," Hawk admitted. "I don't want to dress like a...caricature of a woman. I want to be able to wear jeans and a sweatshirt if I want to, but I also want to look--and feel--feminine. I wish I had an older sister to help me out with all this. I feel like I have this whole new adolescence to get through all by yourself."

"You're not by yourself," Eddie assured her. "And not like the opinion of a dude should make a whole lot of difference, but you look good today." When Hawk giggled again and looked away, he added "I'm not hitting on you! I'm not actually like that."

I dropped back a pace and watched them talk. Again, I noticed Hawk's height. She didn't look any bigger than she is, I realized--she's a tall woman, but not oddly so. She's shorter than I am. I think I must have been seeing her as smaller than she really is before, and now I can see her more clearly. Or perhaps I was seeing something else and only interpreting it as smallness. She could draw the eye without taking up space.

I guess it was her womanhood I was seeing. I could see her the whole time, I just didn't know it.



Monday, October 8, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 3: Time Moving

It's beginning to look a lot like Samhain...

Yes, I mean that with the melody. I'd draw little musical notes around it if I knew a way to do that in Blogger.

Anyway.

The trees are turning now, not quite peak, but close, and the fields are full of goldenrod and aster. The apples are coming in heavy from the orchards and the pumpkins are ripening--we've had pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread in the Dining Hall already (no pumpkin spice lattes, though, for that one must go off-campus). The corn has been harvested, and so the dried stalks have appeared as standing bundles in all the doorways of all the buildings on campus. Yesterday, Charlie's team hung the Great Hall with cut bittersweet vine.

And all the classes have entered their final stretch as the entire campus community starts looking towards winter and then graduation. Except me, oddly enough.

It's not that I'm not thinking about it at all, it's that it's not my focus. June has got a job.

She actually started about a month ago--she's the Outdoor Education Director for a private school nearby, a position that allows her to telecommute two to three days a week, minimizing driving, and gives her summers off so she can work for our school. She has benefits and everything (which means I now have health insurance again).

"I feel so grown-up!" she told me, giggling.

But this means we can't leave campus during the break, or at least we can't spend a lot of time off-campus. I can't go 'home,' because campus IS home, because my wife lives here and she has a job nearby. An actual, professional, grown-up job. And it changes how we both think about time and space.

I'm 28, now, and I'm certainly an adult within this community. I have been for a long time. I'm married, most of my friends are married, and I spend most of my time now teaching classes and workshops and things, or working with Steve. Plus my part-time job at the nursery.

But relative to the outer world I am, in a way, still a boy. I mean, I'm a student. I'm mostly broke all the time because I'm a student. I've never had a "real job," meaning one I intended to keep for a long time, and I still don't know exactly what my real job will consist of when I get one. It feels much odder than I expected to have my wife come home to me at night complaining or pleased by all the things professionals can be irritated or pleased by at their work, making thousands, not hundreds, of dollars per month, with health insurance and a retirement plan. A retirement plan?

It's not that I'm jealous, and it's certainly not that I'm uncomfortable with my wife making more than me. It'd that it feels weird being married to a real grown-up.

I talked to Allen about it the other day. He'd just come from class, I met up with him as he was coming across the Central Field toward the Dining Hall, and so he was uncharacteristically dressed in uniform. Our feet crunched a little in the few leaves that hand already fallen and blown out into the field, and a maple leaf had lodged itself in his hair. I couldn't tell if he wanted it to be there or just didn't know about it.

I explained to him, quickly, about feeling like a boy and not wanting to. He smiled.

"I'll let you in on a secret," he said. "We all feel that way. 'Like a kid' is how adulthood feels, most of the time. Or like a young adult when you're not. The mind never catches up to its real age. I have a twenty-year-old son. Twenty! Some days, I'm surprised I'm not twenty. He could give me a grandson now, if he wanted to." He grinned at the idea, amused, I think, at the strangeness of the whole thing.

"I remember you once said 'feelings aren't facts.'"

"I did," he agreed, "Though I was hypothermic at the time. I'd say, rather, that feelings are poor indicators of reality. Good thing, too, or you and I would be stuck being boys forever and we'd miss all the fun of being men. Also, you know, things like this wouldn't work," and he snapped his fingers and one of his ferrets emerged from my uniform hood (where I certainly hadn't known it was), climbed around to my shoulder, and jumped to its master, who kissed it fondly.

"Does he have a name?" I asked.

