So, I'm back on campus and it's quiet here. I have said the same thing before, on other quiet weeks, and will likely say the same thing again in the future. I like weeks like this. It's one of the reasons I've stayed on campus this year, June being the other reason. I like getting up in the morning and going for a walk in the brown and grey winter woods as the dawn comes up. I like watching birds go about their business in the underbrush, or, later in the day, following the tracks of deer back to the beds they left around the same time I left mine. The campus gets quiet and I get quiet, too.
But there is human company available, when I want it.
Usually, I seek company by going to the Great Hall and seeing who's there. Curiously, someone always is when I want to find somebody, even though plenty of other times I find the place deserted. Almost always. Today was an exception. I found myself alone and sat down on the couch for a bit.
I felt a little cold and a little tired--I'd just come back from a long walk. I sat there, not thinking, for a bit, the way you do when you need a break, but then gradually thoughts began to form. Images, more than words or ideas. I was staring at the floor in front of the couch, remembering the day I watch Rick sleep for a few hours on the very spot, and Greg's Cat, who hardly ever let anyone touch him except for Greg, slept curled up on Rick's body.
For some reason, I reached out and touched the space the cat had occupied, as though I could pet him. As if he would have let me.
"I miss him, too," said a voice behind me, and I jumped and looked over my shoulder to find Greg. He'd walked up without my hearing, or at least without my noticing. I greeted him. "You were thinking of my cat, weren't you?" he asked.
"How did you know?"
"Because you evoked him. I saw you interacting with him. I can't see him, but, in a way, you did. Didn't you?"
"I suppose I did."
"Everything is impermanent," Greg asserted, with some humor, "even impermanence."
I wasn't sure how to respond to that.
"Today is the day, you know," he said.
"The day?"
"Yes. It has been a year, now, since Greg's Cat died. Hit by a car, remember?"
I remember him telling me about it. I wasn't back yet, when the accident happened.
"I'm sorry," I said, because you do.
"What are you sorry about, exactly?" Greg asked, smiling. He was not chiding me for expressing sorrow, just challenging me to identify why. I frowned. I had no answer. "Life goes on," he added. "And then sometimes it doesn't. He was the only being ever named for me, and I don't suppose there will ever be another one. In another ten or twenty years, I will likely not be named for me, either."
I suppose he referred to the prospect of his own death.
"Does being Buddhist make these things easier for you?" I asked.
"I don't know," he answered. "I've never not been Buddhist, so I have no basis of comparison. But nothing can make grief hurt less than it happens to hurt. Nothing makes life cease to be painful. But it is possible to ensure that life remains meaningful. Buddhism does that for me. I don't pretend to know whether it can do so for anybody else."
Showing posts with label Greg's Cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greg's Cat. Show all posts
Monday, November 27, 2017
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Mastery Year 1: Part 2: Post 2: Learning Opportunities
The spring semester has begun...and nothing has changed for me. I still attend my two classes (on alternate Thursday evenings), where I listen to other mastery candidates talk about their trials and challenges, of which I currently have none, apart from having to explain what I learned in grad school to Charlie every week. That is interesting. We're almost done with my entire first year, and it's been an interesting process. I think Charlie's favorite part, so far, has been learning to use the statistical software still on my computer, though there were a few naturalist skills I brought home that were actually new to him, too. Most of his questions are about things he already knows, though. He's just trying to make me figure out how to explain it. Anyway, other than those two duties, I wander around campus, I talk to people, I explore the woods, and I drop in on the occasional workshop. That's it.
June's academic life is a bit more exciting. She has all her graduation requirements met except psychology and magic, though she's decided to work on athletics as well--she met her requirement by playing basketball as an undergrad, and that was a long time ago. So, now she has classes--five of them.
She's taking all of Allen's classes this semester, because she has only one year to meet her psychology requirement--that, plus group therapy, plus Philosopher's Stone Soup, and she's seeing him pretty much every day. She's thinking of asking him to teach her magic, too.
Anyway, so that's Intro to Psychology AND Dark Waters, which sounds like a challenge, because the former is supposed to be a prerequisite to the latter, and also Gender Studies, though of course she's in Kit's section. Remember that Kit and Allen teach that class as single-sex classes that meet together several times.
She's also taking both Personal Safety and Fitness, and Sword with Karen, who is already her athletics master. Neither class has any homework except physical exercise, so it's not an excessive burden. In a week or two she'll start preparing for the summer camp, but for now she has no job to compete with her time.
She's starting to look a bit less lost, a bit more engaged, too. She has friends here, other than me. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm glad she's doing well, of course...but.
Spring has spring. The weather is warm, the birds are singing loudly and often, as are various amphibians, and the main crop of lambs and kids are being born. Campus is full of flowers, mostly the subtle kinds that give people allergies, but also some of the cherries and the blueberries are breaking bud. It's getting to be pretty.
Except that yesterday it snowed. It didn't stick, but for about an hour and a half yesterday, these big, fat flakes falling....
Everyone else was in class, or at work, or something, and I had nothing in particular to do. I'd planned on reading or something, but then when I saw it was snowing, not raining, I ended up spending my time watching the snow fall instead.
