Mastery Year 3: Part 6: Mabon

Mabon—the Autumnal Equinox—isn’t for a few more days, but I like to post before the holiday, rather than after, to build anticipation. -D.

Happy Mabon!

I don’t feel very celebratory at the moment, but of course that’s no reason not to wish everyone a happy holiday. And maybe it’s appropriate that Mabon feel like a mixed bag, since it is the equinox. No, nothing bad has happened, I’m just feeling glum.

It is Fall, now, though I have to admit it doesn’t yet look like it. The forest is still green, the air is still warm—even hot, some days, though not nearly as hot as a month or two ago. But under the green is a yellow cast, a hint of change, and the birds are heading south—some are staging to migrate, others have already left. As with spring, which is present from the first hint of growth, Fall is present from the first hint of preparation for the cold. I didn’t used to understand this. I see things more deeply now, I suppose.

The performance art element of our holiday celebration is back, it always has a competitive talent-show aspect to it, and last year, besides the food (there is always some sort of comparative tasting event, plus a fantastic buffet showcasing the campus farm’s produce), the show was all about athletics. This year it’s reverted to art again. I suppose art suits us better, though art can include athletics, and Karen and some of her students did perform several sequences of martial arts forms.

There was also a pie-baking contest—twenty-some pies competed, each one presented along with a small tub of extra filling, for people who wanted to take a little taste of all of them for comparison.

The pies raised an old question—how are things like this contest organized? I hadn’t known there would be a pie contest, there was no announcement, no call for contestants, so how did the actual contestants know to enter? There are always parts of this place I just don’t see, even as there are aspects I do see that hardly anyone else does. I’ve been noticing that for years, and in years past the realization made me feel, first, pleasantly mystified (as when someone does a magic trick I can't figure out) and later awkward, foolish, and excluded. But this year I felt none of those things. I simply asked Sadie, the cook, how the pie-making contest had been organized and how the competitors had known about it.

"They knew about it because they organized it," she explained. "A group of them came to me a week ago and asked if they could use the kitchen and our supplies to make a buncha pies for the feast today. I said yes, and wrote it into the schedules. The staff saw my notes, and half of them wanted in." She shrugged.

I stared at her.

"Is that how it always works?" I asked. "I'm not missing announcements, there just aren't any for these kinds of things, because they're organized by groups of participants from the beginning?"

"Not always, sometimes you are just oblivious," Sadie told me and grinned.

"I'd almost rather be oblivious--the other is so prosaic," I admitted.

"Some magics are," she told me. "And then there's pie. Pie is delicious even if you do know the recipe."

"I suppose." Actually, I agree with her about the pie, I was just lost in thought. I was looking around the event tent at all the people milling around and eating and talking, and I was thinking about how they all knew things I didn't, and how I'd vainly thought I could crack the code if I asked the right person, but now it seemed there was no code to crack. The people who seemed more involved that I got that way, not because they were tapped and I wasn't, and not because they answered some call that I didn't hear, but simply because they took the initiative and I hadn't. I felt left out all over again, and left out by my own fault.

"I think you're closer to solving your problem than you think you are," Sadie told me.

"Huh? What?"

"Your problem. You want to know how this place works, right?" Of course, I had asked her that very question when I interviewed her over the summer. The fact that I've been interviewing people, actively researching how to school works is common knowledge.

"Yes," I said, cautiously.

"So there's a missing piece--these pies, the other contests, things that happen and you can't figure out how, right? So there's a question you're not asking. You already have the answer, you just have to ask the right question."

"Um," I tried to think. "You're gonna have to give me a hint."

"Alright. You know how the pies got made, but have you wondered why there was space on the table for them?"

And all at once I saw why that was, indeed, a puzzle, and in seeing that I solved the puzzle.

"Why was there room? Why is there ever room for all of these ostensibly unscheduled events? How does it all get coordinated?" Because I know in other organizations, too, there are small groups of people having ideas, but those ideas don't become projects central to the functioning of the whole without some kind of process. In any other school, the pie contest would have had to be proposed to and approved by the event director, who would then insist that a general call for submissions go out...here, there was no director and no approval. Things just happen, bubbling up as they will. And it all fits into a coherent pattern. The school works.