"Templeton. And the female is Charlotte. You barely reacted. I'm going to have to up the anti, the ferret trick is getting to be old hat."

"I bet you have an old hat," I guessed, and he obligingly produced one.

"I'm getting too predictable."

"If I could predict you, Allen, I wouldn't have to ask you questions. I'd know the answers."

"Well, that's some comfort. Though you have your own answers, too, you know."

"I know. Speaking of which, did you know you have a leaf in your hair? It's quite fetching."

His face fell in surprise and he patted his head cautiously and found and removed the leaf.

"I'd forgotten all about that," he exclaimed, embarrassed, and laughed his merry, boyish laugh.

Monday, October 1, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 2: Loving the World

“So, how are you doing?” Charlie asked Steve and I the other day.

We were all sitting on the Mansion porch together, and it was one of those gorgeous days that you think of immediately when you imagine Fall—clear, cool light, trees coloring up (though nowhere near peak, yet), and the pastures all full of goldenrod and asters. Crickets and what I think are grasshoppers buzzed in the grass and some jays argued in the Formal Gardens, probably one of the barn cats had gotten out and gone marauding again. Sometimes, distantly, one of the roosters crowed. I could hear occasional traffic out on the main road, but that, too, was distant and I could ignore it. Streaky clouds against blue sky foretold rain within two days. Charlie meant how were Steve and I doing on our assignment together. He was not making idle conversation.

Charlie had asked us, invited us, or perhaps just allowed us to come report to him over lunch, though he wasn’t eating. His personal deer hunting season has begun, and he was cleaning and sharpening a quiver-full of arrows as we spoke.

Steve sopped up some sauce with a piece of bread, rather pointedly not answering. Charlie glanced at him, frowned, and then returned his apparent attention to his work.

“Well, then,” he said, “in that case, Steve, how is your wife?”

Steve’s attention to his bread became savage.

“Hospitalized, again,” he admitted. “I don’t know, it’s something to do with her meds. They say she’ll be out quickly, this time.”

Charlie did not overtly react, except to nod a little, but his face and his shoulders grew subtly sad.

“And how are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Steve. “You know, though, nobody asks me that?”

“I just did,” said Charlie.

“I know, I know. But most people ask—no, tell—me about her. And none of it matches. Her doctors tell me schizophrenia is an incurable, progressive brain disease treatable only through life-long drug therapy. Acorn told me that some large percentage of people who have one psychotic episode never have another, that the drugs they use are toxic, that who gets diagnosed with schizophrenia depends on who does the diagnosing, and that talk therapy works and is undervalued. And he should know. I mean, his aunt is schizophrenic and he’s done a ton of reading on it. But then Freydis told me that hearing voices is a normal thing in shamanic cultures and that if visionary talent receive social support there is no pathology. And she should know, too.”

Steve’s eyes widened. He breathed out harshly. He seemed overwhelmed.

“So is my wife permanently disabled, is she curable but currently being poisoned by unnecessary drug therapy, or is she a spiritually gifted woman who needs community support? I can tell you one thing—all of this? It’s not helping.”

Charlie dried and oiled a hunting point until recently clotted with blood and hair.
“Next question,” he said. “How are you—both of you—doing?”

I had to suppress a laugh, without much success. His next question was his first question, back again. Charlie glanced at me and the corner of his mouth twitched. Steve stabbed at his food.

“It’s relaxing, I guess,” he said. As you may recall, I was assigned to teach Steve how to...I’m not sure how to put it. Part of what Charlie gave me, I’m supposed to pass on to Steve—so he can cope better with the stresses of his political activism and, I guess, now, his wife’s illness. He dragged his feet at first, he was so focused on everything else that he wouldn’t pay attention. But over the last few months he’s seemed to like our field trips more, anyway. He shrugged.

“Just relaxing?” asked Charlie.

“Yes, just relaxing. I mean, I enjoy tracking and listening to birds and shit. But then when I go inside, when I go to work, everything’s still the same. And I just….If it were just my wife were sick, maybe I could deal with that, but it’s not. And if it were just the cases we lose, the battles we don’t win, the battles we don’t even get to fight…I’ve always believed the arc of history bends towards justice and all that, but tell that to the families of the black men murdered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when those cases still haven’t even been investigated? Tell that to trans women of color being murdered just for being who—no, what—they are and even most liberals plain don’t notice. Every day I found out it’s worse than I thought it was the day before. And I’m a white cishet guy listening to birds. And when I’m done listening to birds, nothing has changed. I just don’t have any faith anymore that what I’m doing is going to make any difference. Because my faith is tired. Faith takes energy, and I don’t have any. Even when I’m out here and it’s beautiful and everything, sometimes I think if I really got into it, just opened myself like you’re trying to get me to do….It feels like I might start crying and never stop.”

