Note: Lammas is August 1st, but I'm writing this as though it had already occurred.
Happy Lammas! Or Lughnasadh, a name reported to mean "mourning for Lugh."
Lugh is a god, as I've explained before, but one nobody on campus seems to pay much attention to, let alone mourn. It's always seemed strange to me. I've had some thoughts about that this year.
But let me tell you about the actual day. It's been hot lately, but today the weather was lovely--cool and dry with thin, fleecy clouds under a blue sky. As in years past, we had a feast in a large event tent on the Central Field, everything the farm produces on offer in a fantastic variety of dishes, plus an organized tasting of different varieties of apples and a separate tasting of different breads. I assume the results of the tastings will have something to do with what campus is eating going forward, but nobody said anything about any plans.
In years past, we've had talent shows, often structured as contests. This year it was all about athletics--a martial arts demonstration, a yoga demonstration, short foot-races, tug-of-war, and other events, including juggling. I was watching all of it when I felt a little puff of resentment because I can run and I can do a form of yoga, but I wasn't included--but of course I didn't volunteer, either. I don't know how to volunteer, who to talk to, and in fact I've never known, though I've been part of this community for a decade. And I never realized before today that I didn't know.
I've been so...pleased with myself for the things I've noticed about the school that all other students--or at least most other students--overlook. The secret stair and the door the masters use, Charlie's habit of lurking in trees to watch life go by, Allen's ability to vanish, and, perhaps most relevant at the moment, the fact that the majority of all people who have ever won a green ring all converge on campus at Lammas each year to do something together in the Mansion. But then there are all these other things I don't notice that evidently other people do.
Anyway, about Lugh.
I've heard various people (people more informed about pagan symbolism than I) explain that we mourn Lugh in August because he is a sun god and the power of the sun has gone into the grain and is about to be cut. Not, again, that Lugh actually has any devotees on campus, nor do we grow much of our grain here, but neopaganism (and maybe traditional paganism, too, I don't know) has a curiously fluid nature, with stories and symbols and reality all merging into and out of each other, such that any god or goddess can be an aspect of, or a reference to, the God or the Goddess, making it somewhat beside the point whether anyone specifically worships Lugh or not.
I've been confused about all this before. I've been confused about what many of these holidays are actually about. I'm not confused this year, and, looking back, I realize it's been a while since I was confused. I've realized, one, that I don't need to understand the symbols and concepts and so forth, that I know what Lammas is about, though I can't quite explain it, and that meaning is present, quite simply, when I enjoy the holiday. Two, the symbols and so on no longer confuse me because I know, after a fashion, what they mean. I can feel them from the inside and, occasionally, come up with my own way of explaining it.
It's simple; at Lammas, the harvest begins, and the harvest is a kind of shift from the potential to the actual, from what might become to what actually is. And as good as what is may be, that's sad. Something is gained, but something is lost.
That I will soon cease being a student here, cease preparing to be a master someday and simply be a master--I'm excited as all anything, but it's sad, too,
Monday, July 29, 2019
Monday, July 22, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Interlude 4
Hi, all, Daniel-of-2019, here.
After much consideration and consultation, I've decided to go ahead and tell you why I've missed several posts over the last few months (and could miss others going forward):
Sarah Kelly, Steve Bees wife, has relapsed--you may recall she has schizophrenia. She had been having problems with the side effects of her meds, and since she was doing very well, she and her doctors decided to try transitioning off anti-psychotic meds. That works, sometimes. They say that about half of all schizophrenics who go off meds relapse, but the other way to look at it is that half do just fine--and some people who stay on meds relapse anyway. For a while Sarah was alright--and then suddenly she wasn't.
And this time she has fought going back on the meds.
The scary thing is that a sizable minority of people who relapse don't respond to further treatment, and some who do respond never get back to where they were before the relapse. Acute episodes appear to make the disease worse.
Steve is beside himself, of course, but he's using what I taught him during his candidacy, maintaining his connection to the natural world, and it seems to help him stay calmer and better focused. What I taught him isn't all of it, he has other resources, too, but it's part of the package.
