Year 3: Part 6: Post 2: Looking Foreward

I said a few days ago that it’s felt like fall for a while. And that’s true. But it didn’t look like fall. 

Only a few of the trees were just starting to turn. But last night a storm blew through campus and this morning, for whatever reason, the trees had turned. I don’t mean all of them, or that any turned completely overnight, but a lot more trees have a lot more yellow and orange in them now. It looks like fall.

It looks like Fall inside, too. We’ve got the whole campus pretty much decorated for the season, now—displays of pumpkins and corn stalks in doorways, little winter squashes on the tables in the Dining Hall, vines twine up the walls and across the ceiling of the Great Hall…we’ve worked hard to get it all set up over the last few weeks. The place looks good.

What we haven’t had to do is rake leaves on campus. Charlie says the best mulch for a tree is what it grows itself. All around here, where we have trees we have ground covered in leaves and broken twigs, all year round. The difference in the fall is the ground gets a fresh and more brightly colored coat. We do rake leaves off campus, though. Charlie has a deal worked with our neighbors where we come and take away their fallen leaves and compost them and use them to mulch our garden beds and farm fields. That will probably start next week. It’s fun—I remember last year how we hitched a cart to one of Joy’s horses and took that cart out along the main road picking up leaf piles….

But the advancing season is making me think of other things, too—all the people graduating. Graduation itself isn’t until February, of course, but after the school year ends at Samhain we won’t see the graduating students very much. I won’t even be on campus very much, though I’ll be here more than I was last year in order to keep my commitment to sleep outside an average of once per week. So it’s like Samhain is the beginning of the end or something.

38 people are graduating this year, including four mastery candidates. I’m not honestly all that concerned about most of them leaving—other than being happy for them, of course. I’m not really friends with most of them and some are people I hardly know. And some aren’t really going anywhere—Arthur, for example, is earning his Green Ring at Brigid, but he’s not leaving. His whole reason for coming here was to get involved in this community, so he’s probably going to stay on as an ally—as long as there’s room he can live on campus for a fee and help out.

But other people—this year’s graduating class includes Rick, Willa, Ham, Jim, three more of the Ravens, and Ebony. And both Rick and Ebony want to come back and get their rings, so they’ll be going into Absence. No offense to any of my friends who are staying on, of course, but right now I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty lonely around here next year.

In the meantime, I’ve started doing my outside thing. This past weekend I spent Saturday night out in my spot—I would have spent Sunday night out also, but that storm was coming in and I turned chicken. My plan is to do two nights a week when I can, so I’ll have the leeway to skip a week when I have to. My parents think I’m crazy, of course. Specifically, my mother is angry that Charlie is “making” me do this. She’s grumbled some about what am I paying room and board for if I’m not allowed to sleep inside. Which is all very strange because my mother loves camping—she and Dad go camping for a few days at a time at least once or twice a year and says she wishes she could afford to do it more often. And she knows I used to love going camping with them. So why is she complaining about Charlie “making” me do something she knows I enjoy and that she wishes she could do herself?

But I’ve long since learned not to worry about my parents’ reactions to this place. It’s just because they love me.

Year 3: Part 4: Post 6: Updates

So, I've realized I haven't talked much lately about what a lot of my friends here are doing. Here, for your reading pleasure, is an update:

Nora

Nora's nineteenth birthday is this week. It's strange to think she's as old now as I was when I started--she still looks so young to me....

But she's obviously matured a lot. She's not rebellious so much as independent, now. When she started, she was only taking half as many credits per semester as the rest of us, since she hadn't finished high school yet. Now, she's gotten her GED and while she has two more years to go, she seems to have mostly caught up with the rest of us in other respects. She's been studying Wicca, bee-keeping, and aromatherapy, and seems very much a witch in her own right, now. The big news is that she's raising money to start her own business making scented candles, massage oils, and lotions.

Kayla

Kayla is sixteen and looks and acts like a teenager now, instead of a child. Since she's no longer nursing Aidan, her relationship with her son is much more like if she were an involved big sister or an aunt, which is probably how it should be. She's still taking just one class per year, spread out over the entire year, while otherwise home-schooling. Her mother is concerned that she's too isolated from other kids her age, so this summer Kayla got a job off-campus as a junior counselor in a day-camp for children. She seems to like it.

Andy

Andy is in his final year here. He is physically healthy, clean from drugs, and seems...more grown-up. It sounds odd to say that, since of course he's something like fifteen years older than I am, but for the first year there was definitely something childlike about him, and that wasn't always a good thing. Now, there's still a trace of that, but he seems almost, well, normal. He, too, is going about going into business. He has an off-campus job in a bicycle shop and the owner is seriously considering making him a partner. Once his credit is rebuilt, he wants to buy the place.


Arther

I haven't talked to Arther much this year. He's on campus as a candidate, and he often teaches workshops on various aspects of Wicca. He seems happy.


Joanna

Joanna is still a puzzle to me. She is not kind, but I seek her company anyway. Being on the receiving end of her teases and jabs, as I often am, is rather like being tickled--you laugh and try to get away at the same time. Maybe that's it--she makes me laugh. I've been told my writing seems overly serious. Maybe I'm overly serious. Maybe I need to laugh more?

She is working on becoming a yoga instructor and she makes, and sometimes sells, ritual implements, like chalices, wands, and alter cloths.

Rick

Rick is mostly living indoors again, though I can tell he still has mixed feelings about it. This is his final year, here, and he's spending it completing a few credit requirements he'd skipped earlier. He still does trail work with me, sometimes, and we go tracking together. I am still learning from him. We don't talk often, or at much depth, but I know he's wondering what he's going to do when he leaves here--and, more broadly, what he's going to do with his life. He doesn't have any clear answers on that, yet.

Ebony

I have not talked to Ebony in a while. I don't really know what she's doing. She's been spending a lot of time off-campus and seems unhappy, for some reason. She insists she's fine.

Ollie

Ollie is, of course, off-campus, having graduated. He's not in Absence yet, though, so he did come to visit at Litha. I don't hear from him very often, but his fiancee, Willa, does, and she gives us updates. He's starting graduate school in the fall, going for a masters' in Divinity. 
 

The Ravens

Of course, there are multiple women named Raven in my story, and I really should have established some way of differentiating them from the beginning, but I didn't.


There are four women named Raven left on campus, three of whom are Allen's students and planning on graduating this year. Two of them are in the Reiki group with me and one of those is a good friend of mine--she's studying totemic animism with Kit and there are overlaps between that and my studies with Charlie.

The fourth Raven is graduating next year and is one of Charlie's students. She's on the groundskeeping team with me, and we get along well.

Year 3: Part 1: Post 2: Students, New and Old

It's happened again.

How, in my year, there were a bizarre number of people named either Raven or Joe? This year, the incoming crop of new students includes no less than four people named some variation of Tom: Tom, Thom, Tommy, and Tommi, that last one being a woman. And there are two women named Patricia, though fortunately one goes by Patti and the other by Trish.

