My birthday is coming up. I don't have any plans, yet. I suppose I'll let June and some of my friends here take me out to dinner.
I suppose I could make plans myself, ask people to do something, but I don't really want to. For one thing, I'm feeling ambivalent; I generally like parties and so forth, but after having been away from campus for a while and on that damn bus for another three days, I want to rest, socially and spiritually, dig my roots down in the soil and escape to my spot in the woods.
But there's something else, too.
I joined Charlie for lunch the other day, just like when I was a novice. He let me sit with him without comment and I made no comment, either, for a while. Then I spoke.
"Charlie, what do you do on your birthday?"
He shrugged.
"Same thing I do every day, take a walk in the woods."
"Your birthday isn't special?"
He looked up at me. He was sitting on the steps of the Mansion porch, I was half-sitting on the stone railing around the porch.
"Every day is special," he said, "If I walk in the woods." He frowned, looked away, and grumped a bit. "I suppose I'll let friends take me to dinner or something." He sounded extremely unenthused.
"Well, I am your friend," I said, laughing a little, "so I'll give you the present of not asking you to dinner."
"Thank you kindly," he told me, with some grumpy sarcasm in his voice.
"Why am I so persistently drawn to misanthropes?" I asked after a bit. "There's you, there's Rick...My friends just don't like people." Actually, most of my friends do like people. Charlie and Rick are exceptions.
"I'm not going to attempt to explain your proclivities," Charlie told me. But then his expression changed somewhat. "Actually, people generally get me wrong."
"Oh?"
"You want me to tell you a secret, Daniel? I'm not really a misanthrope."
"Oh?"
"The real reason I've given up trying to organize my own birthday parties is I can't find anyone willing to pay enough attention to me. Fox and the grapes, I suppose."
And he returned to eating, evidently uninterested in further conversation.
You think you know someone.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 5: Post 4: The Other Side of Magic
Steve's grandfather died, as expected. He's sad, of course. We're going to stay here a few more days through the funeral, then go back to campus.
There's no reason for me to be here whatever, except I rode out here with the Kellys in order to help them deal with the stress of travel, and now I'm waiting until it's time to ride back with them. It's an awkward position, as most people here don't really understand who I am or what my role is, given that I never met the deceased and can't quite remember his name (Edwin? Edward? Edgar? Ed-something). I don't really know how to talk to people under these circumstances. But I am here, and here is where I want to be.
I remember how, when I first joined the school, how blown away I was to be given my own little stainless-steel cup. We all got one to carry clipped to our uniform belts in case we got thirsty and wanted a drink in class or something.--we don't used bottled water or disposable cups. Just something about being given my own cup felt very welcoming, very generous. Since then I've seen other, more dramatic, acts of generosity. There was when Andy arrived and the masters got him into treatment for his various ills--a man they didn't even know, yet. There was Kit taking Hawk out clothing shopping, Hawk's first real public appearances as a woman. There was my own wedding, which took over much of campus for the better part of a day and a night, just as if it were a community holiday.
Now, this.
The funny thing is, it doesn't seem extravagantly generous, what I'm doing. It just seems normal. It seems right. Steve and his family needed something, I'm available, so here I am.
The weird thing about magic is it doesn't always feel like magic when you do it.
There's no reason for me to be here whatever, except I rode out here with the Kellys in order to help them deal with the stress of travel, and now I'm waiting until it's time to ride back with them. It's an awkward position, as most people here don't really understand who I am or what my role is, given that I never met the deceased and can't quite remember his name (Edwin? Edward? Edgar? Ed-something). I don't really know how to talk to people under these circumstances. But I am here, and here is where I want to be.
I remember how, when I first joined the school, how blown away I was to be given my own little stainless-steel cup. We all got one to carry clipped to our uniform belts in case we got thirsty and wanted a drink in class or something.--we don't used bottled water or disposable cups. Just something about being given my own cup felt very welcoming, very generous. Since then I've seen other, more dramatic, acts of generosity. There was when Andy arrived and the masters got him into treatment for his various ills--a man they didn't even know, yet. There was Kit taking Hawk out clothing shopping, Hawk's first real public appearances as a woman. There was my own wedding, which took over much of campus for the better part of a day and a night, just as if it were a community holiday.
Now, this.
The funny thing is, it doesn't seem extravagantly generous, what I'm doing. It just seems normal. It seems right. Steve and his family needed something, I'm available, so here I am.