Charlie looked at me. My turn.

“So, why don’t you cry?” I asked, because it seemed like the next obvious thing to say, although it’s not like I’m eager to get all weepy myself. I can’t remember the last time I cried. I do remember the last time I wanted to.

Steve blushed a little and gave me an odd look.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “I mean, I’m the white guy, I’m the healthy guy, what right do I have to cry? I don’t have time to be all sensitive, I’m supposed to be there for everybody else. I shouldn’t have to break down and have a cry-fest every time I don’t like what’s happening in the world.”

“What the hell does ‘should’ have to do with it?” I asked, and this time I wasn’t saying what sounded right, I was saying what popped into my head, not just those words but, hard on their heels, a whole idea. Charlie favored me with a slight, brief smile. I continued.“If you, if the...dammit, Charlie, I know what I’m saying but not how to say it. Something about paying attention, like paying attention to the evidence while tracking, not getting distracted?”

“I think what Daniel is trying to say…is have you ever been to that aisle in the pharmacy where they keep the prophylactics and what-not?”

“What?”

“What?” That certainly wasn’t what I’d thought I was trying to say.

“Daniel, I’m surprised at you. You, at least, should be familiar.”

“I’ve bought condoms, I just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Next to the condoms, they have various creams and contraptions. The creams are for men in too much of a hurry. Desensitizes the penis to slow them down. Now, why would any man want to desensitize his penis, can you tell me that?”

Steve and I looked at each other. Neither of us knew where Charlie was going with this, but he would demand an honest, straight-forward answer.

“To make it last longer,” I hazarded, “Stretch out the experience.”

“For his partner, I imagine,” tried Steve. “I mean, he’s not the only one whose pleasure matters.” I should have thought of that, I really should.

Charlie finally put down his arrow and gave us his full attention.

“Yes,” he said, “and no. Those products sell because men have preconceived ideas about what sex should be like and they’re willing to numb their own wieners to make it happen.”

Wieners? Who says wieners?

Charlie continued, his voice growing heavy with rhetorical derision. “Being there for their partners, enjoying the moment, what moment? They’re not having the experience their bodies are giving them. They’re not there for their partners, they’re not there at all, they’re off in some damn fantasy land where all men can keep going as long as they want every single time. They call it stamina, like it’s an athletic competition, not an intimate encounter with another human being.”

“Um, Charlie,” said Steve, “why are we sitting here talking about sexual aides when you’re celibate and I’m worried about schizophrenia and racism?”

Again that brief smile.

“Steve, I may not have a human partner anymore, but I have more sex in a day than you have in a typical month at home with your wife.” A wave of his hand took in the whole lovely, glorious Fall afternoon, a world, and his relationship with the world, that he has described before as erotic. “And do you know how I get to have all this sex? Because I’m sensitive enough to actually show up.” He leaned forward and poked Steve in the chest with an almost accusatory finger. “You want to love the ‘Beloved Community’? Fine. You gotta show up.”

Steve had no response for that. He looked shocked, then thoughtful. Then, even more thoughtful.

“You’re right, Charlie,” I said, later. “That is what I was trying to say, but not how I was trying to say it.”

“Never miss an opportunity for a memorable metaphor,” he advised me, laughing openly, now. “Sex sells.”

Monday, September 24, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 1: Mabon

Happy Mabon!

This year, it rained. That's funny, in all the years I've been celebrating Mabon--that's the fall equinox--here, it hasn't rained once, until this year, when I believe it rained enough for all six of the Mabon celebrations I've seen.

It was a cold, long, misty rain that began in the night and continued right on into the morning of the next day. The cloud lowered until you could not see the mountain ridge behind the campus and a fitful wind stirred the trees toward the afternoon. Sometimes the rain came hard, at other times it was a mere, drippy mist, but wet and gray either way. When the air was still and the mist thick, crows cawed once, twice, three times and nothing else made a sound. When crows caw like that, I've noticed, they'll respond to a human imitation, matching the number of caws you care to give, at least until they lose count. But I don't imitate wild animals anymore. It seems rude.