I was in the Great Hall, and I was alone, though there were people in the Library and the Office, and sometimes one of them would walk through.The room was dark and silent, but cheery with Ostar decorations--brightly-colored ribbons, wooden candle-holders carved like tulips held unlit beeswax tapers here and there, and bowls of intricately-dyed eggs and blown eggshell trees. New this year are "paintings," framed images made with multi-colored lentils and peas and beans glued to boards. I think they are probably Ebony's work. She's interested in visual art, and the different lentils and things are different sizes, so she could do it. And at least some of them look like her style. Lentils and beans are, of course, seeds, which makes them the plant equivalent of eggs, so they're seasonal that way, and they all have a spring theme. And there are little bowls of jelly beans and chocolate eggs and other little treats.
I sat down next to one of those bowls and ate jelly beans while I watched the snow fall. And I thought about that day years ago, watching the snow fall with Rick and Eddie and Greg and Charlie, talking about devotion, and the phrase "your cell will teach you everything," and how many different kinds of things could work in that role, of teaching everything simply through attention. Greg spoke of his cat, then, thinking the cat might be learning from paying attention to him.
And I thought about that cat, Greg's Cat. The Great Hall seemed emptier without his small self.
June's academic life is a bit more exciting. She has all her graduation requirements met except psychology and magic, though she's decided to work on athletics as well--she met her requirement by playing basketball as an undergrad, and that was a long time ago. So, now she has classes--five of them.
She's taking all of Allen's classes this semester, because she has only one year to meet her psychology requirement--that, plus group therapy, plus Philosopher's Stone Soup, and she's seeing him pretty much every day. She's thinking of asking him to teach her magic, too.
Anyway, so that's Intro to Psychology AND Dark Waters, which sounds like a challenge, because the former is supposed to be a prerequisite to the latter, and also Gender Studies, though of course she's in Kit's section. Remember that Kit and Allen teach that class as single-sex classes that meet together several times.
She's also taking both Personal Safety and Fitness, and Sword with Karen, who is already her athletics master. Neither class has any homework except physical exercise, so it's not an excessive burden. In a week or two she'll start preparing for the summer camp, but for now she has no job to compete with her time.
She's starting to look a bit less lost, a bit more engaged, too. She has friends here, other than me. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm glad she's doing well, of course...but.
Spring has spring. The weather is warm, the birds are singing loudly and often, as are various amphibians, and the main crop of lambs and kids are being born. Campus is full of flowers, mostly the subtle kinds that give people allergies, but also some of the cherries and the blueberries are breaking bud. It's getting to be pretty.
Except that yesterday it snowed. It didn't stick, but for about an hour and a half yesterday, these big, fat flakes falling....
Everyone else was in class, or at work, or something, and I had nothing in particular to do. I'd planned on reading or something, but then when I saw it was snowing, not raining, I ended up spending my time watching the snow fall instead.
I was in the Great Hall, and I was alone, though there were people in the Library and the Office, and sometimes one of them would walk through.The room was dark and silent, but cheery with Ostar decorations--brightly-colored ribbons, wooden candle-holders carved like tulips held unlit beeswax tapers here and there, and bowls of intricately-dyed eggs and blown eggshell trees. New this year are "paintings," framed images made with multi-colored lentils and peas and beans glued to boards. I think they are probably Ebony's work. She's interested in visual art, and the different lentils and things are different sizes, so she could do it. And at least some of them look like her style. Lentils and beans are, of course, seeds, which makes them the plant equivalent of eggs, so they're seasonal that way, and they all have a spring theme. And there are little bowls of jelly beans and chocolate eggs and other little treats.
I sat down next to one of those bowls and ate jelly beans while I watched the snow fall. And I thought about that day years ago, watching the snow fall with Rick and Eddie and Greg and Charlie, talking about devotion, and the phrase "your cell will teach you everything," and how many different kinds of things could work in that role, of teaching everything simply through attention. Greg spoke of his cat, then, thinking the cat might be learning from paying attention to him.
And I thought about that cat, Greg's Cat. The Great Hall seemed emptier without his small self.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Mastery Year 1: Part 1: Post 5: Finding Love
Almost the first month down. The yearlings are getting the hang of the place now, June's starting to make friends with some of the other students, my two classes have each met at least once, now...and I still have no clear idea what I'm doing. I still spend my days mostly wandering around, hanging out, taking in a workshop or two, my most serious intellectual or spiritual challenge my efforts to get my fiance alone someplace private. And we still haven't managed that.
The others who started with me seem well on their way, now. Ollie, for example, who wants to deepen his practice as a Christian therapist and pastor, is now more or less Allen's full-time apprentice. Not that Allen is Christian (or a pastor, though he does have one of those mail-order ordinations, so he can perform weddings and so forth), but he is a phenomenal therapist. Besides his work here as a psychology professor and group therapist, he sees individual clients in his home office one or two days a week. There's always more people who want to see him than he can take on, so he recommended some of the others to Ollie, and now, as of last week, Ollie has something like ten clients--whom he sees at Allen's house. He's basically living there three days a week, now.