Eight of the new people are in my dorm. They are welcome. It's odd, though. Except for those eight, I find myself less interested in getting to know the new people. Last year I was all excited to meet the newbies, mostly because I wasn't new anymore myself and wanted to sort of glory in not being completely confused. I don't mean I wanted to lord it over them (not much, anyway), I mean I wanted to be useful, but for the most part they ended up not needing me. I ended up not getting to know a lot of them. This year I'm kind of expecting that. I know I won't have classes with most of them. I see them walk by in groups and just think "oh, new people."

I'm hoping that will change. I like getting to know people.

As I said, Arther is back. He and I were never close, but it's good to see him. Normally, graduates have to stay gone for at least three years before coming back and trying for their green ring, but Arther was given special dispensation because of his age.

He says it's because the masters don't want him to die of old age before he gets back (which is unlikely--he's seventy years old, and in good health, and that's not really that old anymore, except as compared to most college students). But I understand the real reason has more to do with his experience than with his health; the whole point of Absence is to keep the community from becoming too insular. People who wear the green ring are eligible to be hired as masters, and they don't want to risk the school being run by people who joined the community at 19 or 20 and just never left. That's not a problem for Arther.

But his age is very much on his mind.

I asked him what he plans to study this time--mastery candidates work with a single master around a single topic. Excellence in that one topic becomes a "way in" to a deeper kind of mastery, as far as I've been able to gather. So I asked Arther what his topic will be.

"Old age," he told me, without hesitation. "My wife's dead, my coven is broken up, I'm retired...I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I've reinvented myself before, I could do it again, but do I really want to start over as if I were 24 again? Go looking for a job, a career, or a girlfriend? You don't know this yet, but life depends on context. And mine's shifted. I need to learn how to be an old man."

I must have seemed rather blank, because he reverted to teacher-mode.

"Life comes in stages, Daniel. Maiden, Mother, and Crone for women, Summer King and Winter King for men. I don't feel like an old guy. I look in the mirror and I think 'what the hell happened to you?' I feel like I'm forty--old enough to know better but young enough to pretend I don't, eh? But I don't look forty. I don't act forty. My body's in pretty good shape, but that's going to change. Pretending that's not going to alter my life is stupid. I've been a priest almost my whole adult life, but how do I be a priest who is old? Who is ill? How is that going to change what I have to offer? What does being a Winter King priest entail? So I'm here to learn."

Arther is positive and upbeat about the eventuality of his physical decline. Rick is the opposite. Everything is going obviously well for him, and yet he seems melancholy.

But with all this coming and going, new people and old feeling and thinking however they do, there is a new scent in the dorms--Kit's flowers, the ones she planted in pots the day Ebony and I saw  the snow falling. Each dorm has a pot of them, and they're blooming, little yellow flowers blooming in February.

They're pretty.

Year 3: Part 1: Post 1: Brigid

 I'm back.

 I'm back on campus, after a month at home. It was so strange to be away, out in the ordinary world that used to be my home and now feels both alien and familiar at once.

I spent the time living with my parents, of course, in my old bedroom from when I was a kid. I did my homework--mostly reading, though I had daily meditation and healing exercises from Joy and I had to stay in shape physically--saw some of my friends, and spent time with my family.

Out in the "real" world (a lot of us call it that, or simply "the world," as in "I was out in the world today," meaning off campus) people make certain assumptions and follow certain conventions that I'm not used to anymore. They even use language differently. There's a whole long list of words that are insults on the outside and neutral or complimentary on campus:

Gay
Fag
Queer
Girl
Pussy
Hag
Crone
Cow
Bitch
Spider
Witch


I haven't accidentally used any of these in the wrong context, but I've heard them used as insults (usually jokingly) over the past month from friends and family and it's jarring. I never know how, or even whether to respond. It takes me a couple of seconds each time to realize the words don't mean what I'm used to them meaning, a small example of the kind of culture shock I experience whenever I go back home.

(Lest you think we are overly polite, we have our own insults, too--"patriarchist pig" looms large, as do "Christian dupe" and "cowan," which means "non-pagan." I've heard both of the latter used by people who either did not think or did not care how either would make me, as a Christian, feel)

Even talking about school is difficult because there is so little overlap between our culture and the rest of the world. Yearlings, senior students, masters, staff-masters, candidates, novices, none of these have any direct equivalent outside. My family can't understand half the things I tell them about what I'm doing or why. In a way, I find it easier to talk to my friends who don't know about the school, who think I'm only going to a liberal-arts college. I tell them my homework isn't for a class but was suggested to me by my academic adviser, and they think they know what I'm talking about and we can go on to the next thing.

Allen says that after a while the school's secrets start keeping themselves.

But all this being said, this January I've also gotten used to being home again. I started to move back into that larger culture, so now everything on campus feels strange. I'm told that it will get easier to move back and forth over time, but it hasn't happened yet.

The ceremony itself was interesting and powerful as always. I'd forgotten that the Chapel has a distinct smell--cold air, wool, and honey, from the beeswax candles. Smelling that again brought it all back. I sat next to Ebony and described what everything looked like. Her hands were cold so I kept them warm in mine. Ebony being Ebony, she wanted to sit on the end of our row so she could light a candle. Greg, whose candle she lit, made it easier by subtly moving his candle towards hers so the two could connect.

"Is it wrong that I'm hoping the yearlings saw that and think my eyeballs work?" she whispered to me.
"No," I whispered back. "They'll be wrong about you in so many ways anyway, why shouldn't you get to pick some of the mistakes they make?"

She squeezed my hand.

Watching the graduating students come up--Ollie was one of them. That was hard. I hadn't expected it to be that way--I'm so going to miss him.

And there was a pleasant surprise as well. There are four new mastery candidates this year--and one of them is Arther.

The man standing at the desk is Arther, back on his first day

Year 2: Part 8: Post 5: Fellow Students

Here I'm doing a list of students whom I mention frequently in the blog--there were actually about a hundred students on campus at any given time. I knew most of them, at least to say hi to, and while I wasn't friends with all of them, I was (and am) friends with more of them than appear as recurring "characters" in the blog.

In any case, here is a brief blurb on each of the students whom I have mentioned at least twice in the blog so far. I figure this way readers who have just joined the story can look up descriptions that I originally scattered across many posts. I've added some information I couldn't fit into the narrative, plus physical descriptions--so I don't have to repeat myself when I describe people, everyone on the list identified as white. Almost all students on campus were--that's who walked in our door. Maybe we should have tried to change that, I don't know.

(I have edited this piece to add "characters" who have joined the story since I first wrote it)

Andy 

Andy started the same year I did. He was in his mid-thirties at the time. He came to campus originally as a bicycle thief--he was a homeless drug addict who hoped that a bicycle might help him get back on his feet somehow. When he was "saved" as a Christian and got clean, he repented and returned the bike and at that time asked to join the school. We put him through a detox program and got him treated for chronic hypothermia and more or less helped him put his life back together. He ended up learning bicycle maintenance as a craft and now owns a bicycle repair shop.

He was unusual on campus in being Christian. He was outspoken and passionate about it, but he never seemed uncomfortable with the pagan school culture--on the contrary, he's always said that we embody Christ better than most Christian churches do. I don't know if that's true or not. There was always a childlike eagerness to Andy. There is still. He says it's because he spent so much of his early life high that he never grew up. I think it's because  he had a very difficult, painful life and he just got tired of pain and fear and doesn't want to have any more of it. He has no family left, except us. He's sort of average-looking, in terms of height and so forth, with dark hair, pale eyes, and bad skin. He looks older than he is.