We continued our festivities as best as we could, though a lot of events had to be moved inside. The Gratitude Circle was in the Chapel, the Thank You Doll Build was in the Main Greenhouse, and so on. Some things had to be outside, such as waking the Doll, and the harvest festival was outside under the event tent, meaning we all had to get rather wet coming and going.

"No sense pretending to honor the Earth if you can't stand a little rain," said Charlie, but I noticed he pulled the hood of his rain poncho up, just life everyone else.

We all have rain ponchos as an optional part of our uniforms, and the wool cloaks we wear are excellent in any kind of cool weather, but as the day wore on the damp leaked in, and as we all spent more time outside that we normally do in such weather, by dinner time we were all rather chilled.

Joy noticed.

"If humans really are animals," she declared, in a loud voice, "I can diagnose you all with incipient hypothermia. GET TO BED."

But we didn't go to bed. We all repaired to our dorms, yes, but only to change clothes and, for some of us, to shower. Then most of us gathered in the Great Hall and built a fire (though we didn't light the wood stove) and set the hot cocoa and the spiced cider on to brew in the cauldrons on swinging arms over the fireplace. And there, led, encouraged, and abetted by Kit, we sat around telling stories half the night.

It's Fall, now.

Mastery Year 2: 5th Interlude

Hi, all, Daniel-of-2018 here.

Last week I was unable to post and here it is a few days after Mabon already. Things seem to be getting away from me, both in general and this week in particular--I'm playing catch-up after having a house guest for several days last week and then having to throw an unexpected party for someone I didn't even know (long story, but the party was fun and the guest of honor was...interesting).

Anyway.

So, I'm writing TWO posts today, an interlude and the Mabon post, and they will both likely be short.

Our new retail complex is starting to hit its stride. As you may remember, we now have a restaurant and two connected retail spaces, one a metaphysical bookstore and the other a natural science bookstore and gift shop. Aaron's library has moved into the basement, and there are apartments on the second and third floors, one of which is now home to Greg--though how long he'll be able to stay there is anybody's guess, as his health is getting poor. One of the other apartments is unoccupied and we use is for classes and rent it out for 12-step meetings and such.

As a campus of sorts, it's not ideal, but at least we as a community have a physical space to call home again.

-best, D.

Monday, September 17, 2018

Note

Hi, All,

I'm in the happy position of not having time to post this week because I have house guests. See you next week.

-D.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 5: Thinking

Aaand summer is back.

It's not really, of course. The harvest is coming in fast, now, the swallows are staging to migrate, the goldenrod is coming into bloom....Fall is well underway. I mean it's hot and humid and I wish it wasn't. I'd like a good summer storm to cool things off, and I heard some rumblings in the distance today and even saw one cloud-to-ground strike far off, but none of the storms came our way.

I was supposed to teach a workshop today but had to cancel because the people who were interested had an extended field trip in another class and weren't going to be able to make it. So, I ended up spending the afternoon lying on my bed, watching the hummingbirds at the bean vines out on my deck, wishing it were cooler, wishing for cooling rain, and thinking about things.

And I was thinking about 9/11. The 9/11, I mean, the attacks. They're getting to be a long time ago, now. I mean, I could have a conversation with someone who wasn't born yet when that happened* and sometimes I do--my brother's kids, for example.

I remember that day. I remember before and I remember after. And someday there won't be anybody who remembers before--the amount of time before that event is finite, we've had all of it there is. There are days that change a person intentionally. I mean, when I first came to this place, I had no idea what it would mean for my life, what I was getting into, but I did it on purpose. And in a way I did know. I knew that here was a place that would be magical in some way, important, worth putting my energy into and caring about. I knew it was a place I wanted to belong and thought that perhaps I could. I was changing something and I was excited about it.

But when I woke up on September 11th, 2001, I didn't know that day would be different.



* Remember, this is set ten years in the past.

Monday, September 3, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 4: Rick's Habit

Today was the first day that felt like fall, cool and crisp. It doesn't look like fall yet, except in that, according to the Wiccan calendar, it is fall, so this is how fall looks. I mean, the color change hasn't started yet. I expect the weather will warm up again in a few days and we'll be back to "summer" for a week or two, before the season really changes.