It sounds pretty intense, living with your teacher. I know that they talk about Ollie's cases and sometimes observe each other's work (with the client's permission, of course), though of course Ollie can't tell me any details. I wonder what that's like for Allen? He must suddenly have almost no time off.
Rick has just gotten his assignment, now, too, though, being from Charlie, it's not nearly so straight-forward. Or, rather, it is straight-forward, but Rick doesn't know how to get started. He talked to me about it this morning as we were getting ready to go out.
"I am supposed to care for a human being," he said, as though the duty sounded strange and onerous to him.
"Care for?" I asked. "Does he mean like babysitting or nursing care, or does he mean, basically, give a shit about somebody?"
"Give a shit," he confirmed. "I think it's a little more than that. I think I'm supposed to devote, you know, like Eddie does with Kit...or like Greg's Cat with Greg. Something transformative. But, basically, yeah, I've got to give a shit about somebody."
"And don't you?" I asked.
We were standing in the Green Room, putting on our layers of clothing, but I stopped and he stopped, too, and looked at me with an odd expression. I think he had just realized he might hurt my feelings if he wasn't careful. That sort of thing rarely occurs to him, though he never actually means to hurt anybody.
"I like you," he said, slowly. "I like some people. I enjoy you. I wish you well. If you needed something, I would give it. But I don't love you. I don't love anyone, I don't think. I never have." He seemed puzzled, puzzled by love.
"Do you love anything?" I asked. I'm not shocked, or even surprised, by Rick's distance. I know him, and that's just the way he is. I just thought I knew what Charlie was up to. Rick had asked for his help learning to work with humans better, without being so irritated by us. I remember that once, when I was out in public with Charlie on a field trip, some stranger's baby was crying loudly nearby, and someone said something about how annoying the sound was, asking Charlie, rhetorically, whether he was irritated. He rather famously can't stand loud, discordant noises. But he shook his head.
"No, I'm not irritated, I'm sad. That baby is a human being. He's having a bad day. Or a bad five minutes--long enough, when you're a baby."
Charlie sees children as people. He's sympathetic to them, so they don't bother him, the way they bother some. I think he wanted to teach Rick that humans are people, so that he would develop an equivalent patience. And he wanted to teach patience for all people by asking him to love one person. Only Rick doesn't know how. I thought that if he loves something, that might offer him a starting point. I was trying to help.
As we spoke, I faced the large picture windows. He faced me, and must have seen the coat rack over my shoulder, but over his I could see the snowy garden and the hedge and part of the sky. It was growing very gray out there.
"Do you love anything?"
"Sure," he told me, and held up the inside of his forearm for me to see--where he had a small smudge of a tattoo, just like mine.
"I thought I was the only one Charlie took through that ritual," I said, though I really had no reason to think so. He wouldn't mention the ritual to anyone. It's not the sort of thing one chats about. I had told Rick and I'd told June. No one else. For all I knew, Charlie took all his students through it. I know he gave some of the others deer knives--Rick has one, as does Raven G. And yet I thought no one else had tattoos. I hoped no one else did. I wanted to be the only one.
"You are," Rick, though I have no idea how he came by such authority. "You told me about it, so I performed the ritual myself, alone."
"Where?" I asked, meaning what place had he consecrated himself to. What place did he love?
"I won't tell you," he said. Of course, he wouldn't.
"How did you find it?"
Silence.
"When Charlie told me to find a favorite place on the Island," I told him, "I looked all over, I explored lots of places, but none stood out to me as the best one. Until I just chose a place. I decided it was my favorite. And it was. I've been there since. It feels like mine. I care about it. It's my favorite. Maybe you can do that with a person?"
"You think loving a person works the same way as loving a place?"
"Love is love, isn't it?" I said. "Anyway, the process Charlie took me through to earn to love the land is the same thing I did learning to be in relationship with June."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I showed up regularly, I paid attention, I learned everything I could about what she needs and likes, I abandoned my own pre-conceived ideas and wishful thinking...I did that several times, I have to keep doing it...."
"And that worked?"
"I'm engaged, aren't I?"
"Crap." That was me, again. It had started snowing. Rick followed my gaze and turned and looked out the window. The flakes were coming down hard already. There would be no tracking for another couple of days.
"Well, that's that," said Rick, after a few seconds. "I have some reading to do." He nodded at me politely, and walked back inside. It was an abrupt end to an intense conversation, and I felt strange, emotionally hyped up with nowhere to go, psychologically. I decided to go for a walk in the snow.
I love walking in the snow. I like tracking, and you can't track in falling snow, but I like the snow more. I live the smell of it, the silence of it, the otherworldly sense of it, and yet somehow the falling, swirling flakes are calming. Even when I was living outside, first for Charlie's assignment, and then on the Trail, I could never mind the snow, though I could appreciate the inconvenience and the danger of it.
This day, the temperature wasn't even that low, maybe just below freezing. I walked around campus with my hood down, letting the flakes build up in my hair. They were just starting to melt and run down behind my ears--and I was just starting to get cold, when Allen crossed my path. He, too, had snow in his hair, even on his eyelashes. He kept blinking his eyes, because of the snow falling on his face, but I know he does not feel the cold.