Arther 

Arther also started my year, but graduated at the end of that year. He was in his late sixties at the time and had been a Wiccan High Priest for decades. He joined the school shortly after his High Priestess, his wife, died, because he didn't want to be alone. He already knew most of what the school had to teach and already had a college degree--more than one, I think. As a student he was white-haired and wrinkled but still physically robust. He is now in his eighties and his health is beginning to fail but he can still hold his own in an argument.


Aidan

Aidan was not a student thirteen years ago--he was a toddler. His mother is Kayla, who was only twelve when he was born. The circumstances of his conception are not my story to tell, but the man was an adult and is still in prison. He was adopted by his grandmother, Sadie, who was on staff, but Kayla has helped raise him. He's a teenager now and knows she is his real mother. He's a sweet kid, still pretty little, with thin features and dark hair.
 

Daniel 

Me, of course. There was another student in my year named Dan who was, like me, 19 when we started. Like me, he was a young 19. He and I never really got to be friends and I spent a lot of time worrying that people might confuse the two of us, since he was very good at putting his foot in his mouth, but he's basically a good guy. I haven't heard from him in a while.

As for me, I'm tall, skinny, kind of awkward-looking, honestly, with brown hair and eyes. I usually have a Van Dyke beard--that's a goatee plus mustache.  You can't tell, since I'm the narrator, but really I hardly ever talk. I like listening better. And people like to talk to me. I don't know why.                               

Ebony

Ebony started the year after I did and she is something like fifteen years older than I am. She is also--and some readers have guessed this--one of the women I dated on campus. I have decided not to talk about my romances in the blog posts because all of them were marred by my self-consciousness over still being a virgin. There is no way I could write about that in character as my 20-year-old self, so I haven't. Ebony was my second girlfriend on campus and we were together for a couple of months. We ended badly, but recovered our friendship. She is still closely involved in the community.

She is on the short side of average, pretty (of course), with thick, long, brown hair. Her eyes are brown but look black because the pupils dilate a lot. Physically speaking, she is almost totally blind and has been so since birth. Spiritually, she is not blind at all. She doesn't think of herself as blind and she identifies more strongly with sighted people than with blind people. She calls it "transability."

Eddie

Eddie started the year after I did, but we only became friends in my third year. The other reason I did not mention him at first is that it is difficult to tell his story with any degree of depth without mentioning that he is transgendered, something that he is not always open about (he can pass a cisgendered and usually prefers to). I do disguise identities for this blog, but I write as if I we simply my younger self telling you things, and my younger self would not have told you about Eddie's status. Finally, I spoke to Eddie himself about it and he gave me permission to write about him freely.

He is on the short side, for a guy, wiry and muscular, with short, light brown-brown hair, blue eyes, and a movie star-handsome, oval face. He is a complete flirt and very much a ladies man--I don't mean he's a player. He doesn't use people. Instead, he celebrates and glories in them. He also sings, dances, and raises and trains therapy and service dogs.


Joanna

Joanna was another student in my year, and 11 years my senior. I would not have said we got along--she made fun of me a lot--but we kept finding ourselves spending time together. Eventually we became friends when I learned to ignore her teasing. I always thought she was gorgeous, which might be why I put up with her, but she honestly didn't mean anything bad by it. I think she expected me to tease her back, but I've never been able to. I get kind of tongue-tied around her. Still.

She's on the tall side of medium, with thick blonde hair and hazel-blue eyes. Her features are strong, straight, and covered with pale freckles.


Kayla 

Kayla was, as I said, only twelve when she gave birth to Aidan. She hadn't even realized she was pregnant. The masters decided that enrolling her as a student would give her an opportunity to connect with supportive adult women who could identify with some of her experiences better than kids her own age could. But academically she remained a home-schooled kid for many years. She was a bit pudgy before Aidan was born (that, plus his being premature helped hide the pregnancy) but thinned out afterwards. She's of average height but thinly built, with a narrow face and long, blonde hair.

Nora 

Nora was another early-starter--she was sixteen when she joined the school as a student, and the masters gave her a six-year plan and required that she get her GED before she could finish. She fought with her mother a lot, and for the first year or two was deliberately rebellious--her hair is black, but she kept bleaching and dying it various colors, like purple, pink, and green. She ended up getting into Kit's version of Goddess-based feminism and also bee-keeping. From bee-keeping she expanded herself into making scented candles and massage oil. She has a strong, almost chiseled-looking face, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin.

Ollie

Ollie was my "buddy," the older student assigned to help me out when I first arrived. We ended up as good friends, although our courses of study were very different. He studied reason and philosophy as a spiritual path, with Allen. Ollie has always been gentlemanly to the point of delicacy; I never heard him use coarse language or make sexual jokes, even in all-male company. He's a Baptist preacher and, like Andy, found something in the pagan community of campus that augmented his Christianity. Unlike Andy, he has always been painfully self-conscious of his status as a member of a minority at the school. To his own surprise as much as anyone's, he fell in love with (and has since married) a woman who glories in her paganism. He is tall and slim and brown-haired, like me, but his face is oval and clean-shaven.

The Ravens 

By a weird coincidence, seven of the women who started with me all called themselves "Raven." Their interests were different enough that they were rarely all together, so it was less confusing than you'd think it is, but I made the mistake of not giving them nicknames for the blog so it's been difficult to really present them as separate people with distinct characters. Three studied magic with Allen, but one became Zen Buddhist, another became a totemic animist, and the third never talked with me about her religion. Three more studied Wicca or magic with Kit, and the seventh was, like me, mostly Charlie's student--though she focused her studies with him on horticulture.

Rick

Rick was, in a way, my closest friend on campus and he is the one of my fellow students with whom I have kept most consistently in touch. I qualify that with "in a way" because Rick himself does not really like human beings and does not quite feel like one of us. He likes some individuals and I do think he likes me, but he usually prefers to be alone. There were basic things about him that I didn't learn until years later because he simply didn't think to mention it. For example, he's gay. He wasn't closeted, he just didn't want to date within the fishbowl of the campus community where everyone soon knows everything. But I've never been one to talk much about my thoughts and feelings, either.

Rick and I get along because we give each other space and because our studies were always so closely intertwined. Like me, he studied with Charlie, and while he studied outdoor survival skills and I focused on spirituality, on a deeper level our studies were much the same. He is tall, slim, with short, black hair, and black, bushy eyebrows and a round face with high, taught cheekbones. He does not look quite human.

Steve Bees

Steve Bees arrived in my third year. There was already a man named Steve on campus (I have mentioned him, but we never got to know each other well), so after the new Steve stepped on a yellow-jacket nest his first spring, people started referring to him as "Steve--you know, the one with the bees?" and eventually it stuck.