I've been writing poetry for Charlie for over a year, now, and I've written about five hundred poems, mostly about my "spot" in the woods. That's probably more poems than I'd written in my entire life before this project, and I never thought I could be so productive, not that productivity alone is a good measure of poetry. It's just a lot, you know? We've decided to publish 180 of them in a little book, which is harder than it sounds because, first, only around a hundred so far are revised to the point where we're both happy with them, and, second, most of those hundred are clustered around the same season, spring, when I apparently had a burst of creativity or something. The idea is to follow the course of the year, so we need more poems for the other seasons. The book is therefore only about a third done.

Has my soul improved its condition? Charlie suggested we clarify my soul, back when I was protesting that poetry can't be edited because it is an expression of the artist's soul. How embarrassing, that kind of statement sounds so juvenile now....

Anyway, we never set about anything Charlie framed as "soul improvement," and I very quickly knuckled under and started rewriting my poems based on Charlie's editing. Sometimes I couldn't do it, I'd already forgotten the ideas and feelings that made me write the poem and I couldn't recapture that inspiration. But most of the time I found that answering Charlie's questions (usually some version of "what does this mean?) helped me clarify my intent and improve my communication so that the revised poem better expressed my thoughts and feelings than the original had.

But is my soul clarified?

You know, I think it may be. It's hard to tell. I've always been a man of few words, but the few words I speak are more likely to make sense, now. I stick my foot in my mouth less often. I'm more sure of what I want to say. I'm more sure, in general, of what I want. I'm less worried about it when I don't know. Is this clarity of soul? How am I supposed to know?

But poetry, along with therapy and the two courses the candidates' group takes, do seem to have something to do with the shift.

Speaking of shifts, both Ollie and Rick expect to get their Green Rings this coming February. September is always the month when I start thinking about who's leaving next, and this time it's them, again (along with Jasimin, Nel, and Oak, from our group, and a few dozen novices, including Freydis, whom I've talked about here, Ebony's friend, Nutmeg, and Steve's friend, Edna). It's not as hard as the first time, as they won't be going into Absence, but I'm not entirely sure Rick won't simply drop off the face of the Earth.

I asked him about that the other day.

"Why, will you miss me, Kretzman?" he asked, a slightly mocking half-grin on his face.

"Frankly, yes I would," I told him. "I'd rather you not vanish."

"You--I don't get you. Why do you bother to like a guy who you think might just vanish on you? I'm not the kind of person who deserves your loyalty."

"I'm not loyal because you deserve it," I said. "Look at it this way, I'm Charlie's student. You can't be more prickly than he is."

"Yes, I can," he asserted. "But I'm not going anywhere, yet. I like this place, for what it's worth. I like you. Where else can I be the prickly, anti-social jack-ass I am and have people still be ok with it?"

"If you were that much of a jack-ass, why would you be so concerned about it? You're constantly warning people. You're like an ass walking on cat-feet." You know, how cats can walk among delicate china or glassware and never knock anything over? My simile made him laugh aloud.

"That's why I like you, Kretzman," he said.

"Speaking of which, how's loving Charlie going?"

As you may recall, his primary assignment as a candidate has been to learn to love one human being. When Rick expressed worry that he might accidentally hurt or confuse the object of such deliberate love, Charlie volunteered himself. I'm not sure how ethical that looks, since he's the one who gave Rick the assignment in the first place, but Charlie is often not what he looks like, so I think it's ok.

"Well, I don't feel any urge to ride off into the sunset with him."

"No, seriously, how's it going? You're expecting to get your Green Ring in a few months, so I assume something's happened with your assignment?"

"Nothing dramatic," Rick explained, with a little discomfort. He doesn't talk on a personal level easily. "Like, nothing's happened. I've had no big revelation, he hasn't tested me by almost dying, my feelings haven't changed. But I've been thinking about Charlie's welfare every day, all day, for months now. Everything I do, everything I find out about, everything I read in the damned newspaper, it's always how is that going to impact Charlie? Is it going to be good for him? Is there some way I can help for his sake? Nothing's changed, it's still just an exercise, but I'm used to it. I realized the other week that I don't resent doing all this for him. I never have. Isn't that odd? You'd think I'd feel...imposed on, interrupted, at least bored, but I don't. I'm ok with all Charlie, all the time. I can keep doing the exercise forever, and maybe I will, whether I get the ring or not." He shrugged, as though the statement weren't extraordinary. "I didn't even tell anyone about that realization, but two days later, Charlie told me I have his vote to graduate. Isn't that crazy?"

