Happy (belated) Samhain.
I always get a case of "the lasts" at this time of year--I get obsessed with the idea that I'm doing or experiencing things for the last time. It's seasonally appropriate, I suppose, and the feeling always eases up a bit after the holiday. I guess I get over my obsession and just get on with the year actually ending. But this year, of course, it was especially bad. If all goes well--and I expect it to--my candidacy is basically over.
I was sitting in the audience, breathing in that old, familiar scent of beeswax, wool, and autumn leaves, thinking about how I'd never be a student sitting in this audience again, because at Brigid I'll be on the stage as a newly-minted master, when I suddenly realized I didn't know the actual procedure. What has to happen between now and February to ensure I am sitting on that stage?
So after the ceremony I found Charlie.
"How does the next few months go?" I asked him. "When do I interview? How will I know? Is there something weird happening before then that I need to be on campus for? I forgot to ask!" I was hurried and breathless because I didn't know exactly when they'd ring the bell, and there's never any guarantee of being able to ask questions like that after the bell rings.
Charlie looked confused for a few seconds and then smiled at me, clearly amused.
"Nothing weird, unless you make it weird yourself. Mind-games are for novices, remember? You'll interview the last week before Brigid--they'll be a schedule, we'll reach out to one of you and let you know. Then there's a short ceremony earlier on Brigid day. None of it's secret."
"Oh."
"No, it's good you asked. You should have."
"Thanks."
"You're welcs. But Daniel?"
"Yes?"
"You have the votes of everybody on your committee, right?"
"Charlie, I don't know who everyone on my committee is. But...yes."
That earned me a smile.
"Don't take those votes for granted. That interview is not a formality."
"Way to make me anxious, Charlie."
"Hmph. I can't make you feel anything, Daniel. I expect you'll be fine, but you know what expectations are. Complacency teaches you nothing."
Great.
Anyway, the ceremony itself went very well, and since I haven't described it in any detail in a few years, I'd better do it now--meaning this whole post is somewhat inside-out. Ah, well.
Samhain (pronounced "Sah-wen") is a Day or the Dead, related to, but distinct from, both Halloween and Dia Del Muerte. There are many people who celebrate it, and the way we celebrate it on campus is probably a little different than what most people do--though honestly, I wouldn't know. We prepare for it by decorating campus with shocks of corn stalks, bales of straw, pumpkins, squash, and gourds, and, indoors, cut vines of bittersweet and grape, candles, and baskets of apples. And, in a new twist they added last year, pots of marigolds both indoors and out. Anyone who wants to is also welcome to make a poster to memorialize a dead person. Those go up on display in the Chapel several days before the event.
Usually, the 31st, the evening of which is Samhain Eve (these things begin the sunset before, like Jewish holidays) is our last day of classes, but this year it fell on a Saturday. Most of us treated it like a regular Saturday, while the janitorial team set up for the ceremony. Instead of dinner, we all dressed in our uniforms and moseyed on over to Chapel Hall across already frosty ground lit with constellations of candles, each floating in a small bowl of water.
We all found seats in the Chapel, which was lit by dozens and dozens of beeswax candles so that the whole room was dim and honey-colored and warm from the candles and the ceiling was lost in the gloom and might have been a million miles up. My stomach started to grumble; it knows what time dinner normally is and I'd skipped it.
A small bell rang from somewhere and rang again and again and the masters processed in, each carrying a lit candle. Charlie, the current Head of the masters' group, led the procession, though with his hood up I wouldn't have recognized him if I didn't know him as well as I do--the way he walks and the breadth of his shoulders are distinctive.
They climbed onto the stage, which
was empty except for the tall candle-holders, deposited their candles,
and then all of them except Charlie left the stage and sat in the audience with us. As Head, Charlie was master of ceremonies. He put his hood down and made a kind of semi-formal opening speech, and then he read the names. Some years they get someone other than the Head to do it, but Charlie read them himself, a long list of people who had died and were being honored. Most of the names belonged to people I never met, and while most were community members of one kind or another, but some were simply famous people we like to honor. I noticed Steve's grandfather had joined the list.