He is medium-tall, with pale eyes and curly, black hair--or, rather, it was black when he arrived, in his mid-twenties. Much of it's grey now, as is the beard he grows occasionally, and it makes him look older than he really is. He is another of the school's Christians, a Quaker, though it was Greg's Buddhism that led Steve to embody his faith's commitment to social justice and Charlie's animism that made him a true contemplative. He is unusually able to learn from (even contribute to) other traditions while remaining rooted in his own. He is also a truly gifted singer. I have seen him dressed in novice-white, in the brown of a candidate and then a master, and in a series of mundane but expensive-looking suits (he is a lawyer, now). But when I think of him, in my mind's eye he is always wearing jeans and a t-shirt and he is always smiling.
 
Veery 

Veery started my second year and graduated in my third year. She could sing beautifully, loved watching and learning about birds ("veery" is a kind of bird) and studied psychology with Allen. She was short and stocky, with a cute plump face and beautiful auburn hair. She was the first person I dated on campus--we were together for a few weeks early in the summer of 2001. We didn't have a whole lot in common besides mutual physical attraction, and in the end we broke up because I wanted to have sex with her so badly that I had no idea how to ask her. And she got tired of my awkwardness on the subject. Our breakup wasn't acrimonious but we didn't become friends and I haven't heard from her in years.

Willa 

Willa was Ollie's girlfriend. She is now his wife. She's a self-described tantrika, meaning that sex is a big part of her spiritual practice. She was unapologetically promiscuous before getting together with Ollie--that their relationship worked out surprised everybody, but they seem very happy together. She's medium-tall, with long, light brown hair and large, expressive features.  

Part 8: Post 12: Call My Name

Today has been an odd mix of coming and going. Almost everyone is back on campus now, and people were busy unpacking all day. But people were busy packing, too. Forty-two people are graduating in less than a week, and most of them have started packing up their things. I hadn't thought about it before, but even though they're obviously staying until Brigid, their stuff has to be moved out by the time the new students come in because we have very few empty rooms.

Where do they go? Where do they spend their last night or two on campus? I'm not actually sure. Why are they packing up now? Some of them are just trying to get it out of the way, I'm sure, but they're rumored to be going away on some kind of final trip together, and I'm sure that has something to do with it.

It's strange to think of these people being gone. Arther, Joe, Trish, and Otter are friends of mine, and I'll miss their company, but it's not like they're dying, so it's not really a big deal. But some of these people, even some people from my own dorm, I barely know them. Song, Wren, Arion...who are these people? I've never really found out. I'm having the most irrational urge to hurry up and become close friends with them right away before they leave...that's obviously not happening, though.

I've been talking to a lot of the graduating students, though, asking them questions, and two things jump out at me. First, listening to some of them talk about how long they've been here and what they've done...how do I put this? It's like aging trees. You can go around measuring trees and estimating their ages, and discover, for example, that the sugar maples along the main drive and the white oaks along the back drive are all about the same age--about a hundred years. That means they all started growing at the same time, and I can think about what that time must have been like. In the same way, I keep hearing people say, over and over, that they've been here three years. That means they were all yearlings together. I never thought of it this way before--that all these people have known each other the whole time.

The other thing is that hardly any of these people are planning to come back and do the mastery program. Arther is, but I think maybe only five or six other people are.That sounds about right, given that there are only ten mastery candidates on campus right now, compared to nearly a hundred novices, but still, I can't really imagine anyone just being satisfied with the undergraduate degree here. That's weird--I hadn't really noticed, but I guess sometime over the past year I decided to stay here as long as I can and go as far with it as I can.

I want to be a master.

Anyway, Nora is back on campus now for the year. She's managed to convince her mother to let her stay through the weekend most weeks. I asked her how she did it, expecting to hear something about how responsible she is now, and how she's nearly 18, both of which are true.

"I threatened to get back together with my old boyfriend," she told me, blithely.

"You--what?"

"Well, I mean, she never used to like my friends. She thought they would get me into trouble. I don't know, maybe she's right, but they were my friends. And she especially hated my boyfriends. They were all too old and too...well, sexy, I guess, for her. I'm still friends with a lot of those people, but I hardly see them anymore...I just asked her, who does she want me hanging out with on the weekends? Those people or you guys? And she likes you guys."

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Kayla and Aidan are back, too. Aidan is getting big. He's walking everywhere, and according to Kayla he can talk now, or at least say a few words, but he wouldn't say any of them around me. I'm not sure he remembers who I am. He does seem to like me, whoever he thinks I am, though. The whole time Kayla and I were talking last night he kept picking up various nick-knacks from around the Great Hall and bringing them to me. I was supposed to name them for him, apparently, but he wouldn't say the names after me. He only grunted in acknowledgement.

Candlestick, pomander, worry doll family, amethyst, piece of pop corn, clump of cat hair, a lemon, dried poppy pod, rabbit's foot, owl feather, wet sock....

"Oh, no, honey, that's not yours, go put that back. Put back the sock!" Kayla insisted, and Aidan looked at her uncertainly for a moment. Then he put the sock back in the boot where he had found it. I have no idea whose sock that was. Aidan might not be that great at talking, but he clearly understands what Kayla says to him.

"You really listen to your mommy, don't you?" I told him when he returned. At the word "mommy" he seemed surprised and looked around the room. Kayla picked him up.

"No, she's not here. She's upstairs, remember? But you do listen to Mommy when she tells you things, don't you? You are very attentive."

I must have looked confused because Kayla smiled at me.

"I'm not 'Mommy,'" she explained. "I'm Aunt Kayla, though he's starting to call me Anka and I think we're going to go with that. Mommy is 'Mommy.'" And she blushed for a moment. "I mean, Mom is 'Mommy.' Anyway, it's not a secret that he's my son, but Allen told me I really need to think about who I disclose to--because of my age? And what it means about my history? He says it's a privacy thing for me. And I can't be choosy about who I disclose to if Aidan's calling me 'Mommy.' When he get's old enough to know the difference he'll just be calling his mother 'Anka.'"

I guess that makes sense, but I have mixed feelings about it, too.

Today, just after lunch, my therapy group met for the last time. We're all meeting either today or tomorrow, so Allen can meet with us. We haven't seen him since Yule, he's been in Florida or something, and he has the tan to prove it. He didn't talk about his vacation, and we didn't ask, but he seems relaxed, energized, happy. I'm not surprised, if he swam every day. I remember how long he spent in the water on the island.

We talked about the year, what our goals had been, how we had changed, how we had seen each other change, whether any of our goals had changed along the way. And we kind of said goodbye to each other.

Of course, most of us can keep spending as much time together as we want, if we want. Therapy group is over--or, it is more most of us, because the groups have only a limited number of spaces and new students get first priority--but we're all still going to be here. For Arther, it's different. He isn't.

He's in my therapy group, and not only is his time here ending, but he can't come back and visit right away because he wants to go on to the mastery program, so he has to be out of contact for a year. Allen had him speak last, and I think that was a good idea because something about his talking was qualitatively different from what everybody else said.

"I wish I had more time," he said, finally.

At the end of the meeting, Allen lead us through one more group bonding exercise. He had us stand in a circle and link hands. He joined the circle, but the dropped the hand of Joe, the person next to him so we made a line, him on one end, Joe on the other. Joe is graduating, too, but he's been here two years and I think it's easier for him to go. But maybe still not easy. We made a curved line, Allen on one end and Joe on the other, and Allen had us wrap around Joel the way you might wrap yarn around itself to make a ball. Soon we were all wrapped into a giant spiral hug with Joe at the center.