"The school works because each of you" I meant the masters "can see a different aspect of the whole, just like I can see some aspects and, I don't know, Eddie, can see other aspects. And you ask each other questions."

"Bingo," said Sadie. "That's what Friday night dinners are for. We get together and share what we know and think and want, and we keep each other on the same page that way. More or less. If there's a conflict, we can deal with it."

"I still feel really dumb," I admitted. "I could have been making all kinds of stuff happen around here, but I just assumed I needed an invitation or something."

"What would you have made happen?"

"I don't know."

"Well, there you go. You have other skills, and you have been using them."

"Speaking of which, don't you have to go to the Mansion, now?" I'd noticed, out of the corner of my eye, as Allen slipped away. Kit and Greg and both Joes had already vanished. Charlie was gathering his things. I knew the masters did something secret in the Mansion on Mabon and that students weren't even supposed to know that the secret existed, let alone what it was. I tipped my hand to Sadie on impulse, just to prove--to her? to myself?--that I wasn't the idiot I felt like. Her eyes widened.

"You're right. I'd better get a move on," she said. But if she farewelled me and got up, other eyes might notice and follow her. I knew that.

"I'm going to get myself some pie," I told her. "You can wander away while I go--eyes will follow me because I'll move first."

"You've been hanging out with Allen," she accused. I shrugged.

"You want some pie?" I said, standing up.

"No, thank you."

I nodded in acknowledgement and walked over to the tables, tripping over a chair as I went, though I didn't fall over or anything dramatic like that. A few people glanced at me. Sadie was gone by the time I turned around, pie in hand.

I wandered around with my pie (which was very good) and ended up settling near Hawk and Eddie. I'd mentioned Eddie earlier because he'd been involved with the Beltane celebrations for several years, without my ever finding out how he'd gotten involved. He must simply have volunteered. His being thus on my mind was part of the reason I moved towards him. The other reason was that Hawk had her hawk with her. She has to bring the animal out among people periodically, or she won't stay completely tame.

I approached and the others acknowledged me, but they were deep in their own conversation and the hawk seemed nervous about my being too close, so I sat some feet away and ate my pie.

"I wish Elmo was here," Eddie was saying. "I was never able to do this with him. He was never as far along as I thought he was." Elmo was the dog Eddie was training, until the animal made a serious attempt to kill him and Joy had to intervene with a gun. Eddie held out his hands and looked at the more accessible of his many scars.

"Do you think you would do anything differently?" asked Hawk, "If you had to do it over again?"

But Eddie just shrugged.

"I would probably get less involved emotionally," he said, after a bit. "But I doubt that would lead to a better outcome. It's just what I would do."

"You've lost a certain innocence," Hawk said.

"Yes. I shouldn't have. It's not like I didn't know some dogs are dangerous."

"But it hadn't happened to you."

"No."

"Before I came out," said Hawk, "there were people I thought loved me unconditionally. Had my back, you know? And they didn't. Now I wonder who else doesn't. Who else will leave me if they find out I'm not the person they thought I was."

"Aren't you?" I suppose Eddie was wondering if Hawk had still more closets to climb out of.

"How they hell should I know? I don't know what other people think. It's having no control that bothers me."

"Thinking I should have control bothers me," said Eddie. I knew Elmo was impossible. I thought I could train him anyway. Isn't that how the story goes?"

And they both shook their heads sadly.

"I don't think either of us are as good at loving as we used to be," said Hawk. "Sometimes I'm trying to teach my bird here to trust and I feel like a total hypocrite. She's sitting here calmly and I bate at every little thing. I have armor, not feathers, anymore." To bate, for a falconer, means to panic and bolt. When a hawk on a short leash does it, the bird ends up hanging upside-down from the leash and flapping helplessly. Panic accomplishes nothing, not even escape. Hawk has explained all this to me.

"Do you suppose we'll ever get better again?" asked Eddie. "Or is this....hardening permanent?"

"I don't know," replied Hawk. "I think if we can forget to protect ourselves, it's possible."

"Tall order," said Eddie.

"I don't know," suggested Hawk, "you were supposed to tame an impossible animal for work in therapy. Ever think you're the animal?"