"No more than most things around here," I conceded.

Monday, August 27, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 3: Priesthood?

"What is a priest?" asked Apple Blossom at breakfast.

For some reason, the entire candidate's group, except Veery, and Oak, had ending up sitting at the same table with Apple, a single yearling, and she had been using the opportunity to pick our brains. Halfway through the meal, Nel excused herself because she had spotted someone she'd been meaning to talk with, and switched tables with Greg, but Apple continued prompting discussion.

"A priest is a male priestess," said Ebony, and took a big bite of eggs. She was just giving Apple a hard time.

"A priest/ess," Apple amended, making a motion with her hand to indicate the slash. "What is a priest/ess? What is it you're all trying to do?"

"I'm trying to be a good person," said Olli.

"That's not what I mean," said Apple. She has learned how to be persistent. "I'm asking in the abstract."

"That depends on whom you ask," said Greg, and we all looked at him because he had not spoken earlier. "What?" he asked, "is this a candidate's-only interview?"

"Not formally," I assured him.

"I'm asking you, anyway," said Apple. "You and them. What's a priest? ess?"

"No," said Greg, thoughtfully. "I didn't mean it's a matter of opinion, I mean that different systems have different kinds of priests, especially if you include clerics and ministers and monks and shamans in the category. Which I suppose we do, here."

"There's a difference between a priest and a minister, though," interjected Olli, "and between a priest and a monk. Christianity has all three, and they are distinct."

"Granted," said Greg.

"But what is it?" persisted Apple. "What's the larger category?"

"Well, I'm a minister," said Ollie. "That means I serve the people, but I don't have any special power, not like a Catholic priest."

"That's like a rabbi," commented Ebony, who was raised Jewish. "They're, like, religious experts, not religious authorities."

"I think most of us are ministers, then," said Steve, looking around. "We all serve."

"Raven and I are witches," Ebony corrected him. "We do have special powers."

"But not authority," said Raven.

"No, not authority, unless we have a leadership position in our own coven," Ebony agreed.

"But aside from Kit's teaching coven, we're both solitaries," added Raven.

"And yet you are also both priestesses, yes?" Greg pointed out. "If a priest has special authority, in what sense are you priestesses as solitaries?"

"We stand as intersessionaries between humanity and the, the Everything," explained Raven. As an animist, she doesn't exactly have a god concept. She frowned.

"Ministers do that, too," said Steve, "but we're not priests."

"I didn't know you're a minister," said Ollie.

"I'm a Quaker. We're all ministers."

"I think I'm a priest and a minister," suggested Eddie. "My priesthood is between me and the Goddess. My ministry is to animals and the humans who need them."

"What about you, Daniel?" asked Apple. I had been characteristically quiet.

"I don't know," I told her, slowly. "I don't think of myself as a priest. I don't know that Charlie is a priest. I guess I'm becoming whatever it is he is." A man who has married the land? Is not that a kind of intersessionary? But it doesn't do to speak of such things, and I didn't know the word for it anyway.

And Rick said nothing at all.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Note

Hi, all.

This week has been "crazy," and I'm running behind schedule. So, you can expect a post...sometime.

-best, D.

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 2: Therapy

So, fall semester begins, and for the first time neither I nor June have any new classes. Of course, the same has been true for every semester this year, but for some reason the fact is impressing itself on me more strongly this time. Perhaps it's only that summer has seemed very long and I was, without realizing it, looking forward to a change and there isn't any.

I am still taking the two classes all mastery candidates take, Chaplains' Seminar and Candidates' Seminar. I teach my own workshops and things, and I sometimes join one of Charlie's classes for the day (usually Messing Around Outdoors, it's fun) or substitute for him, or I sit in on Steve's American Religious History class, which he took over from Greg, just to see how he's doing. So it's not like I have no contact with academics, it's just that I'm not taking classes with novices, nor do I have a vicarious connection to the novice's view of the year through June, as I did last year. I feel...isolated, somehow, outside of the school that I have spent so long within.

So far in that I'm out.

Perhaps I shall discuss all of this in therapy. I started individual therapy some weeks ago, not because I think I need it, but because it's actually a graduation requirement for candidates--a year and a day of it, of course. I'm not sure why, I think it's something about making sure you're not crazy. I didn't do it my first year, because I knew I wouldn't finish that year anyway, and this this year I sort of let it get away from me until Allen reminded me of the requirement mid-summer. I hadn't exactly forgotten about it, and I had to admit I've been reluctant. Individual therapy, as opposed to the group therapy I did as a yearling, seems so associated with...having problems. To me, at least. I don't want to think of myself as one of those people in therapy. I know better, but it worries me all the same.

