So, I've felt really conflicted about Steve. Remember, I'm supposed to be teaching him to connect with the out-of-doors, but he's not talking to me, so how can I? Something is bothering him. He's spending a lot of time off-campus, he's per-occupied, and he's barely talking to me socially, let alone making himself available to me as a student.
The reason I feel conflicted is that I don't know whether I'm supposed to reach out to him or not. I don't know if I'm supposed to insist--I'll feel remiss if I don't, since it's kind of my assignment, but at the time time, I've never been the sort of person to force others to talk to me. Maybe that's one reason people do talk to me?
I talked to some of the masters about it, but they gave me conflicting or even cryptic answers.
Charlie shrugged and said "you can't make someone learn from you, Daniel."
Allen said "what if having people who will insist is one of the advantages of being here? In most places, no one will ask if you're ok unless you're bothering someone."
Greg said "why would you feel remiss? That's the interesting part, for me."
Joy said "use your intuition. You'll know what to say and when."
And Kit, whom I spoke to last, said "I've had this idea for a divination methodology. Flip coins of several denominations, heads are yes, tails are no. Then imagine each of the presidents on the coins and why he'd say yes or no. You don't need to do what they say, but their comments would be food for thought, yes?
Well.
It's springtime, which means it's a time of transition. Kit always says this. So does Charlie. It's one of the few places where they agree. Whenever anyone complains that spring keeps coming and going, they say, each in their own way, that coming and going is spring. When warm weather is here unambiguously, that is summer. I kept this very carefully in mind late last week when we had three days of all-but-literally freezing rain. It is spring, it is spring, it is spring.
Today has been more obviously springlike, warm and sunny and perfumed by flowers. Some of the shrubs are starting to leaf out, but hardly any of the trees have broken bud, yet, except for the flowers of the maples. The forests still look largely winterlike. But I think that is about to change. Next week, or perhaps the week after, the leaf-out will begin, and once it does, it will go fast. I will wish it could slow down so I could watch it properly. So far, it has mostly seemed slow. Every year this happens--spring seems to take forever and then as soon as it springs, I forget, and I think of it as a more or less brief season, until the next year, when I am reminded that it isn't.
And Steve is missing all this. He's not paying attention. That I'm sure of.
In other new, I had lunch with Eddie the other day. As you might remember, part of his assignment is to find a dog he considers impossible to train and then train it as a therapy animal anyway. His assignment, too, seems hung up. He seemed pretty droopy about it.
"Are you still hung up with wanting to train all of the trainable ones?" I asked. He had told me about that earlier this spring, how he sees all of these great dogs in shelters and rescue places, some of whom he doubts anybody else could train, but the very fact that he knows he can bring out these dogs' potential means that he can't make the attempt right now. It sounds very hard.
But
"No, that's not it," Eddie told me. "In fact, there's this dog...."
"That's great," I told him. "So what's the problem?"
"Well," he said, "I really like this dog. And I don't want to think that I can't help him."
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