"When you feel your neighbor squeeze your hand, squeeze the hand of your other neighbor," Allen directed. "Joe, let us know when you get it."

I think we all felt very warm and fuzzy at that point. I felt the squeeze after a few seconds--Allen must have started it--and passed it on. I was on the outside loop, so it felt more like I was hugging that getting hugged. I'm not a particularly huggy person, but I liked that one. I could smell the wool of the other people's uniforms so close to me, and their bodies felt warm and I waited for Joe to say he'd finally gotten the squeeze.

He never said that he did. Eventually, we figured out that the message and gotten lost somewhere along the line, so we let go and had a chuckle about it and went in with our day, but that's not what I remember. What I remember is standing in that spiral hug, not talking, for what seemed like hours but must really have been two or three minutes, just standing there, listening to the gentle sound of an old man crying.

[Next Post: Friday, January 31st: Eighth Interlude]

Part 8: Post 5: To Be Merry Another Year

Happy New Year! We had a nice little party, and as soon as our bedroom windows get fixed we can go back to being at least halfway warm at night.

I should explain.

There wasn't any official New Years Eve celebration, but of course we had a party and Kit and her husband turned up, as did Security Joe and Cuppa Joe, and, surprisingly, Greg. I don't think any students came in who weren't here anyway, but it's sometimes hard to tell, since people have been coming and going a lot.

It was pretty low-key, actually, especially at first. After dinner we just turned on the tree and broke out the booze and the leftover holiday cookies and sat around talking.

"So, where's my flying car?" asked Arther at one point. "Weren't we supposed to have flying cars by this point? It's 2001, for crying out loud!"

"If we did have flying cars, we'd crash them," pointed out Andy. "Three-dimensional traffic jams? I'd kind of hoped we'd be done with cars by now, actually."

"We'd all switch to bicycles?" asked one of the Ravens, teasing him. Andy colored, but recovered his dignity.

"Well, yes. Or walking. Walking's lovely," he said, quietly.

"It's not like nothing's changed since we were boys, for better or worse," pointed out Greg.

"That's true," Arther conceded. "Consumer electronics, the moon landing, nuclear power, plastic everything, a lot of pollution...and civil rights, and the repeal of Britain's anti-witchcraft laws. I rather appreciate that one."

"Free love and The Pill?" asked Greg, with half a smile.

"That, too," conceded Arther. "Viva La Revolution!" and he took a swig of something. I don't know what was in that bottle, it never got around to me. Willa giggled and Ollie, his hand in hers, looked at her oddly.

"Flying cars and video phones are just consumer interest issues," declared Ollie. "We could have them if enough people wanted them, the technology's there. But we don't have intelligent computers or the Cavradyne drive."

"Cavradyne drive?" asked Arther.

"The propulsion system of Discovery One, in 2001: A Space Odyssey," supplied Rick, before the answer could make its way out of Ollie's open mouth. Willa giggled again and Ollie frowned at her. "The book, I mean," continued Rick, not appearing to notice. "You want to bet that movie is on at least one TV station tonight?"

"Too bad we don't have a TV," said Andy.

"Oh, hang on," interjected Greg, and went upstairs. He came down a few minutes later with a copy of the book and we took turns reading passages from it. I've seen the movie a few times, but I'd never read the book. We didn't get through all of it, obviously, so I think I'm going to have to read it myself at some point. The language is wonderful.

More often than not the ship would reverberate to the tunes of the harpsichord, frozen thoughts of a mind that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

Anyway, along around 11, Andy giggled.

"Did you know you're slurring your words?" he asked Arther, who was, just slightly. "It's neat to be the only sober one in the room. You're all very entertaining."

"You're not the only sober one," I told him, which was quite true--I'd poured  myself one cupful of hard cider, and tasted some of the new applejack (you make that by letting hard cider freeze; the alcoholic fraction stays liquid, so you pour that off and it ends up about as strong as brandy), but after that I'd switched to cocoa. I was on a sugar high, if anything. But I got the hiccups right after I was done speaking, which kind of ruined the effect. Everybody laughed at me. What is it with hiccups? The few times I have been drunk I didn't hiccup.

"If you're going to be drunk, though," continued Andy "you might as well do it up right, right? Be Really fun to watch? This is New Years."

"What" hic! "do you" hic! "have in mind?" hic! "Damnit," I said.

hic!

hic!

hic!

"BOO!" cried Arther. I jumped half out of my chair, spilling my cocoa.


"That never works!" I complained, and hiccuped again. Everybody laughed at me, again. But after we'd gotten the spilled cocoa cleaned up the party at last started to pick up. Except for Arther, I think most of us were sober, or nearly so, but we were tired and sometimes that's almost the same thing. Once we started getting goofy we couldn't really stop. Along about midnight somebody said we should have a parade, so we all ran outside and tromped around in the snow playing "When the Saints Come Marching In" on kazoos on the big flat pasture out by the Edge of the World while fireworks and shotguns went off in the distance. The sky was clear, but the snow was fresh and I realized that the next day the field would bear tracks like the invasion of a giant and slightly tipsy centipede.

The next day was pretty normal for winter around here, except that I fell asleep during zazen, which I normally don't do, and Kit hung around happily lecturing anyone who would listen on the history of the Philadelphia Mummers tradition. As the afternoon wore on a storm blew in, but I didn't care much because I had nowhere I needed to be. It was a bad storm, though, and the wind was still getting stronger when I went to bed just before ten.

That night--which was last night--something like an explosion woke me. Everyone else was awake, too, and everything was confusion. Eventually we figured out that the wind lashing the branches of the elm tree at the corner had broken a couple of windows. Even as we talked about it we could hear more windows breaking. My room is ok, it's nowhere near the corner, but there was snow and broken glass in a couple of different rooms, and with the wind still blowing more windows could break.

Chuck--who, if you'll remember, isn't Charlie, but the head of maintenance, came down to look at the broken windows.

"We can't fix this tonight," he proclaimed, "and I doubt anyone will sleep well wondering if their window's about to break. Some of our windows broke, too--in the breakfast room? Why don't we all move down to the Great Hall? It'll be easier to keep warm than this Swiss cheese up here."

He was right; the temperature in the dorms had already dropped ten degrees and was falling fast.

So, that's what we did. There's a curtain rod running the width of the Great Hall, I think they used to use half of the room for performances or something, so we took the evergreen garlands down from the rod and tied a line of blankets up there to keep the heat in and then carried our own bedding down.

The masters came down, too, mostly half asleep. Kit's hair stuck up every which way, like a giant red Afro, but she seemed bright-eyed enough. I tried to see where she went, but I lost her in the crowd. Greg still wore his school uniform--I've never seen him in anything else, I don't suppose he has much else in the way of clothes. Allen wasn't there--I've heard a rumor he's in the Florida Keys with his family for a few weeks. Joy wasn't there, nor was Karen. I don't know where Karen was. Joe, my boss from the janitor crew came down, looking odd in a pair of boxer shorts and a truly ugly sweater. Sarah and her family were not there, and neither were Sadie and her family. Sharon never seemed to be anywhere except when she works in the office. She's a complete mystery. But Aaron, and of course, Chuck both showed up. I hadn't known Aaron was on campus. Charlie came downstairs in a flannel nightshirt and shearling slippers. He's let his hair grow out a little since classes finished and it's long enough now to give him a definite case of bed-head. He didn't look like anyone's guru, he looked like an old man shuffling around looking for his bed.