They put the list together every year, so if nobody writes a name down it just isn't on there--that's how the list does not get impossibly long with favorite cousins of former students and that sort of thing, but some people go on the list every year, and it is gradually getting longer. This year I noticed Charlie did not read the list of exist species. It appears to have been cut for space.
Then Charlie invited anyone who wanted to to eulogize community members who had died over the past year. There was only one, a former student I never met, and two people stood up at the same time. There was a bit of awkward negotiation with gestures before one sat down and the other said a few words.
Finally, we sang "Hats Off to Dead Folks," our goofy memorial song where anyone who wants to can contribute a verse. I'd expected Kit to lead it, she usually does, but Charlie never introduced her. Instead, he started off by singing a verse about his brother, which surprised me twice--once since he'd obviously, publicly, and apparently pointlessly snubbed Kit (she routinely does so to him, but he tends to act as though he's above whatever goes on between them) and another time because Mario has been dead a couple of years, now, and Charlie has not sung for him publicly before.
The song is goofy and light-hearted, but Eddie's voice still broke when he sang a verse for his dog. I sat a few rows behind him and saw hands reach up to him, almost literally supporting him as he sang. Steve sung a verse for his grandfather--and Sarah, Steve's wife, surprised us all by singing her own different verse for the same man. I suppose that's allowed--we allowed it, anyway--but I've never seen it done before. I didn't know any of the other people who got verses and I didn't sing one myself.
Then we all milled around for a while, leaving the ritual seemingly unfinished, until the bells rung and the masters suddenly absented themselves, some of thm leaving mid-sense, as they do. There is, after all, a sharpness, a suddenness to loss, however expected, that cannot be made goofy and must be acknowledged.
We all streamed out of the Chapel and out towards the fire pit where food and drink awaited us. And we old hands dropped towards the rear of the crowd, unobtrusively forcing the yearlings to the front so they wouldn't try to stop the abduction of one community member by a pack of masked miscreants--the sprouts and their friends, of course. Yearlings never know about the tradition until they see it done.
It was Alexis, Allen's youngest, who came to demand ransom for the prisoner--Ebony, as it turned out.
Predictably, everyone made a big show of weeping and wailing and pleading for her return, but Alexis, whom we were not supposed to recognize under her costume, held firm. Finally, Kit regretfully asked what the hostage-takers wanted. Normally some haggling follows over how much candy and so forth the kids will get, but I stood up and said NO in a loud voice.
"What?" said kit, momentarily startled.
"No," I repeated. "We can't give in to terrorists! Come on, I can't believe you people are even considering it! You know how this works--if we pay one ransom, none of us will be safe!"
A short pause, then, as the others came up to speed, a vociferous argument broke out, some of us in favor of paying, others joining my side of it. Alexis stood there, obviously unsure of what to do. Gradually, more and more people came over to my side until, with a nervous glance at each other at our temerity, we made a united front ant told the bandits they could do their worst--we wouldn't pay.
"NO!" cried another voice, this time June's.
We turned to look at her and found her standing, gun-shaped stick in hand, covering us all with a kind of unhinged nervousness.
"No," she said again. "We're paying, I don't care.I'll pay myself, if I have to. I'll, I'll, I'll shoot anyone who gets in my way."
"June," I cried, aghast, staring down the barrel of my wife's imaginary gun, "why?"
"Because, because--I'm in love with her!" She said this with enough melodrama for three day-time-TV stars, and someone sang "dun-dun-dun!" in approximation of suitable music.
Of course, June's elaboration blew our negotiating power to hell, and the sprouts ended up with more candy and other goodies than I think they've ever gotten before. Ebony was returned unharmed, and I was pleased to see they'd blindfolded her just like they would have any other abductee. She doesn't like special treatment.
"I'd always wondered what being abducted felt like," she said, quite merrily, once we'd gotten her freed from her restraints. She disappeared into a knot of well-wishers bearing warm drinks.
"Well," said Kit to me in mock anger, once the others were too far away, up near the fire, to pay attention. "I hope you're satisfied. Next year they'll expect twice as much."
"What?" I replied, all innocence. "If I'm going to be a master soon, I figured I'd better start acting it and try changing something.
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