"Oh, I'm glad I found you, Daniel," he said. "I wanted to tell you, when you're trying to solve a problem--any problem--sometimes there's no key, because there aren't any locks."
"Huh?"
"The key to your problem is that there is no key because there are no locks. Think about it."
"Allen, why do you so often speak in riddles?"
"Because I like watching you solve them. And I know you're capable of it." And he clapped me on the shoulder and went on his way.
Aren't any locks, huh?
A few minutes later, I stood in front of the door to Chapel Hall. I tried the door. It opened. There was no lock. Come to think of it, I don't think there are any locks on any doors on campus--I've never noticed any, I've never had to use a key, I've never heard of anyone else having to use a key or find a key or get a key. No keys, no locks. The building is closed right now, and I'd just assumed that meant I couldn't go in it, but that's not the sort of thing we really have rules about around here. A closed building just means it's not heated or cleaned and nothing is scheduled there. No one has to go there, just like no one has to go in certain parts of the Mansion basement, or lots of other places around campus. That doesn't mean you can't. There are no locks.
How did Allen know I was looking for this sort of information? I certainly didn't tell him. June wouldn't have. Maybe it's just that Allen was once a mastery candidate with a fiance, too.
Anyway, I'm thinking of the storage place on the fourth floor, the one Charlie popped out of that one day to play a prank on Allen. It can't have much stuff in it, or he couldn't have moved around in there so easily. Yes, Chapel Hall is probably about twenty degrees right now, but I have a sleeping bag. So does June. And they zip together.
The others who started with me seem well on their way, now. Ollie, for example, who wants to deepen his practice as a Christian therapist and pastor, is now more or less Allen's full-time apprentice. Not that Allen is Christian (or a pastor, though he does have one of those mail-order ordinations, so he can perform weddings and so forth), but he is a phenomenal therapist. Besides his work here as a psychology professor and group therapist, he sees individual clients in his home office one or two days a week. There's always more people who want to see him than he can take on, so he recommended some of the others to Ollie, and now, as of last week, Ollie has something like ten clients--whom he sees at Allen's house. He's basically living there three days a week, now.
It sounds pretty intense, living with your teacher. I know that they talk about Ollie's cases and sometimes observe each other's work (with the client's permission, of course), though of course Ollie can't tell me any details. I wonder what that's like for Allen? He must suddenly have almost no time off.
Rick has just gotten his assignment, now, too, though, being from Charlie, it's not nearly so straight-forward. Or, rather, it is straight-forward, but Rick doesn't know how to get started. He talked to me about it this morning as we were getting ready to go out.
"I am supposed to care for a human being," he said, as though the duty sounded strange and onerous to him.
"Care for?" I asked. "Does he mean like babysitting or nursing care, or does he mean, basically, give a shit about somebody?"
"Give a shit," he confirmed. "I think it's a little more than that. I think I'm supposed to devote, you know, like Eddie does with Kit...or like Greg's Cat with Greg. Something transformative. But, basically, yeah, I've got to give a shit about somebody."
"And don't you?" I asked.
We were standing in the Green Room, putting on our layers of clothing, but I stopped and he stopped, too, and looked at me with an odd expression. I think he had just realized he might hurt my feelings if he wasn't careful. That sort of thing rarely occurs to him, though he never actually means to hurt anybody.
"I like you," he said, slowly. "I like some people. I enjoy you. I wish you well. If you needed something, I would give it. But I don't love you. I don't love anyone, I don't think. I never have." He seemed puzzled, puzzled by love.
"Do you love anything?" I asked. I'm not shocked, or even surprised, by Rick's distance. I know him, and that's just the way he is. I just thought I knew what Charlie was up to. Rick had asked for his help learning to work with humans better, without being so irritated by us. I remember that once, when I was out in public with Charlie on a field trip, some stranger's baby was crying loudly nearby, and someone said something about how annoying the sound was, asking Charlie, rhetorically, whether he was irritated. He rather famously can't stand loud, discordant noises. But he shook his head.
"No, I'm not irritated, I'm sad. That baby is a human being. He's having a bad day. Or a bad five minutes--long enough, when you're a baby."
Charlie sees children as people. He's sympathetic to them, so they don't bother him, the way they bother some. I think he wanted to teach Rick that humans are people, so that he would develop an equivalent patience. And he wanted to teach patience for all people by asking him to love one person. Only Rick doesn't know how. I thought that if he loves something, that might offer him a starting point. I was trying to help.
As we spoke, I faced the large picture windows. He faced me, and must have seen the coat rack over my shoulder, but over his I could see the snowy garden and the hedge and part of the sky. It was growing very gray out there.
"Do you love anything?"
"Sure," he told me, and held up the inside of his forearm for me to see--where he had a small smudge of a tattoo, just like mine.
"I thought I was the only one Charlie took through that ritual," I said, though I really had no reason to think so. He wouldn't mention the ritual to anyone. It's not the sort of thing one chats about. I had told Rick and I'd told June. No one else. For all I knew, Charlie took all his students through it. I know he gave some of the others deer knives--Rick has one, as does Raven G. And yet I thought no one else had tattoos. I hoped no one else did. I wanted to be the only one.