But it's not that the peace and serenity of nature help him de-stress. Not exactly. See, the thing is, while many people feel peaceful and serene out of doors among green, living things, that's not the same as nature itself being peaceful and serene. The living world itself is often ugly and unfair and indifferent. Most of what we think is its value for mental health is actually something projected onto it by humans.
Real nature provides no answer; it just asks better questions.
After much consideration and consultation, I've decided to go ahead and tell you why I've missed several posts over the last few months (and could miss others going forward):
Sarah Kelly, Steve Bees wife, has relapsed--you may recall she has schizophrenia. She had been having problems with the side effects of her meds, and since she was doing very well, she and her doctors decided to try transitioning off anti-psychotic meds. That works, sometimes. They say that about half of all schizophrenics who go off meds relapse, but the other way to look at it is that half do just fine--and some people who stay on meds relapse anyway. For a while Sarah was alright--and then suddenly she wasn't.
And this time she has fought going back on the meds.
The scary thing is that a sizable minority of people who relapse don't respond to further treatment, and some who do respond never get back to where they were before the relapse. Acute episodes appear to make the disease worse.
Steve is beside himself, of course, but he's using what I taught him during his candidacy, maintaining his connection to the natural world, and it seems to help him stay calmer and better focused. What I taught him isn't all of it, he has other resources, too, but it's part of the package.
But it's not that the peace and serenity of nature help him de-stress. Not exactly. See, the thing is, while many people feel peaceful and serene out of doors among green, living things, that's not the same as nature itself being peaceful and serene. The living world itself is often ugly and unfair and indifferent. Most of what we think is its value for mental health is actually something projected onto it by humans.
Real nature provides no answer; it just asks better questions.
Monday, July 15, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 4: Post 4: A Solution
Sorry for the lack of a post last week. I might--or might not--explain what's been occupying my head and my time at the next interlude. It involves someone else, so confidentiality is an issue.-D.
How do I tell when I'm done if Steve isn't? It's the question that I asked myself a few weeks ago. I mean, part of my assignment as a candidate has been to help Steve Bees learn to de-stress, and Steve's entire assignment so far, aside from teaching classes and workshops and such, has been to learn to de-stress with me. Since I'm expecting to earn my ring this year and he isn't, I'd been thinking that I'd have to leave at some point before my work with him was complete, so how could I identify that point?
I imagined talking to Charlie about it, but in my imagination he told me to figure it out myself (doesn't talking to an imagined person count as figuring it out myself? I felt vaguely angry at the unfairness of my imaginary version of Charlie until I realized how metaphysically twisted that was). So then I imagined talking about it to Allen, which proved more fruitful, and I sat in the garden in front of the Dining Hall imagining so hard that I didn't notice that the real Allen had joined me until he spoke.
"Who are you talking with?" he asked.
"You, actually," I said, as startled as you'd think. "How...?"
"Your lips were moving," he explained. "And you paused to give the other person time to respond. You were speaking to me? Really? Was I being helpful?"
"Yes, um...."
"Which version of me do you prefer?"
"Allen, I....The real one, of course."
"Not of course," he corrected me, with a smile. "Plenty of people make up people they like better."
"Yes, but that's horrible," I protested. "To prefer an imaginary person over a real one!"
"Maybe. But don't forget, Daniel, I am your friend even if you do the occasional horrible thing. Honesty is more important to me. Anyway, how do you know I'm not imaginary, too?"
I had to think about this for a bit.
"I don't," I admitted. "But I'm fairly sure I'm not imagining you, because if I had hallucinations that realistic, how could I function? Unless I'm only imagining functioning....Anyway, if you're imaginary, then I must be, too, whether I'm doing the imagining or not."
My cogent answer won me a small approving smile almost buried among all the other kinds of smile he had for me.
"It's the masks imagination places over real people that cause trouble," he told me. "All other uses of the imagination are fine by me. Speaking of which, if you don't mind my asking, what were you and I talking about? Or would you rather I leave you to get back to it?"
