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.
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