So, yes, a disgruntled student of Allen’s triggered the closure of
the school; her parents filed a lawsuit and as we had no liability
insurance, in order to settle out of court we had to sell the school
itself to pay our bill. Each of our several other options, including
fighting the suit in court, would have required we compromise our
community in some important way. We decided it was better for the
school to die intact than live on as less than itself. Whether it
actually did die at all is the subject of this last post, but at the
time we saw no hope, no way forward but an ending.
I want to emphasize
that while I have mentioned that the student was mentally ill, her
illness was not the cause of her vindictiveness—mentally ill people
are not inherently dangerous to anyone, and lots of healthy people
are vicious. Indeed, we don’t know whether it was she or her
parents who decided to come after us. The reason I mentioned her
mental status at all is that had she had any other kind of crisis,
legal blame would not have landed on Allen—there might have been no
way for blame to find purchase at all.
Allen felt horrible,
for while he was not in any way responsible for what happened, he had
made a mistake. There was a kernel of truth to the lawsuit. But we
all felt horrible. I can’t overemphasize how awful it all was,
every step that we took felt just plain wrong. And there were a lot
of steps to take.
Again, I don’t
want to be detailed, or even entirely accurate in my description,
because we engaged in some subterfuge that I don’t want to come to
light.
The first priority
was to appear to capitulate fully in order to satisfy our attackers
and distract from the fact that we weren’t capitulating fully. The
Six were the board members of the school as a legal entity and its
sole shareholders, so we could not appear to remain involved after
the sale, nor could we arrange to sell the school to an ally whose
connection to us could be traced. We (staff and students together)
therefore created the illusion that we were and had always been a
quirky private liberal arts college, and we presented that illusion
to several potential buyers.
We also quietly made
a deal with a different quirky liberal arts college to accept our
students and transfers and find ways to properly credit their real
educational experiences, including the courses on magic and so forth.
We would continue working with the students in secret, and the other
school would find ways to credit that secret work.
Thus, we planned to
honor our obligations to existing students, although we could not
take on new students because we would all shortly have to find other
ways of making a living.
We were sued in
August. We sold the school in October, and according to plan Allen,
Kit, and Greg all walked away unemployed and penniless. I stayed on,
since I had not been legally added to the board, pretending to be an
adjunct science professor and writing coach. The other allies stayed
on as well, and more allies stepped in to cover Allen’s psychology
classes and Kit’s classes on dance and movement. Joy and Karen lost
their positions on the board, but they both owned their own
businesses—as you may recall their classes were open to
outsiders—and so they both kept going as though they were simply
contractors who had lost a client.
Over the following
year, most of us allies gradually left the school’s employment,
replaced by real liberal arts professors who had no idea what the
school had really been. Most of the students, particularly those
close to graduating, transferred to the other liberal arts college,
the one we had a secret deal with, to finish their studies. New
students came in with no thought of magic. The place very rapidly
became the ordinary liberal arts school we had pretended it was.
But we had not sold
the campus to the same buyer. The campus was our home. It contained
Charlie’s ashes and some of those of Shrimp and Jim, who helped
found the school and whom I never met but have heard a lot about. And
remember, ashes from the campus lie under my skin; as Charlie
predicted, I can’t ever permanently leave.
So we sold the
campus to a newly-formed non-profit created by Sarah Grimm whose
stated twin purposes of sustainable agriculture and education would
be furthered by continuing the farm and by renting the campus
facilities to various other groups, including the college that bought
our school and Karen and Joy’s businesses—and the summer camp,
which my wife continues to run. How did Sarah get the money? Some of
it was hers, some of it raised from our community, but the entire
down payment came from Charlie; he had bequeathed her his life
savings with the understanding that she would do just what she did,
if it ever needed to be done.
We expected our
retention of the campus and our deal to stay involved with our
students to function merely as lifeboats for a sinking ship. We
expected to more or less all go our separate ways. Kit spent a year
as a full-time member of her husband’s band, the Blue Pixies, then
got herself re-certified as both a dance movement therapist and a
yoga instructor. She then taught yoga at the YMCA and volunteered her
services as a therapist at nursing homes and in a women’s prison.