Allen laughed at me.

"Are you worried I won't be friends with crazy people?" he asked.

Allen is not my therapist. He says it's one thing to conduct group therapy with yearlings he met recently, but quite another to offer one-on-one counseling to friends he's known for a decade. He won't serve as therapist with any of us. Instead, he maintains a list of people who practice nearly, whose work he admires and trusts, and who know the school exists. They're paid from our tuition, though at a discounted rate. Some will even come to campus, if several mastery candidates are seeing them that year, though the one I picked doesn't.

It's interesting. No major insights or breakthroughs, yet, and I have to admit I still don't think I need therapy, but the opportunity to talk about myself freely for fifty minutes a week--I like it.

Monday, August 6, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 1: Lammas

Happy slightly belated Lammas. This year, as last, we had a feast, several tastings (this time garlic, vinegar, and mead) and several types of talent shows--magic (of course), but also martial arts, and what I guess counts as debate, though the format was different than any debate I've ever seen.

The first part of the day was hot and sunny, and the sprouts (and some of the adults) had a water-fight--the fight wasn't an official scheduled activity, the way it was last year, but it was fun anyway. Then a thunderstorm blew in, so we retreated to the Dining Hall for the worst of the lightning, then came out again and danced in the rain. So, that was fun, too.

But that's not really what I want to talk about. The thing is that every year, the masters and some number of others who have completed the mastery program (that is, also masters, but not school employees) withdraw into the Mansion and do something that we're not supposed to know about. And we don't know about it. I'm one of the few students who even knows they do something, since they slip away one at a time and don't call attention to their going, and even I don't know what they do.

For the first several years I was here, the vanishing gave me a delicious sense of mystery, and so many things around here have, at one time or another. Then it started to piss me off. I felt excluded, condescended to. But this year was different.

For the first time it occurred to me that if I asked what they're doing, they'd probably tell me. Secrets around here are usually kept by evasion and distraction, not by outright refusal, and never by lying. But it also occurred to me, again for the first time, to think about the whole thing from the masters' perspective. Like, not just did I want to ask, but, if I were one of them, would I want to be asked?

And I don't think I would. It's like they give their lives to the school, they are at work, in one way or another, almost all the time, let them have their privacy.

I don't know, I just never thought of it before from a perspective other than my own needs and wants. And it's not about me.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Mastery Year 2: 4th Interlude

Hi, all, Daniel-of-2018, here, feeling...wistful.

I woke up thinking about Charlie last night and could not get back to sleep. I can't really tell you the contents of those thoughts, we're not there yet in the story, but the night has left me both sleep-deprived and melancholy. Perhaps my thoughts landed thus because we're preparing for Lammas and I've been calling a lot of people I don't normally talk to, gathering the tribe, so to speak, and so I think of the past.

But you know Charlie through my words, and can appreciate my thoughts without knowing exactly what they were. So let me tell a brief Charlie story, one of my favorites, though it doesn't fit in to my history any place--for one thing, I don't remember precisely when it happened, though I was wearing brown at the time, so I must have been a candidate.

I was walking along beside the row of trees that separated the farm from the rest of campus, and I saw Charlie on the path that leads through the row and into the farm. He probably knew I was there, he knew most such things, but I can't be sure because he did not react to my presence at all. He's been hunting woodchucks and carried his game bag and his bow, but his bow was unstrung. He was done hunting for the day. And this rabbit approached him. I mean it hopped right up to him and looked at him. He looked at it--he may have spoken to it, I was too far away to hear--and then walked on, but the rabbit followed. This time man approached rabbit, maybe to test how close he could get, and the rabbit hopped away. So Charlie continued on his way, but was followed by the rabbit.

Now, Charlie did just hunt woodchucks and deer, he also hunted rabbits, and sometimes squirrels. Anything likely to interfere with our farming could find itself harvested if it entered our fields while Charlie had his bow strung. I've eaten rabbits he has killed. But when he found himself once again being followed by this abnormally friendly rabbit, he turned and spoke to it kindly. I still couldn't hear his words, but I could see his face and it shone with a kind of fond amusement.