That Allen wanted to respect the privacy of my conversation with a made-up version of himself seemed really weird to me until I realized that he'd basically asked me what I was thinking, and of course my thoughts are private. The layers of reality moving back and forth made my head hurt. I rubbed my temples and he waited patiently until I caught up.
I caught him up on the basic problem and then explained my progress thus far.
"You said, I mean, I imagined you saying, that there were layers to unpack, that I was making unwarranted assumptions."
"Sounds like me so far. Go on."
"Well, I'd been assuming that Steve's entire assignment as a candidate will be the work he's doing with me. That's not necessarily true, and the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that it's not true. Also, I've been assuming that I have to finish with Steve before earning my ring. That's not necessarily true, either. I mean, Steve's not ever going to be a finished product, is he? He's a human being, not an, an...art project or a thesis. Once I have demonstrated that I can serve as his master in some respect, then I'm free to continue doing so as a master, right?"
"More or less," Allen said, with an expression suggesting I was missing something somewhere. "Let me ask you this: what are you doing with Steve, at at what point will you judge that he is finished with that particular process? Ready to move on?"
"I'm teaching him to self-center," I replied at once, then stopped. "No, that doesn't sound right. I don't mean make himself the center, I mean to center himself. I'm teaching him to find a larger context of meaning than the particular fights he engages with day-to-day. So he doesn't exhaust himself with stress and despair and everything."
Allen dislikes sloppy catch-all phrases like "and everything," and I saw him wince a little and then almost literally weigh my mistake, tilting his head back and forth. He evidently judged in favor of the smarter things I'd said.
"Good. And?"
"And how will you tell when he gets there?"
"When he starts seeking the larger context while at work--by going outside, for example. And I expect he'll seem calmer and more energized while working, too. I suppose I should enlist some spies, though I'm not really sure how that works--what occurs to me is that I am a writer, now. Maybe I can do an article about that class-action lawsuit he's been involved with for the last few years and interview some of his clients? They've been talking to him regularly and should notice a change--and care, since they depend on him not to be crazy, so they'll remember. They'll talk about it easily. I'll have to get a legitimate venue to publish the thing, though, or it wouldn't be ethical, and for something like that I'll need to line up a publisher first, which means learning a lot more about publishing than I know as yet, but that's not a bad thing. Somehow, whenever I think through a project, I talk myself into taking on more work."
"And just like that," said Allen, "you earned my vote."
I stared at him.
"To graduate? I thought I only need Charlie's vote at this level?"
Again the head-tilting.
"Yes and no. Technically speaking, you only need your master's vote, and then you go into the job interview. But, ah, don't tell anyone I told you, but I'm on your interview committee." And with that he stood up, patted the top of the stone wall near me a couple of times, and absented himself.
Well, then!
How do I tell when I'm done if Steve isn't? It's the question that I asked myself a few weeks ago. I mean, part of my assignment as a candidate has been to help Steve Bees learn to de-stress, and Steve's entire assignment so far, aside from teaching classes and workshops and such, has been to learn to de-stress with me. Since I'm expecting to earn my ring this year and he isn't, I'd been thinking that I'd have to leave at some point before my work with him was complete, so how could I identify that point?
I imagined talking to Charlie about it, but in my imagination he told me to figure it out myself (doesn't talking to an imagined person count as figuring it out myself? I felt vaguely angry at the unfairness of my imaginary version of Charlie until I realized how metaphysically twisted that was). So then I imagined talking about it to Allen, which proved more fruitful, and I sat in the garden in front of the Dining Hall imagining so hard that I didn't notice that the real Allen had joined me until he spoke.
"Who are you talking with?" he asked.
"You, actually," I said, as startled as you'd think. "How...?"
"Your lips were moving," he explained. "And you paused to give the other person time to respond. You were speaking to me? Really? Was I being helpful?"
"Yes, um...."
"Which version of me do you prefer?"
"Allen, I....The real one, of course."
"Not of course," he corrected me, with a smile. "Plenty of people make up people they like better."
"Yes, but that's horrible," I protested. "To prefer an imaginary person over a real one!"
