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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”