The rabbit looked up at him and then picked up a small it of stick in its mouth and threw the stick some feet with a jerk of its head. Charlie looked at the rabbit for a few seconds, considering, and then he fetched and returned the stick. The rabbit threw it again, and again Charlie fetched it. And so on for some minutes, until a dog barked and the rabbit ran away.

I later learned that a wild rabbit someone had raised as a pet had been released on our property, and of course that must have been the rabbit I saw. A few other people saw it, too, and then after a few weeks it disappeared, probably eaten by something, but not by any off us. And what sticks in my mind is that image of the man and the rabbit playing fetch together early one summer morning before breakfast. 

I can't stay in this mood long, I've got to get to work so I can get certain tasks out of the way in time to take the holiday off. And as usual, I'm slightly unprepared, since I should have written the interlude post last week so that I could write the Lammas post this week. Everything is disorganized. Time has a way of running out. Maybe I'll write a second post this week, for the holiday?

.... .... ....  .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....

And now I've been interrupted again--it's almost four and I need to pick my daughter up from her friend's house and I'd better send this off before anything else gets out of wack. Use the time you have, I guess I'm saying.

-best, D.

Monday, July 23, 2018

Mastery Year 2: Part 4: Post 6: I Think He Likes Me

Eddie turned up on campus today with his hand bandaged.

I asked him what was wrong, and he peeled back the gauze and showed me a couple of paired puncture wounds, one of them deep, a hole in his hand, like a tiny, red, manhole without its cover. It looked even worse than it was, being filled with a clear, unnatural-looking gooey substance that I belatedly realized must be antibiotic ointment. His hand shook slightly, and I noticed he tried not to move his fingers. He wrapped up his hand again.

"Joy's work," he explained, with some humor.

"Joy doesn't have teeth like that," I said. He rolled his eyes.

"The teeth belong to Elmo," he said. "Joy bandaged my hand. She said I'm almost as sweet and loyal as a dog, so she guessed she could work on me. And we don't want the bite reported. He's had all his shots and I've had mine, but still...."

"I thought you said Elmo is getting better?"

"He is. Believe it or not, I think this is improvement."

I should explain that Elmo is the dog Eddie has been trying to train for the last two months or so. His assignment, the thing he has to do to earn his mastery, is to train a dog as a therapy animal whom even Eddie thinks cannot be trained. The first hard part was finding a dog he honestly considered untrainable, when lots of dogs who would merely be difficult to train beckoned at the shelters. And then there was the philosophical problem of being assigned to train an untrainable dog.

"If I succeed, and end up with a trained therapy dog," Eddie had said to me, "does that mean I have to start over with a new dog? Or, if I fail with the dog, does that mean I've failed my assignment and I have to start over with a new dog? Or just not earn my ring?"

None of us have ever heard of a candidate who wanted to earn the green ring and couldn't do it, but there's always the fear one of us could be the first. The masters like to assign impossible tasks, after all, like training an untrainable dog.

"Are they trying to teach me to handle failure, or trying to teach me not to give up on long-shot dogs?"

But all such philosophizing and worrying went out the window in mid-April when Eddie found, and more or less fell in love with Elmo, an unsocialized and deeply traumatized animal whom three rescue organizations had each independently examined, despaired of, and left at the kill shelter. Eddie took him, moved him in to one of the barns on campus, and hasn't looked back.

It took until almost June to get Elmo moved in and settled then treated for various physical ailments so he could concentrate on his training. And then Eddie started working and, his optimistic assertions to the contrary, made no progress at all.

"He's scared," Eddie admitted. "He's scared of me, he's scared of strange noises, he's scared of the other dogs....He won't make eye contact with me, won't take treats, won't let us take his food bowl when he's done with it...." I'd seen the inside of Elmo's barn just once since he moved in, and there were 14 empty dog bowls inside, plus the one he was eating from. That was the morning of his eighth day. Since then, I'd learned, they had build a dividing wall of straw bales down the middle of the barn, with a kind of door in it for Elmo, so they could clean one half while he was in the other.

So, now this bite.

"How do you figure getting bitten is progress?" I asked.

"He was so scared after he did it," Eddie answered. "He thought I was going to kill him--and there are people who would have. But I didn't. And I won't. And afterwards, while I was huddling in the corner trying to get my head clear of the pain so I could do something, he came up to me. He seemed sympathetic. He's never approached me before. I think he likes me."