"Maybe. But don't forget, Daniel, I am your friend even if you do the occasional horrible thing. Honesty is more important to me. Anyway, how do you know I'm not imaginary, too?"
I had to think about this for a bit.
"I don't," I admitted. "But I'm fairly sure I'm not imagining you, because if I had hallucinations that realistic, how could I function? Unless I'm only imagining functioning....Anyway, if you're imaginary, then I must be, too, whether I'm doing the imagining or not."
My cogent answer won me a small approving smile almost buried among all the other kinds of smile he had for me.
"It's the masks imagination places over real people that cause trouble," he told me. "All other uses of the imagination are fine by me. Speaking of which, if you don't mind my asking, what were you and I talking about? Or would you rather I leave you to get back to it?"
That Allen wanted to respect the privacy of my conversation with a made-up version of himself seemed really weird to me until I realized that he'd basically asked me what I was thinking, and of course my thoughts are private. The layers of reality moving back and forth made my head hurt. I rubbed my temples and he waited patiently until I caught up.
I caught him up on the basic problem and then explained my progress thus far.
"You said, I mean, I imagined you saying, that there were layers to unpack, that I was making unwarranted assumptions."
"Sounds like me so far. Go on."
"Well, I'd been assuming that Steve's entire assignment as a candidate will be the work he's doing with me. That's not necessarily true, and the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that it's not true. Also, I've been assuming that I have to finish with Steve before earning my ring. That's not necessarily true, either. I mean, Steve's not ever going to be a finished product, is he? He's a human being, not an, an...art project or a thesis. Once I have demonstrated that I can serve as his master in some respect, then I'm free to continue doing so as a master, right?"
"More or less," Allen said, with an expression suggesting I was missing something somewhere. "Let me ask you this: what are you doing with Steve, at at what point will you judge that he is finished with that particular process? Ready to move on?"
"I'm teaching him to self-center," I replied at once, then stopped. "No, that doesn't sound right. I don't mean make himself the center, I mean to center himself. I'm teaching him to find a larger context of meaning than the particular fights he engages with day-to-day. So he doesn't exhaust himself with stress and despair and everything."
Allen dislikes sloppy catch-all phrases like "and everything," and I saw him wince a little and then almost literally weigh my mistake, tilting his head back and forth. He evidently judged in favor of the smarter things I'd said.
"Good. And?"
"And how will you tell when he gets there?"
"When he starts seeking the larger context while at work--by going outside, for example. And I expect he'll seem calmer and more energized while working, too. I suppose I should enlist some spies, though I'm not really sure how that works--what occurs to me is that I am a writer, now. Maybe I can do an article about that class-action lawsuit he's been involved with for the last few years and interview some of his clients? They've been talking to him regularly and should notice a change--and care, since they depend on him not to be crazy, so they'll remember. They'll talk about it easily. I'll have to get a legitimate venue to publish the thing, though, or it wouldn't be ethical, and for something like that I'll need to line up a publisher first, which means learning a lot more about publishing than I know as yet, but that's not a bad thing. Somehow, whenever I think through a project, I talk myself into taking on more work."
"And just like that," said Allen, "you earned my vote."
I stared at him.
"To graduate? I thought I only need Charlie's vote at this level?"
Again the head-tilting.
"Yes and no. Technically speaking, you only need your master's vote, and then you go into the job interview. But, ah, don't tell anyone I told you, but I'm on your interview committee." And with that he stood up, patted the top of the stone wall near me a couple of times, and absented himself.
Well, then!
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 4: Post 3: Fourth of July
Note: I'm writing this as though today were after the Fourth, not before it. Also, please remember this whole thing is set ten years ago. -D.
Why do we have Independence Day Observed? What's wrong with celebrating the Fourth of July on the July 4th, on Saturday? I suppose it has something to do with giving people who have the weekends off an extra day out of work, but plenty of people work on the weekends, so the relocation of the holiday must do nothing for them. That July 4th isn't the day independence was actually declared--July 2nd was--makes the whole thing seem ironic to me.