"You are," Rick, though I have no idea how he came by such authority. "You told me about it, so I performed the ritual myself, alone."
"Where?" I asked, meaning what place had he consecrated himself to. What place did he love?
"I won't tell you," he said. Of course, he wouldn't.
"How did you find it?"
Silence.
"When Charlie told me to find a favorite place on the Island," I told him, "I looked all over, I explored lots of places, but none stood out to me as the best one. Until I just chose a place. I decided it was my favorite. And it was. I've been there since. It feels like mine. I care about it. It's my favorite. Maybe you can do that with a person?"
"You think loving a person works the same way as loving a place?"
"Love is love, isn't it?" I said. "Anyway, the process Charlie took me through to earn to love the land is the same thing I did learning to be in relationship with June."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I showed up regularly, I paid attention, I learned everything I could about what she needs and likes, I abandoned my own pre-conceived ideas and wishful thinking...I did that several times, I have to keep doing it...."
"And that worked?"
"I'm engaged, aren't I?"
"Crap." That was me, again. It had started snowing. Rick followed my gaze and turned and looked out the window. The flakes were coming down hard already. There would be no tracking for another couple of days.
"Well, that's that," said Rick, after a few seconds. "I have some reading to do." He nodded at me politely, and walked back inside. It was an abrupt end to an intense conversation, and I felt strange, emotionally hyped up with nowhere to go, psychologically. I decided to go for a walk in the snow.
I love walking in the snow. I like tracking, and you can't track in falling snow, but I like the snow more. I live the smell of it, the silence of it, the otherworldly sense of it, and yet somehow the falling, swirling flakes are calming. Even when I was living outside, first for Charlie's assignment, and then on the Trail, I could never mind the snow, though I could appreciate the inconvenience and the danger of it.
This day, the temperature wasn't even that low, maybe just below freezing. I walked around campus with my hood down, letting the flakes build up in my hair. They were just starting to melt and run down behind my ears--and I was just starting to get cold, when Allen crossed my path. He, too, had snow in his hair, even on his eyelashes. He kept blinking his eyes, because of the snow falling on his face, but I know he does not feel the cold.
"Oh, I'm glad I found you, Daniel," he said. "I wanted to tell you, when you're trying to solve a problem--any problem--sometimes there's no key, because there aren't any locks."
"Huh?"
"The key to your problem is that there is no key because there are no locks. Think about it."
"Allen, why do you so often speak in riddles?"
"Because I like watching you solve them. And I know you're capable of it." And he clapped me on the shoulder and went on his way.
Aren't any locks, huh?
A few minutes later, I stood in front of the door to Chapel Hall. I tried the door. It opened. There was no lock. Come to think of it, I don't think there are any locks on any doors on campus--I've never noticed any, I've never had to use a key, I've never heard of anyone else having to use a key or find a key or get a key. No keys, no locks. The building is closed right now, and I'd just assumed that meant I couldn't go in it, but that's not the sort of thing we really have rules about around here. A closed building just means it's not heated or cleaned and nothing is scheduled there. No one has to go there, just like no one has to go in certain parts of the Mansion basement, or lots of other places around campus. That doesn't mean you can't. There are no locks.
How did Allen know I was looking for this sort of information? I certainly didn't tell him. June wouldn't have. Maybe it's just that Allen was once a mastery candidate with a fiance, too.
Anyway, I'm thinking of the storage place on the fourth floor, the one Charlie popped out of that one day to play a prank on Allen. It can't have much stuff in it, or he couldn't have moved around in there so easily. Yes, Chapel Hall is probably about twenty degrees right now, but I have a sleeping bag. So does June. And they zip together.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Mastery Year 1: Part 1: Post 2: Getting Started
Of course, my first morning back I woke early--we all did, in order to make noise and turn on lights and generally make sure the yearlings didn't sleep in and miss meditation. I used to just stay up and go for a walk, and I'd planned to do that again, but I couldn't get out of bed, not even to go hassle yearlings. But I couldn't get out of bed. My room was cold, it was very dark out, and honestly, I hadn't slept well, so I was exhausted. I don't like sleeping without June anymore, and of course she was in her own dorm.
I think I fell asleep again before the yearlings had even left. When I woke again, the dorm was much warmer--close to 70 degrees, thanks to the wood stove--and my room was full of light. The indirect sunshine of morning leaked in through the my tapestry curtain and made the Green Man design glow and that old, familiar scent--wool and incense--greeted me. The dorm was completely silent and, for a moment, I was completely happy.
And then I realized that the reason the dorm was empty was that everyone else had left. I scrabbled for my watch and found that it was 7:45--fifteen minutes until breakfast!
I yelped, jumped out of bed, threw on my uniform over the long underwear I'd slept in, and ran out my room and all the way to the Dining Hall. I made it in time to find my seat before the moment of silence that begins the meal.
I was sitting with a group of yearlings, nobody I knew. I didn't know any of the senior students, either. As I ate, I looked around. I saw a few brown uniforms, a few familiar faces, but I couldn't get a real sense of who was really on campus with me. No one I knew came to seek me out, everyone seemed busy talking to somebody else. I wasn't eating with June--we've agreed to mostly avoid each other, at least for the first few weeks, so she can really find her own way here. We'll have breakfast a couple of times a week, have sleep-overs....I agree with the plan, and I helped plan it, but I felt lonely and disoriented.