The weird thing about magic is it doesn't always feel like magic when you do it.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 5: Post 3: All Gone to Look for America
Steve's grandfather is dying. Of course he and Sarah and Sean had to go, but it's a long trip, raising the specter of sleep deprivation, challenging childcare, disrupted schedules, and possibly missed medication doses. Sarah's health has seemed a bit vulnerable lately--her doctors want to change her meds but they're not sure yet how--and she was concerned that the trip might trigger a relapse.
For a while she considered just not going, but she's close to the grandfather, too. The candidates' group discussed the matter (it's really the first time we've functioned as a real-world problem-solving body, not a college class) and decided that Sarah should go, but that one of us should go, too. That way, Steve could focus on making sure his wife ate and slept and took her pills on time while someone else entertained Sean and kept the boy fed, hydrated, and in clean diapers.
Somehow, I was chosen.
So I cleared my schedule, and got on a bus--and I stayed on that bus, or inside one or another bus terminal, for almost three days.
You'd think that inside Bus World, as I came to think of it, would be the most prosaic, least magical place imaginable. Buses are dirty, most bus stations are worse, most of the people one meets in that world are crabby, and basically you're all hurtling across America in a fossil-fuel-powered, air-conditioned box while surviving on fast food purchased at truck stops. It is a world of strangers, most of whom have probably never heard of sustainability or magic or deliberate communities founded on kindness and wonder. And yet, on our last night on the bus, while Steve and Sarah slept leaning on each other and Sean slept cuddled in my lap, the man sitting next to me started talking.
He told me this long story, beginning with the fact that he had once had a wife who also had schizophrenia, and that they had both known she couldn't handle the stress of living closely with someone (why not? Sarah seems to draw strength from living with Steve--but of course I did not ask), but they had married anyway because they loved each other and wanted to honor that love while they could. And a year later, still loving each other, they divorced so she could seek the solitude she needed.
The story went on from there. Much of it was convoluted, and most of it was sad. Some of it involved guilt, shame, and uncertainty. But the man seemed to need to talk, and so I listened. Finally, as dawn started to color a world that had got flat and agricultural and arid over night, he slept.
I felt as though I had been treated like a priest. And I suppose I had been.
For a while she considered just not going, but she's close to the grandfather, too. The candidates' group discussed the matter (it's really the first time we've functioned as a real-world problem-solving body, not a college class) and decided that Sarah should go, but that one of us should go, too. That way, Steve could focus on making sure his wife ate and slept and took her pills on time while someone else entertained Sean and kept the boy fed, hydrated, and in clean diapers.
Somehow, I was chosen.
So I cleared my schedule, and got on a bus--and I stayed on that bus, or inside one or another bus terminal, for almost three days.
You'd think that inside Bus World, as I came to think of it, would be the most prosaic, least magical place imaginable. Buses are dirty, most bus stations are worse, most of the people one meets in that world are crabby, and basically you're all hurtling across America in a fossil-fuel-powered, air-conditioned box while surviving on fast food purchased at truck stops. It is a world of strangers, most of whom have probably never heard of sustainability or magic or deliberate communities founded on kindness and wonder. And yet, on our last night on the bus, while Steve and Sarah slept leaning on each other and Sean slept cuddled in my lap, the man sitting next to me started talking.
He told me this long story, beginning with the fact that he had once had a wife who also had schizophrenia, and that they had both known she couldn't handle the stress of living closely with someone (why not? Sarah seems to draw strength from living with Steve--but of course I did not ask), but they had married anyway because they loved each other and wanted to honor that love while they could. And a year later, still loving each other, they divorced so she could seek the solitude she needed.
The story went on from there. Much of it was convoluted, and most of it was sad. Some of it involved guilt, shame, and uncertainty. But the man seemed to need to talk, and so I listened. Finally, as dawn started to color a world that had got flat and agricultural and arid over night, he slept.
I felt as though I had been treated like a priest. And I suppose I had been.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 5: Post 2: Invisibility
It is entirely too hot.
Or, at Charlie would point out, I'm entirely too hot. "It," meaning the weather, is just fine, doing what it does in August.
My annual case of "lasts" has begun, my obsessive awareness of the approaching end of the school year. The beginning of the last semester, the end of the last summer, the last time I might see or do or experience this, that, or the other. There have been years when it was fairly mild, since I knew I'd be back the next year, it's just that I knew people who wouldn't be. The year I completed my novitiate it was very intense, as I knew I'd be entering Absence, three whole years away.