Anyway, we here on campus don't take off for Independence Day to begin with, so we just went ahead and celebrated on the 4th, an advantage because it meant my brother could bring the kids over for the day. Of course, the fireworks were still on Friday, we don't have any control over that, but I don't really care about fireworks anymore anyway. I do care about spending time with my family and I find I do care about American history.
I had some free time in the morning, so we found Charlie and got him to give us a project we could do with my brother's kids. He assigned us beetling, of course (more accurately, de-beetling--you go around and knock Japanese beetles off plants and into coffee cans of soapy water), but surprised me by choosing to prune hedges nearby. He didn't talk to us much, but I could tell he was being companionable. We all talked less because of his silence. Then I taught a workshop in the afternoon--unrelated to the holiday, I'm sorry to say--and then met up with my family again for dinner.
After dinner, as usual, Greg read the Declaration of Independence in the long evening. No particular discussion or lesson developed, we just all gathered to listen and it was nice. A couple of students played an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner, and my niece, Ruthie, who is seven now, melted my heart by singing along with her hand over her chest. It's a very pretty song, really.
"What did you do this afternoon?" I thought to ask, after the song, while everyone was dispersing. She didn't answer at first, then gasped and started talking very fast--she'd forgotten she had news for me.
"We went to Steve Bees' workshop--that's called auditing, did you know that? And it was all about the Founding Fathers, and this was the last day of it and they did a play that they'd practiced by reading and stuff and so everyone in the workshop played a different Founding Father and there wasn't a script, they just knew their parts and made it up as they went along--that's called improv, did you know that? And they all, all the Founders, got into a big fight, they were all yelling at each other, and my favorite were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson because they were friends and they died today except years and years ago, did you know that? We didn't know about the play, we just happened upon it by accident and it was SO MUCH FUN! Did you know there was going to be a play, Uncle Daniel?"
No, I did not. I hadn't thought to ask. Some people have all the luck.
Why do we have Independence Day Observed? What's wrong with celebrating the Fourth of July on the July 4th, on Saturday? I suppose it has something to do with giving people who have the weekends off an extra day out of work, but plenty of people work on the weekends, so the relocation of the holiday must do nothing for them. That July 4th isn't the day independence was actually declared--July 2nd was--makes the whole thing seem ironic to me.
Anyway, we here on campus don't take off for Independence Day to begin with, so we just went ahead and celebrated on the 4th, an advantage because it meant my brother could bring the kids over for the day. Of course, the fireworks were still on Friday, we don't have any control over that, but I don't really care about fireworks anymore anyway. I do care about spending time with my family and I find I do care about American history.
I had some free time in the morning, so we found Charlie and got him to give us a project we could do with my brother's kids. He assigned us beetling, of course (more accurately, de-beetling--you go around and knock Japanese beetles off plants and into coffee cans of soapy water), but surprised me by choosing to prune hedges nearby. He didn't talk to us much, but I could tell he was being companionable. We all talked less because of his silence. Then I taught a workshop in the afternoon--unrelated to the holiday, I'm sorry to say--and then met up with my family again for dinner.
After dinner, as usual, Greg read the Declaration of Independence in the long evening. No particular discussion or lesson developed, we just all gathered to listen and it was nice. A couple of students played an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner, and my niece, Ruthie, who is seven now, melted my heart by singing along with her hand over her chest. It's a very pretty song, really.
"What did you do this afternoon?" I thought to ask, after the song, while everyone was dispersing. She didn't answer at first, then gasped and started talking very fast--she'd forgotten she had news for me.
"We went to Steve Bees' workshop--that's called auditing, did you know that? And it was all about the Founding Fathers, and this was the last day of it and they did a play that they'd practiced by reading and stuff and so everyone in the workshop played a different Founding Father and there wasn't a script, they just knew their parts and made it up as they went along--that's called improv, did you know that? And they all, all the Founders, got into a big fight, they were all yelling at each other, and my favorite were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson because they were friends and they died today except years and years ago, did you know that? We didn't know about the play, we just happened upon it by accident and it was SO MUCH FUN! Did you know there was going to be a play, Uncle Daniel?"
No, I did not. I hadn't thought to ask. Some people have all the luck.
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