After the meal, I went out for the walk I'd intended to take before it. I wandered around in the snow, noting shrubs that had grown, trees that had lost limbs...campus looked about the same as I'd left it. I thought at least the trees know me. I started to feel a little better. It was strange to think, as I walked around, that at that very moment, the masters were busy fare-welling the graduating students and none of the white-uniformed novices knew. They were all in a series of orientation meetings and meet-and-greets for the new yearlings, completely unaware that their attention was being misdirected so as to render an event invisible--but I, not being part of the intended audience for this particular trick, could see perfectly well that something was going on--there were extra vehicles parked around Chapel Hall, and a thin, white smoke issued from the chimneys there.
At last I grew cold, so I went inside and showered. By then, it was almost noon, so I wandered over to the Dining Hall for lunch. I found Greg there, loading up his plate. He greeted me casually, as though we'd seed each other last just days ago, and agreed to eat with me. We sat together at a table in the back corner of the room and talked while a sea of yearlings surged in as a group and ignored us.
"I noticed some people are missing," I told him. "Joe, Security Joe, Chuck, and Malachi?"
"Yes, I believe they've all left while you were away," he confirmed. "You don't get to return to the world exactly as you left it."
"I didn't expect it to, it's just...are they all ok?"
He looked at me as though he were preparing some clever and Zennish reply, but evidently he couldn't think of anything.
"They are all ok, so far as I know," he said simply. "Security Joe has retired. He is still living with his husband on campus--they were at breakfast this morning. The others truly have left, gone to take up more conventional employment."
"Wow, hadn't Malachi been here twenty years?"
"Nearly," he told me. "He had just turned 51. Middle age has a way of forcing you to think about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. Malachi decided he didn't want to spend it here."
"Wow," I said, again. It's not like I was close to any of these people, but it felt disorienting to think of someone who had been here for twenty years just up and leaving while I was gone. "At least some things haven't changed," I said. "You're still here."
"Actually, I'm not." And Greg took a sip of coffee and smiled. He seemed pleased to finally be able to say something odd.
"What?"
"I've retired from teaching. I still lead Zazen and I am still the school's spirit master, but this year I will teach workshops and talks, not full classes."
"You're retired?"
"I am turning 80 in a few days, Daniel. I think I've earned it."
"Happy birthday."
"Thank you."
"Anything else I need to know about?"
"They'll be a meeting for mastery candidates next week, just as soon as we've gotten the new yearlings settled in."
"No, I mean...has anybody died?" I meant the question kind of facetiously, an exaggerated, playful way of defining the kind of changes I was concerned about. But Greg's face fell and I immediately regretted my joking.
"My cat," he said. "Greg's Cat has died. He was hit by a car a few months ago."
"I'm sorry," I told him, and meant it.
"Thank you. I have trained all my life to accept the fact of impermanence, but acceptance does not mean painlessness. I am not sure, honestly, that it should."
Over the past few days, I've caught up with my fellow candidates--Ollie, Rick, Ebony, and Eddie are all here with me, just returned, as I have. Which is pretty incredible. Most of my favorite people, and I have them back again. There are five others in the group--I think the only one I've really talked about much before is Andy. He got back last year and expects to receive his ring a year from now.
There is one other student here I know, and I shouldn't have been surprised to see her, but I was. Kayla, I mean. She looks like a grown-up now--no taller, but a little broader, more filled out, with stronger, more defined features. She's 20, and part of this coming year's graduating group. I doubt any of the yearlings will realize she's anything other than an ordinary college student, unless she tells them.
The meeting for candidates is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. We've all been wandering around with no clear idea of what to do. And I was wandering and wondering, rather than asking, because I understand that the masters are busy answering the questions of yearlings who, after all, have many more questions than we do.
But, yesterday at lunch, Charlie found me. I simply turned around, and there he was, making his traditional cheese sandwich. I could not tell whether he had sought me out or just happened to be there, but he spoke without hesitation, as though he had planned what do say.
"Have you forgiven me?" he asked.
His voice was rough and guarded and I could not tell whether he was serious or not. I assumed he meant forgiven him for helping to "kidnap" me for the graduation ordeal three years ago, but of course that was his job--the job I'd asked him to do. Or maybe he meant forgiven him for not saying a proper goodbye to me before I left. Which, yes, hurt my feelings a bit, but whatever. We never were chatty, and he has a lot of students. Or maybe he just meant for the entire experience of my novitiate, which he made as difficult--and as rewarding--as he could. But whether he honestly thought he needed my forgiveness or was just joking to break the ice, I could not tell. Before I could formulate a response, he spoke.
"Are you ready to do it again?"
I think I fell asleep again before the yearlings had even left. When I woke again, the dorm was much warmer--close to 70 degrees, thanks to the wood stove--and my room was full of light. The indirect sunshine of morning leaked in through the my tapestry curtain and made the Green Man design glow and that old, familiar scent--wool and incense--greeted me. The dorm was completely silent and, for a moment, I was completely happy.