Allen expanded his private therapy practice to full time and
eventually founded an after-school program for troubled youth. Greg,
long since retired from teaching, went to live with his sister, his
social security check supplemented by a small pension collected from
the school community at large, as per our promise to take care of the
Six. The Joes moved in with their son. Raven G. went to work for
Sarah supervising the care of the non-farm parts of the grounds. Rick
went to work for the US Forest Service (where he stayed until shortly
after the inauguration of Donald Trump, when he went to work for a
state agency instead) but continued to consult on the management of
the campus forest. Karen and Joy continued teaching their classes and
did quite well for themselves. Sadie put her energy into her
restaurant, becoming Sarah’s primary buyer.
And I became a
full-time landscaper, supplementing my income in the off-season as a
free-lance writer and writing tutor and by sometimes doing classes or
workshops for area high schools and the community college. And I had
a baby. And I wrote this blog.
The blog was an idea
that came up very soon after we sold the school, the idea being to
“seed” some of the values of the school into the wider world. We
hoped that someone would take our example and create another
community such as our was—if that has happened, we have not heard
of it. But we had another goal, too.
Our community was
never unique. I’m not the only one who has had the experience of
meeting people who seem to be masters in our sense of the term but
appear not to have gone through our program—they are out there. And
there are places, or corners of places, where magical little
communities very like ours grow. They aren’t obvious. In fact,
they’re generally hidden, much as ours was, in plain sight—a
school or a business or a private club or a neighborhood, wherever
two or more gather amazing things can happen and yet the third who
has also gathered might notice none of it. It’s very strange, yet
somehow comforting.
So the other mission
for this blog was to give encouragement to such places, and to all
those who seek them.
The reality is that
if our school is seen as a larger phenomenon, a reality beyond a
single institution, then it never closed. It still very much exists.
If you want to figure out the specific reality of my stories, who we
really are, what really happened, you can give up now—I’ve hidden
us so deeply you’ll never find us. But if you want to join us as a
student, you’ll find we are all around you. All you must do is
recognize our existence and want to join and we will take you in at
once.
That paragraph was
to be be the end of the blog. I thought of it years ago, almost word
for word, though I have not written it down before today. I figured
that the tragedy of Charlie’s death and the school’s closing
might impel some readers to take me up on my invitation, to take
seriously and offer care to the secret magical places and people
around them, and then maybe my losses, our losses, would mean
something.
But while I’ve
been writing, a curious thing has happened, to me specifically and to
us generally (something I found last week would require enough words
to explain that I had to split the last post into two parts).
I have found myself
transformed once again, no longer merely a science major who likes to
write but a chronicler, a person concerned with and knowledgeable
about the uses of narrative to communicate, to frame, and to
transform. It has become my special skill and magic, and while I once
felt myself inadequate as a leader of our community, I now have a
place here. It has grown around me. And around me, around us, has
grown a new version of “us.”
It happened
gradually, as our meetings shifted from nostalgic get-to-gethers
(sometimes precipitated by people wanting to know how the blog was
coming, or by me wanting to consult the memories of others on points
I wasn’t sure of) to catch up to semi-organized discussions of our
various projects and how they fit into some kind of whole. We became,
once again, the Six. I’ve given you hints of this process as it
happened, told you of our decision—or was it a discovery?--to begin
moving forward, to build something new.
Initially what we
built did not resemble a school. Sadie had her restaurant, and when
she decided to move it into a slightly larger space with a better
location, we pooled our resources to help her buy a building with a
restaurant and two other retail spaces on the first floor, a large
finished basement, and two second-story apartments. The basement
became the new home of Aaron’s library, which he had been running
as a lending club through the mail from his home since the school
closed. I took charge of one of the retail spaces with several
business partners, also from the community, and sold science books
and supplies and art supplies. Kit took charge of the other retail
space and built a metaphysical book store. We rented the library
after closing hours to 12-step groups and other community functions,
and turned one of the apartments into an Air B&B. The other we
gave to Greg, rent free, when his sister had to give up her house and
move to an assisted living facility. We taught classes to the public.
We took on small numbers of students secretly, bringing them on as
novices at Brigid, just as we used to.
By that time the
school that had once been ours had failed, its resources folded into
other programs of its owner—enrollment had dropped precipitously
after we left. We started talking about what might be done with the
campus.
The election of
Donald Trump was a turning point for us. The “real world” no
longer felt safe for us or our values, and we realized we needed to
create a refuge for ourselves, not to hide from the world, which is
what we had done before, but as a base from which to act. We needed
our own land again.