Eventually, we all settled down on the couches or on the floor, and someone turned out the lights. Except, we were all probably still too jazzed up to sleep. I was. Finally someone said it.

"I can't sleep," complained a voice.

"Do you want a lullaby?" another voice jeered. But someone took the suggestion seriously.

There is a castle on a cloud
I like to go there in my sleep
Nobody shouts or talks too loud
not in my castle on a cloud.

It was Kit's voice, from somewhere near the fireplace. When she was finished, someone said "encore!" and we all laughed. Someone else sang, not Kit, I don't know who, but a woman's voice. "Hey Jealousy," I think?  Song, after song. I'm not sure everyone wanted to stay up singing, but no one complained.

Finally, I heard an odd voice--I couldn't figure out who it was, but I almost recognized it.

Did you come here for forgiveness?
Did you come to raise the dead?
Did you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head?

I looked around. We'd left the tree lights on, so anyone who had to get to the bathroom could navigate without shining a flashlight all over, and I worked out that the voice was coming from near Cuppa Joe. I could see his head silhouetted against the lit tree. But he wasn't singing. Presumably, Security Joe was.

You act like you never had love
and you want me to go without.

Was it only a pretty song to him? I wonder about Security Joe, what it's like to be him. He does not talk about his life to me, and I do not ask. What is it like to have the legal part of your marriage evaporate like sublimating snow? Or, maybe it was just a song to him. It is pretty.

We were all quiet for a while. Then, I heard Willa's voice.

Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain, we all have sorrow.
But, if we are wise, we know that there's
always tomorrow.

I heard Ollie join in beside her. Then another voice. Then I joined in. Then Kit--I'd know her voice anywhere. Then other voices. Soon, we were all singing.


Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For, it won't be long
Till I'm going to need somebody to lean on.

I don't think we were singing to Joe specifically. He wouldn't have appreciated it, for one thing. People who don't share their troubles tend to not want a lot of public sympathy. I'm not even sure how many people in the room knew Joe might have had private meaning to his song--or knew him well enough to know whether he meant it that way or not. But the song felt right, no matter who it was for. Dozens of people, singing together, in a damaged mansion with the wind still howling outside.


You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand.
We all need somebody to lean on.
I just might have a problem that you'd understand
We all need somebody to lean on.

Exactly.

Part 8: Post 1: Yule

Note; Yule is actually tomorrow. I've just decided I'd rather post about the holiday early than late. Yule was on a Thursday that year. By the way, some readers have been asking me if this blog is about to stop. I have no plans for it to stop. -- D.K.

They didn't tell us what the Yule celebration was going to be about until it was actually here, which I suppose is typical. According to the senior students we shouldn't miss it and we should take a nap ahead of time, but that's all they would say. And of course, it turned to be fantastic.

There were only maybe twenty of us on campus on Wednesday--despite the advice of the senior student a lot of people had gone home for Christmas already--which was kind of a bummer, but at least it made dinner feel kind of cozy and family-like. We had a little Yule dinner around the beautiful old table in the Great Hall dining room and we all fit around it. Kit and Greg both joined us for dinner and helped cook, and they sat at the head and foot of the table like parents--which was strange, as I'm not used to thinking of either of them in parental terms. But I liked it. Yule night, I should say, is the night before the sunrise of Yule, not the night after.

It also happened to be the first night of Chanukah. A few students here are Jewish, and more are pagans from a Jewish background--some of them call themselves "Jewitches." So usually the campus as a whole doesn't celebrate the Jewish holidays, but there are often small private services or dinners here, just like there are for Christian holidays. But today, the two combined. Before dinner, they lit the first candle of the Menora, with sung prayers in Hebrew. And apparently some of what we had for dinner was traditional for Chanukah.

After dinner, while I was helping to clean up, Kit and some of her students left--I think they went to the martial arts studio down the hall for a Wiccan ritual. When they came back an hour later, smelling of sage smoke and looking like starlight, they brought a lit candle and a lot more people. Kit's husband had joined her and some of the senior students were back, plus Nora and Kayla and Aidan, and a group of graduates. I guess most of them had joined Kit for the ritual, and the others just showed up at the same time.The candle was the long, pale gray taper that's been on the mantel-piece this past week, and Kit carefully returned it there.

"The Yule candle," she explained, looking pleased with herself. "It will burn all night, to hold the place of the sun."

"Not a Yule log?" I asked.

"I expect we've got one burning already," commented Arthur, pointing at the wood stove.

"Yup! We're burning oak tonight," confirmed Kit. The newcomers brought cakes and candies and a lot of alcohol. Apparently, we were going to have a party. 

I was busy catching up with Kayla when Nora pulled at my sleeve and quietly pointed to Arther. He was sitting by himself, looking at the Yule candle, with an odd, sad expression on his face. Even as we watched he sighed, sighed again, and then he sort of crumpled in on himself, weeping.

"I don't know whether to give him space or comfort him?" Nora said. Kayla bit her lip and frowned.

"When we first got here," I began, "I saw him come in. He told Sharon he wanted to be here because his wife had just died and he didn't want to be alone. I bet she was still alive at Yule last year. Let's go make sure he isn't alone." And so the three of us brought him a fresh handkerchief and a plate of cookies and he told us all about his wife and their life together.

"It's a good thing this is the darkest day of the year," he said, finally, "It's about the worst I've felt all year. You never expect some things to just...end." I've never seen Arthur to break down like that. He's always so in charge of himself and everything else.

But while we were talking to him some of the others had collected their instruments and a sort of band had started up. All this light-heartedness was happening around us. More people had come in, so there were maybe fifty or sixty people in the room. There was a bit of a commotion, Kit was trying to refuse to do something and others were insisting. Finally she gave in and stood up and sang an a Capella version of Twelve Days of Christmas but with hand gestures--the sort of thing children learn to do for school Christmas shows. Each day had its own motion, vaguely related to the lyrics, and the whole thing was entirely goofy. Even Arthur was laughing, his tears not dry yet.

From there, the music just didn't stop. The band kept changing as one or more members got up to dance and someone else sat down. Except for that first song, Kit wasn't really a center of attention, which was kind of strange, and, besides Greg, none of the other masters showed up. I guess the party was mostly a student-thing. Hours went by. Gradually people started leaving, including Kit, but the band showed no sign of stopping. Around three in the morning I realized we were going to dance the sun up, but I turned out to be wrong.

By five things were starting to calm down and I was getting tired myself. There were maybe thirty of us left. One of the senior students called us all together and suggested we all climb the mountain to watch the sun come up. Greg would stay behind and watch over the oak logs and bayberry candle that still burned. The only thing was, we had to be utterly silent, not say anything until the sun actually came up. I knew a ritual activity when I heard one, I think we all did, so nearly all of us put on a couple of extra layers, pulled on our boots, grabbed foam pads to sit on, and walked out into the crusty, early-season snow.

