Happy belated Beltane, everyone! The holiday was a few days ago and I
am, rather unexpectedly, off to the Island.
Let me tell you
about the holiday, first.
This year the first
of May came very cold—there was actually a frost the previous
night, and in the morning a cold, wet, fitful wind blew. If the
clouds had loosed anything it would have been snow. But they held
their peace, and the wind blew the sky clear by lunch, leaving an
incredibly blue sky and a cheerful, warming sun.
We held the Maypole
Dance in the afternoon, followed by most of the other festivities,
and pushed ndinner back late into the evening to leave enough time.
As Charlie acknowledges reluctantly, modern technology has some
advantages, and somewhat accurate weather prediction is one of them.
I didn’t dance but
sang and banged away on a tambourine and watched the pattern of the
dancers and their ribbons, thinking about how by the next May Day
I’ll be actually barred from joining them. I’ll have my green
ring, technically a faculty member, and no more able to do this
sexual metaphor of a dance with a student than to literally have sex
with one. I’ll dance with the masters, I suppose. If they dance.
This year, once again, whatever dance they did was private.
As to our other
festivities, Kit’s tide seems to be rising again now, though she
was actually not very involved. May Day here is largely a project of
Sarah and Kit, except their ideas of how to celebrate it are more or
less mutually exclusive. Kit favors sexy, bawdy, very adult
celebrations that Sarah finds frankly offensive. Sarah favors an
event focused on child-friendly activities organized around farming
and nature. Kit likes those, but finds them somewhat euphamistic. And
so the tension between the two generates a gradual oscillation in the
event as first one and then the other gains ascendancy from year to
year.
This year saw a
return of the concert of slightly bawdy love songs, but Kit wasn’t
in evidence except as an audience member. Instead, Eddie was
everywhere—and Eddie, too, organized the blessing of the animals
and the petting zoo, and a kind of amateur talent show for dogs and
their trainers. Eddie in his person embodies both poles of the day,
Eddie the incurable flirt, lover and fan of all women, and the
devotee of dogs.
Eddie sang most of
the songs, either alone or in duet, backed up with a gradually
shifting band of students and masters, but the one song that sticks
in my mind was the one for which he yielded the stage utterly—to
Hawk.
As you may recall,
Hawk is a transwoman still mid-transition. If she’s on hormones,
they have not yet done much to transform her look. She still dresses
like a man when she leaves campus without one of us for company—she
says she feels safer that way. But on campus she’s been relaxing
into her new identity, developing her style, and generally exploring
herself. And it turns out she can sing.
Her voice, of
course, is quite deep, and she has not yet learned to adjust it for
speaking—I don’t know whether she plans to. But Kit has been
coaching her in the use of her falsetto, and she’s at the point now
where, as she puts it, she “sounds like herself.”
Hawk sang “Fever,”
and she did it with a voluptuousness of soul that brought the house
down.
Afterwards, while we
were milling around, waiting for the people who had danced to finish
setting up the Dining Hall, Charlie approached me.
“You didn’t
dance,” he stated.
“No.”
“You didn’t try,
did you?”
“No,” I
admitted. “I danced more years than not. I figure it’s other
people’s turn.”
He looked at me a
moment, seeing, probably, my regret and my sadness.
“It’s
first-come, first served, not rationed,” he pointed out. I said
nothing. “Daniel, when you want something, try to get it. The worst
that can happen is you won’t get it.”
I know a Teaching
when I hear one, a principle I am supposed to remember.
“In that case,”
I asked, “can I come with you to the Island?” I half expected him
to say no. I knew he knew I wanted to go, and I knew him perfectly
capable of encouraging me to ask for something I couldn’t have,
just as an exercise. And I knew I couldn’t expect his attention
and company forever. As with the dance, other people deserved their
turn.
“Yes, you can,”
he told me. “But why?”
“Why?” I echoed.
Should I feel hurt?
“No, not why do
you want to come, that’s obvious—why is coming to the Island this
year part of your education? Make up something plausible.”
“Um, so that I can
bring Steve? He needs an intensive exploration of a beautiful place
unconnected with his daily life. It’s a sort of test for him.”
“Tell Steve to
pack his bags. Talk to Sharon about arranging rides and campsites.”
“Uh, Charlie?”
“Hmm?”
“How ethical is it
to draw Steve into this?”
“It’s fine.
Because you’re right—he needs to go to the Island.” I must have
given him a funny look, because he continued, “Daniel, make the
thing you want the solution to other problems.”
And that, too, I
realized, was a Teaching.
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