And then I realized that the reason the dorm was empty was that everyone else had left. I scrabbled for my watch and found that it was 7:45--fifteen minutes until breakfast!
I yelped, jumped out of bed, threw on my uniform over the long underwear I'd slept in, and ran out my room and all the way to the Dining Hall. I made it in time to find my seat before the moment of silence that begins the meal.
I was sitting with a group of yearlings, nobody I knew. I didn't know any of the senior students, either. As I ate, I looked around. I saw a few brown uniforms, a few familiar faces, but I couldn't get a real sense of who was really on campus with me. No one I knew came to seek me out, everyone seemed busy talking to somebody else. I wasn't eating with June--we've agreed to mostly avoid each other, at least for the first few weeks, so she can really find her own way here. We'll have breakfast a couple of times a week, have sleep-overs....I agree with the plan, and I helped plan it, but I felt lonely and disoriented.
After the meal, I went out for the walk I'd intended to take before it. I wandered around in the snow, noting shrubs that had grown, trees that had lost limbs...campus looked about the same as I'd left it. I thought at least the trees know me. I started to feel a little better. It was strange to think, as I walked around, that at that very moment, the masters were busy fare-welling the graduating students and none of the white-uniformed novices knew. They were all in a series of orientation meetings and meet-and-greets for the new yearlings, completely unaware that their attention was being misdirected so as to render an event invisible--but I, not being part of the intended audience for this particular trick, could see perfectly well that something was going on--there were extra vehicles parked around Chapel Hall, and a thin, white smoke issued from the chimneys there.
At last I grew cold, so I went inside and showered. By then, it was almost noon, so I wandered over to the Dining Hall for lunch. I found Greg there, loading up his plate. He greeted me casually, as though we'd seed each other last just days ago, and agreed to eat with me. We sat together at a table in the back corner of the room and talked while a sea of yearlings surged in as a group and ignored us.
"I noticed some people are missing," I told him. "Joe, Security Joe, Chuck, and Malachi?"
"Yes, I believe they've all left while you were away," he confirmed. "You don't get to return to the world exactly as you left it."
"I didn't expect it to, it's just...are they all ok?"
He looked at me as though he were preparing some clever and Zennish reply, but evidently he couldn't think of anything.
"They are all ok, so far as I know," he said simply. "Security Joe has retired. He is still living with his husband on campus--they were at breakfast this morning. The others truly have left, gone to take up more conventional employment."
"Wow, hadn't Malachi been here twenty years?"
"Nearly," he told me. "He had just turned 51. Middle age has a way of forcing you to think about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. Malachi decided he didn't want to spend it here."
"Wow," I said, again. It's not like I was close to any of these people, but it felt disorienting to think of someone who had been here for twenty years just up and leaving while I was gone. "At least some things haven't changed," I said. "You're still here."
"Actually, I'm not." And Greg took a sip of coffee and smiled. He seemed pleased to finally be able to say something odd.
"What?"
"I've retired from teaching. I still lead Zazen and I am still the school's spirit master, but this year I will teach workshops and talks, not full classes."
"You're retired?"
"I am turning 80 in a few days, Daniel. I think I've earned it."
"Happy birthday."
"Thank you."
"Anything else I need to know about?"
"They'll be a meeting for mastery candidates next week, just as soon as we've gotten the new yearlings settled in."
"No, I mean...has anybody died?" I meant the question kind of facetiously, an exaggerated, playful way of defining the kind of changes I was concerned about. But Greg's face fell and I immediately regretted my joking.
"My cat," he said. "Greg's Cat has died. He was hit by a car a few months ago."
"I'm sorry," I told him, and meant it.
"Thank you. I have trained all my life to accept the fact of impermanence, but acceptance does not mean painlessness. I am not sure, honestly, that it should."
Over the past few days, I've caught up with my fellow candidates--Ollie, Rick, Ebony, and Eddie are all here with me, just returned, as I have. Which is pretty incredible. Most of my favorite people, and I have them back again. There are five others in the group--I think the only one I've really talked about much before is Andy. He got back last year and expects to receive his ring a year from now.
There is one other student here I know, and I shouldn't have been surprised to see her, but I was. Kayla, I mean. She looks like a grown-up now--no taller, but a little broader, more filled out, with stronger, more defined features. She's 20, and part of this coming year's graduating group. I doubt any of the yearlings will realize she's anything other than an ordinary college student, unless she tells them.
The meeting for candidates is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. We've all been wandering around with no clear idea of what to do. And I was wandering and wondering, rather than asking, because I understand that the masters are busy answering the questions of yearlings who, after all, have many more questions than we do.
But, yesterday at lunch, Charlie found me. I simply turned around, and there he was, making his traditional cheese sandwich. I could not tell whether he had sought me out or just happened to be there, but he spoke without hesitation, as though he had planned what do say.
"Have you forgiven me?" he asked.