This year it's again different. I'm not going anywhere--I probably won't be living on campus next year, but I intend to remain fully involved as an ally. I won't really ever have to leave. And yet I won't be a student anymore.
I don't know why this bothers me so much. I've been gradually ceasing to be a student for a long time, now. I know novices mostly because I've had them as students, not as classmates. Most of my friends around here are masters or candidates. It's not like I want to be a student here forever, I'd get bored. And yet.
I watched Hawk flying her hawk the other day. I almost wrote "flying with her hawk," but that's what it looked like. Woman and bird seemed equally un-self-conscious, equally focused, and perfectly coordinated, as though they were a single organism and each could go where the other was. It wasn't then quite so hot as it is today, and the sky was a hard, pale blue with streaky clouds across it. Hawk stood at the Edge of the World and launched the bird, not at a specific prey animal--the normal thing in falconry, I understand, as falconers don't want their birds flying free without anything particular to do, lest they fly off--but there were birds in the canopy of the Enchanted Forest, and mice and rabbits and ground hogs in the pasture, especially near the cover of the apple orchard. The bird circled for a bit then dove at something I couldn't see, broke off the attack, and lit in a tree.
Hawk watched the hawk in the tree for a minute or two, then jogged towards the apple orchard and along its edge, through the tall grass where the goats and sheep haven't been yet this year.
Suddenly, a rabbit flushed out of the grass and ran out across the cropped pasture at the base of the Edge and the hawk dove but missed the rabbit by a hair (no pun intended) and the animal dove into a clump of goldenrod and hid. The hawk circled around and returned to the tree, but by that time crows had noticed the situation and began mobbing, calling more and more crows in. The hawk hunched its shoulders, seeming vaguely bothered. Hawk called out, offering a piece of meat, and the hawk flew to her glove. Woman and bird together left the scene, heading for the farm fields and the shed where Charlie butchers deer in the fall.
Neither of them had seen me watching the whole time. I was invisible.
Or, at Charlie would point out, I'm entirely too hot. "It," meaning the weather, is just fine, doing what it does in August.
My annual case of "lasts" has begun, my obsessive awareness of the approaching end of the school year. The beginning of the last semester, the end of the last summer, the last time I might see or do or experience this, that, or the other. There have been years when it was fairly mild, since I knew I'd be back the next year, it's just that I knew people who wouldn't be. The year I completed my novitiate it was very intense, as I knew I'd be entering Absence, three whole years away.
This year it's again different. I'm not going anywhere--I probably won't be living on campus next year, but I intend to remain fully involved as an ally. I won't really ever have to leave. And yet I won't be a student anymore.
I don't know why this bothers me so much. I've been gradually ceasing to be a student for a long time, now. I know novices mostly because I've had them as students, not as classmates. Most of my friends around here are masters or candidates. It's not like I want to be a student here forever, I'd get bored. And yet.
I watched Hawk flying her hawk the other day. I almost wrote "flying with her hawk," but that's what it looked like. Woman and bird seemed equally un-self-conscious, equally focused, and perfectly coordinated, as though they were a single organism and each could go where the other was. It wasn't then quite so hot as it is today, and the sky was a hard, pale blue with streaky clouds across it. Hawk stood at the Edge of the World and launched the bird, not at a specific prey animal--the normal thing in falconry, I understand, as falconers don't want their birds flying free without anything particular to do, lest they fly off--but there were birds in the canopy of the Enchanted Forest, and mice and rabbits and ground hogs in the pasture, especially near the cover of the apple orchard. The bird circled for a bit then dove at something I couldn't see, broke off the attack, and lit in a tree.
Hawk watched the hawk in the tree for a minute or two, then jogged towards the apple orchard and along its edge, through the tall grass where the goats and sheep haven't been yet this year.
Suddenly, a rabbit flushed out of the grass and ran out across the cropped pasture at the base of the Edge and the hawk dove but missed the rabbit by a hair (no pun intended) and the animal dove into a clump of goldenrod and hid. The hawk circled around and returned to the tree, but by that time crows had noticed the situation and began mobbing, calling more and more crows in. The hawk hunched its shoulders, seeming vaguely bothered. Hawk called out, offering a piece of meat, and the hawk flew to her glove. Woman and bird together left the scene, heading for the farm fields and the shed where Charlie butchers deer in the fall.
Neither of them had seen me watching the whole time. I was invisible.
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