We had flashlights, and it is hard to get lost in such a bit group, so hiking in the dark wasn't bad. It was strange not talking, though, moving with such a large crowd in the dark and hearing their breathing, their footfalls in the leaves and the snow, and nobody talking. We climbed to the top of the ridge behind the school to a lookout area where the trees had been cleared to give us a view almost straight down the valley to the east. By that time there was a definite glimmer of dawn; the eastern half of the sky was a luminous blue, with the ghosts of grey clouds just visible here and there. We all settled down to wait.

And heard music.

Someone, somewhere behind us, was playing "Here Comes the Sun" on a tin whistle.

Charlie! I looked around, but could not see him in the gloom under the trees. He finished the song and immediately began it again and this time, after the first few bars, was joined by a guitar. That had to be Allen. I hadn't seen him in weeks. I still couldn't see him, though the air was growing brighter all the time. The song cycled through, over and over, gaining instruments as it went: a violin, a tambourine, and a drum. The masters had all come. It was light enough now that I could probably have seen them if I'd looked, but the dawn was so close I was watching the horizon for the sun. One spot was growing brighter and brighter so that I kept thinking is that the sun? Is that it? Like when you're on an airplane taking off and you wonder if you've left the ground yet until suddenly it's obvious that you have. The sun came up and split the weird pale light of dawn and at that moment the song that had been repeating itself over and over again reached its beginning and it was obvious that we should all sing. Most of us knew the words--I did, I knew all of them.

Sun, sun sun, here it comes! we sang as the sun indeed came. I'd never paid any attention to sunrise before, but now it felt like a victory over darkness, like some sort of achievement. We did it! And when we were done singing we all jumped up and hooted and hollered and hugged like our team had won the Superbowl or something.

And we were completely freezing, having sat in the cold for the better part of an hour. Fortunately, the Masters had not just brought their instruments; they had also brought vast quantities of hot chocolate, cider, and coffee. Kit passed out ginger candies, golden as the sun, and caramels made with cayenne pepper. By the time we all got back down to the Great Hall, breakfast had appeared and so had dozens of other people, including the "sprouts," the children and nieces and nephews of the masters, all playing with new toys and eating cookies and candy. The almost monastic quiet of campus in winter was gone. I'd been up for over twenty-four hours at that point and was pretty fried, but the walk in the cold woke me up and I just kept going.  Not everyone did. Greg had gone to bed just after breakfast. I think the noise bothered him some, he isn't a very outgoing person, and he's not exactly young. Most of the masters fell asleep on the couches for at least a few minutes, and some took naps. Around noon, we found Kit curled up asleep under the Yule tree. Her husband picked her up and carried her off to bed like a child. It was very sweet. I don't think she was exactly sober at that point, and she didn't wake up except to wrap her arms around her husband's neck, smiling.

Happy Yule, everyone.

Part 6: Post 11: Transitions

English Ivy

We have a lot of traditions here that nobody ever talks about. I've noticed this before--like how we do certain things for each of the holidays but no one ever says why. Or how no one ever said we have to turn lights out and eat local and all those other things, we just do it. Anyway, I've found another such hidden tradition; the end-of-year party.

Nobody really said anything about it. Nobody said it was a tradition or a big deal or a ceremony. Just the other day Arther said there were a couple of people getting together in the Great Hall after dinner and I should go, too, and it turned out that all the people who are graduating, all the masters, and most of the yearlings were there. Everyone else was mysteriously doing something else.

It was a big party. There are about thirty people graduating this year, which seems like a really small graduating class to me, but with maybe fifteen yearlings and all fourteen masters, plus Aiden and a couple of earlier graduates from off-campus it still added up to a lot of people gathered together in one room. There was no particular ceremony, just a fire in the fire place, lots of food and drink, and some great music.The music, of course, was home-made--Kit and some of the others brought instruments and played and sang, not like a band providing entertainment, more like a campfire, with a couple of people singing or playing on and off as the mood struck them. Mostly they played familiar stuff, Simon and Garfunkel, Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, Grateful Dead, but also some traditional Celtic stuff, some--I think they're Greek folk dances, Kit admires Greek culture, as I think I've mentioned--and some contra dance tunes. Mostly we talked over the music, if we weren't dancing or singing along, which I mostly wasn't. But I did stop and just listen--I think all of us did--for a few songs. One stuck in my head because I almost recognized the tune but couldn't quite place it. I have a good memory for lyrics, but instrumentals are harder, and it was this beautiful duet Kit did on her cello with one of her students, a violinist named Sinclara who's graduating in February after three years. No singing, just the cello and violin soaring around each other, beautiful and kind of sad. I asked about it later--it was "Empty Chairs," by Don McLean. I know that song, but somehow I'd always thought the title was "Never Thought You'd Leave," after a line in the refrain.

Asian Bittersweet

At one point Kit and some of the others played a waltz and a few people started dancing, which looked really cool, with the black or brown cloaks swirling around as the dancers swayed and spun against the backdrop of the honey-colored wood and the arrangements of corn stalks and dried flowers and seedheads, pumpkins and gourds, all occupying corners and tables and vases all around the room and the garlands and wreaths of grapevine, bittersweet, and ivy twined seasonally up light fixtures and corners and partway across some of the wooden beams along the ceiling. The bittersweet and ivy is exotic and will be burned when we're done with it, but it gives a wonderful fairy-tale look to the room.

Aiden spent most of the party wandering around, dancing, and looking up at the adults and squealing with laughter. I don't mean wandering around on his own. He's nine months old now--"he's been out as long as he was in!" as Kayla says--and can't walk on his own yet, but he can stand if he holds on to something, and with someone to hold his hands he can sort of walk and he gets a tremendous kick out of it. He dances by bouncing up and down a bit, especially when the music gets faster. He doesn't like all music equally--he actually frowned at some songs he didn't like, and he seems to have his favorites. He was wearing a little brown onesie handmade to look a little like a master's uniform and people kept calling him "the baby master" or "Buddha baby." He didn't get the joke, I'm sure, but I think he could tell we were talking about him and that we were joking, so he would look up at us and grin and giggle. His hair is dark and long enough to get in his face a bit and his eyes are this brilliant blue.

Mostly we milled around and talked to each other, all of us who could talk, and Aiden, who can't talk, milled around and giggled.

The community here subdivides in a couple of different ways, I've noticed. I'm a yearling, for example. I belong with the yearlings. I'm also a member of the Turtle Dorm, Therapy Group 1, the Janitorial Team...I'm one of Charlie's students, I'm one of the younger students, I'm male, I'm straight, I'm Christian, etc. But no matter how many different ways the community divides up, I've never really noticed the "Class of 2001" as a distinct thing. We don't have classes in that sense here, because we each move through the program at different rates. You don't necessarily finish with the people you start with. I didn't even know who-all was planning to graduate, though I knew a few of them. And now here they all were--I could see who they were, because they were the ones at the party who weren't yearlings and weren't masters or alums (or a baby). I could go up to the ones I didn't know well, even, and ask them questions about what they had studied and what they planned to do next. I could look at them as a group, and they could look at each other. I wonder if that's why we had the party?

