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.
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