It took a few years
to organize, but...we’re back. This Brigid, as I prepared to finish
the blog, we inducted our first new group of resident novices. Some
are new, but some have been secret students of ours for a few years
now. We even have two candidates living with us.
We’re not the same
school that we were. We couldn’t be—we don’t know how far the
antipathy of that student’s family extends, for one thing. For
another, we recognize now how vulnerable we were and have taken steps
to make ourselves less so. The Six is no longer the institutional
leadership on paper, nor are we one entity, we we used to be.
Instead, we are a group of legally separate organizations, one of
which is the school, which rents the campus facilities from Sarah’s
non-profit. Never again can an outside attack threaten the entire
structure—the school could close again, but it could be immediately
replaced by a new legal entity with new people acting as its public
face and behind that face the rest of us doing the same work.
It’s just in time.
COVID19 has given us very good reason to retreat to a place that can,
after all function independently. We grow our own food, and since the
restaurant and our stores are shut for the duration, we none of us
need to leave. We have invited our friends, allies, and families to
join us—the student body is still quite small, so we have plenty of
space and food—and some have taken us up on our offer. For over a
month, now, no one have come in or gone out, we’re like the
mysterious workers in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and so far
none of us are sick.
But who “we” are
has changed, too. Of the Six who I knew as a student, only Allen and
Kit remain. Greg has completed his retirement. Karen and Joy have
been gradually drifting away from us for years, getting involved with
unrelated projects, and when we decided to re-open the school they
elected not to come with us. And of course Charlie is gone.
I am the new Craft
Master, though my primary craft is writing. Allen retains his old
position, but Kit is the new Spirit Master, replacing Greg (yearlings
no longer do zazen; they do yoga), and leaving a vacancy that Ebony
has filled. Ebony is the new Art Master, teaching mostly visual art
and poetry. Breathwalker is the new Athletics Master (as well as our
new grouchy old mystic). He spent many years as a long-distance
hiker, before permanent injuries took him off the trail, and walking
is the primary athletic form he teachers. It’s harder than it
sounds. Our new Healing Master is a physical therapist named Brian
who earned his Green Ring in the years when we didn’t have a
campus.
Two months in, our
new residential community seems to be doing well, still feeling its
way into existence, but we seem to be finding our way. Yesterday’s
on-campus Easter service was well-attended and lovely.
June and I and Carly
(who is, by the way, named after Charlie, as are several other
sprouts with similar names all born since his death) have given up
our old apartment and moved into the suit of rooms formerly occupied
by Charlie and Greg. June and I share one room, Carly has the other,
and there’s the shared living room, too. It’s less space of our
own than we used to have, but room and board is free and we have the
entire campus as our home.
Greg, who was less
sentimental than I, chose a different room from which to enjoy his
retirement. He was 93 and though still perfectly clear mentally, he
was getting frail physically and spent much of his time dozing or
getting to know our newly-acquired barn cats.
Did you catch the
past-tense?
This morning Greg
Monroe did not wake up. When he didn’t come to breakfast, Kit went
to check on him and found his body cold and stiff in bed. He must
have died quietly very early in the night. Brian is dealing with the
details of properly caring for the body and for the legal details of
a death. We have another funeral to plan, and while we’re not sure
how, yet, Greg’s ashes, too, will enrich our soil. And yet Kit
found the body not quite as cold as it might have been, for his
remains lay guarded and warmed by all our barn cats. We have no idea
how they got inside.
I was among the
first Kit told, and I returned to the Mansion in time to see Greg’s
body, though not in time to see the cats. I did not involve myself in
the initial discussion of whom to call and what to do, but instead
retreated to my room. I wasn’t scheduled to teach until the
afternoon—now, of course, classes are canceled for the week—and I
blog post to write.
I sat there in my
room, which used to be Charlie’s room, thinking about Greg and
about my history here with this school since I have known him and
everything that’s happened, everything I’ve learned and done, and
thinking too about what I wanted to write in this, my last post.
Because that’s what this is. It’s the end. The end always comes,
sooner or later, and while beginnings are not guaranteed, they tend
to come, too. This story may someday become a novel, and if that’s
going to happen I’ll post about it here—so please stay tuned. Or
you can go back and read the story again from the beginning. It’s
all here. It’s not going any place.
So my thoughts went
and my ideas moved, and I got out my laptop to write this post. But
before I began to write I got up and I stepped outside and I played
my tin whistle on my balcony.