I don't think I was the only one wondering that.

After a while, people began to leave, off to do homework, or sleep, or whatever else. I didn't feel like going to sleep, and I'd finished my homework already, so I wandered over to the couches by the fire and sat down. Charlie was there, drinking something from a mug and staring into the fire. I couldn't tell if he was cold or not, because while he'd wrapped himself up in his cloak like a big, brown cat, I could still see one of his feet poking out and, quite typically, it was bare. I wrapped myself up in my cloak, too, finding it quite cozy, and belatedly realized I'd mimicked him. We didn't speak. Greg came to sit by the fire as well, straight-backed and stern and looking preoccupied. Wren and Tenny, two women I didn't know well, came to sit together on the couch, giggling like teenagers. They're both planning to graduate this February, after four years. One by one, everyone either left or accreted to the group on the couches by the fire. Kit asked us if we wanted any hot chocolate. She had a pot of it, a cast-iron cauldron on a swinging cast-iron hook, heating over the fire. The hot mug felt good on my hands, though I hadn't thought I was cold. I took a sip and tasted...well, chocolate, obviously, but something else, too. Some kind of spice?

"What'd you put in this, coffee?" asked Allen, of his chocolate. Kit paused for a moment to think.

"Yeah, some. Do you like it?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's good," he said appreciatively. Kit went back to ladling. I didn't think my chocolate tasted like coffee, though.

"Charlie, you want some?" she asked him, cordially. Charlie slowly came back from wherever it is he goes and shook his head.

"I'll stick with the cider," he explained. "It's the only time of year I get to drink any." Of course, the rest of the year the only cider on campus is hard, and he wouldn't buy it from the store. Kit shrugged, ladled out a last cup and handed it to Wren, and took her own up back to her seat. We all settled in by the fire, nine of us, counting Arther, Joanna, and one of the Ravens.

"Hey, my chocolate's hot!" exclaimed Wren, startled.

"Well, yeah," said Tenny.

"No, I mean spicy. Like cayenne or chilli. I like it...but I don't taste coffee."

"I don't taste chillis or coffee," I admitted. "I taste...something else." Wren and I traded cups and she told me I had cardamom in my chocolate, among other things. Hers was good, but tasted nothing like mine, other than the cocoa base. We all exchanged sips and discovered that everybody had a different flavor, although all the chocolate had come from the same pot.

"Nice trick," commented Allen, casually. Charlie sipped his mulled cider in thoughtful silence

 "I wish I had a spoon," Arther muttered to himself and then said, more loudly and to everyone else, "it's strange, I'm a yearling and I'm graduating. It's like I'm at this party twice."

"We're in a similar boat," Charlie told him, with an uncharacteristic openness. "We're all staff, but we're all graduates, too. Except for Greg."

"You were never a student here, Greg?" Joanna asked. She hadn't heard any of his story, I guess.

"I'm always a student here," Greg corrected her. "I just was never a novice or a candidate."

"He's always been the meditation teacher. The early masters found him and drafted him from some local meditation center," Charlie explained. "Closest thing to a monk they could find, I suppose."

"But you weren't a monk?" Raven asked. "Not formally, I mean?"

"I never took vows as a Buddhist monk, no," Greg clarified. Then, anticipating another question, he added "perhaps if I were Japanese, and living in Japan, I would have. But we have no tradition of monks as part of society here. I didn't want to shut myself up in a counter-cultural enclave. Of course, that's just what I've gone and done, anyway." He sipped his chocolate thoughtfully, peacefully. We were all quiet again for a bit.

"What's it like to be a graduate of this place?" asked Arther.

"Depends who you are," said Charlie, "And where you go. I like being of this place. But then, I came back. I like it here." I tried to imagine Charlie being anywhere else and couldn't. I tried to imagine this place without him in it and couldn't.

"It's not that bad," asserted Allen, "to leave here and be out in the world, as one of us. You'll have a different perspective on things, but of course as a Wiccan priest you're used to that already."

"I feel normal in this place," Arther admitted. "It's the first place I ever have." Quite an admission for a mildly bombastic sixty-eight-year-old. Or, maybe he's sixty-nine now. I'm not sure.

"That's true for a lot of us," said Charlie. I looked at him in surprise and he ignored me.

"But we're all different from each other and from everybody else," put in Allen, "though there are differences of different degrees and kinds. And at the same same time, we are all normal inside ourselves, though not everyone believes it. You learn to carry your personal normality with you. And when you can leave, then you can come back."

I never thought of it that way before. They always say that graduates have to leave, before beginning their candidacy, in order to prevent the community from becoming too insular, but Allen's comment suggests there could be something else, too.

"Kit, could I have some chocolate after all?" Charlie asked, holding out his, now empty, mug. Kit brightened in a way I'd never thought of her as dark, and ladled him out some chocolate with a sudden, subtle, girlish pride.

"It's good," he pronounced.

Gaultheria Procumbens (redberry wintergreen)

"What flavor is it?" Raven asked.

"Fennel and--maybe wintergreen?" He did not offer anyone a taste and nobody asked. "Gaultheria or Betula?"

"Betula," Kit replied. "It's bigger." Charlie nodded his approval. Gaultheria I have not heard of, but Betula is a birch tree, and both yellow birch and black birch smell like wintergreen if you scratch the twig bark with your thumbnail. Hence birch beer, I'm sure. I keep forgetting that Kit knows that sort of thing, but of course she keeps the herbarium stocked. And of course, she was once his student.

I looked around the room and tried to imagine not seeing this place anymore for a while. Of course, I'm moving in the other direction--farther in instead of farther out. Pretty soon, in just a few months now, new yearlings will be coming in and I'll be the one of the senior students and supposedly know what I'm doing. I'm transitioning, too. But what would it be like to leave and know that the place

Whale and Mariner

might change irrevocably while you were gone, and to know that way might lead on to way, as in the poem, and not bring you back? I looked around at the vines curling along the ceiling, the guttered, but currently unlit candles everywhere, the big brass vase of dried flowers and seedheads spreading themselves like a vegetable peacock at the back of the room...I could hear the fire crackle and I could hear, farther away, the tinkle of the fountain in the Green Room where certain fish spend the winter. So many weird but utterly familiar things--the rocking llama, its polished driftwood mouth curled into a sneer, the andirons with suns and dragons on them, the old milk carton of books currently filled with titles on sex magic and which nobody gave a second thought to at all...And, I just noticed it, above the fireplace on the mantle, are little sculptures made of what look like small sticks glued or

Camel and Hump

tied together, some with painted paper mache skins. There is a whale eating a man on a raft, a camel with a crooked hump that looks like it's meant to come off, a wrinkled-looking rhinoceros, a leopard only half-spotted with a man kneeling beside it, and an elephant with a crocodile pulling its trunk. And there were more, thirteen in all. I counted them.

The whale made me think of Jonah, of course, but I couldn't make sense of the others. But I kept looking at them, as the others talked, until suddenly the light-bulb turned on in my head.

"Oh!" I said, then I think I blushed because everyone was looking at me all of a sudden.

"Just so," agreed Kit, who had been watching me.

[Next Post:Monday, October 28th: Interlude]