His voice was rough and guarded and I could not tell whether he was serious or not. I assumed he meant forgiven him for helping to "kidnap" me for the graduation ordeal three years ago, but of course that was his job--the job I'd asked him to do. Or maybe he meant forgiven him for not saying a proper goodbye to me before I left. Which, yes, hurt my feelings a bit, but whatever. We never were chatty, and he has a lot of students. Or maybe he just meant for the entire experience of my novitiate, which he made as difficult--and as rewarding--as he could. But whether he honestly thought he needed my forgiveness or was just joking to break the ice, I could not tell. Before I could formulate a response, he spoke.
"Are you ready to do it again?"
Monday, December 21, 2015
Year 3: Yule
Happy Yule.
I just realized I've forgotten to tell you about the Yule tree. I've written about it in years past, but this year, no mention. It was already up when I and the other "elves" decorated the Great Hall that night, trimming the tree is an informal campus activity. None of the masters helped--it's our tree--though soon after we finished both Kit and Joy arrived from nowhere (none of us could tell whether they'd been on campus or just arrived) and sat together in a little love-seat, wrapped in the same blanket and drinking mugs of something, looking at the tree. At one point they both sang "Oh, Christmas Tree," except Kit sang it in German, to the obvious surprise of Joy. Also, Joy can't sing on key, something I hadn't known before. When they were done, they giggled like school-girls and spilled some of their chocolate on the blanket. I fetched them a dish-towel from the Great Hall Kitchen.
Anyway, the tree itself is artificial but scented with fir-oil so it smells right, and it looks realistic. It's quite tall, because the Great Hall has a high ceiling, maybe twelve feet. All the decorations are in the same color range, all on the same theme, and the lights are white--the whole thing looks very elegant. In the interior of the tree are balls of various sizes, yellow and orange and red, they look like fruit and catch and reflect the light. Then there are ivory-colored ribbons rimmed with gold, like vines hanging from the branches--this year we added a long string of bright red cranberries and another of popped corn. On the outermost branches clung blown-glass birds, each one detailed and lifelike and different from the others, and all of no species I've ever seen this side of a dream. On the very top of the tree is a pose-able doll clinging to the top leader like she's climbing it, a fairy dressed in a short Greek tunic with a bow and a quiver full of arrows slung over her shoulder.
The masters all clearly like the tree, because they take the time to come look at it, but it's not their tree. They have their own--I remember seeing it my first year when I was on the janitor team--it's a little live red cedar, which is really a species of juniper, in a big pot. It usually lives in their outdoor courtyard, but they bring it in for a few days around Yule and decorate it. As I remember, the decorations are a motley lot. I expect that each master (except maybe Greg?) brought in a few treasured family ornaments and added them.
This year, just like the last two, we had a party on Yule night and a lot of the people who had gone home came back to join us. Kit and Greg attended the party, but the others didn't. I assume they had their own party up on the fourth floor. They must have been up there and they could not have been sleeping, because we on the first floor were making too much noise, singing and dancing and goofing around. Hours went by.
And, the whole time the weather was awful--a cold, driving rain and wind, with the temperature gradually dropping through the night. The weather worried me because I knew we'd have to go out in it, but the yearlings didn't know and I didn't tell them. They danced on, unconcerned.
Long about dawn, Lou broke it to them--we were going out. It took some cajoling to get everyone to agree to it without knowing why, and frankly I wasn't sure there was much point, given that dawn would be just about invisible, but I put on a brave face and helped shepherd everyone out the door into the frigid, wet dark. Sometimes, you just have to act on faith.
As I said, the temperature had been dropping, and by that point the air hovered just around freezing. The wind had died back a bit, but the rain had turned to an intermittent spitting sleet. The ground was sloppy with an inch or so of slush and a and we splashed along, breaking a thin crust of ice with every step, our toes freezing already, and none of us allowed to talk as per the rules of the ritual.
We climbed the mountain and sat down to wait for the dawn. Before long, Charlie--invisible in the dark behind us--began to play "Here Comes the Sun" on his tin whistle, repeating the song over and over. The others joined him, but given the weather, their instruments were different. I heard no guitar, no violin. Instead I heard a harmonica (Kit can play any instrument she picks up), two kazoos, and a rattle. The song went over and over and over as the sky grew gradually lighter, and the rising sun was visible for just a moment before it lifted into the dense cloud. At that moment of sunshine we all began to sing here comes the sun! although the sun was gone again before the song was over--but before the song was over, I am not kidding, the sleet switched over into snow.
It was a thick, warm snow and it built up quickly on the wet but frigid ground and all along the winter trees and on our shoulders and hair and eyelashes. Song finished, we shrieked and laughed and threw slush-balls at each other in the first morning of winter (though Kit calls it mid-winter), the first morning of the returning sun.
The masters had not brought up drinks and candy this time. They played in the snow like the rest of us (Charlie thanked us for bringing the nicer weather up) for a few minutes but then Joy and Charlie insisted we all get back to the Mansion before we froze. And in fact we were all shivering pretty seriously by that point. As we got inside, Joy, who, remember, in our Healing Master, ordered us to all take warm showers and put on dry clothes before breakfast and presents. So we did, racing upstairs like a herd of obedient children.
By the time we got back it was well after nine in the morning and the view out through the windows was a white wonderland. The temperature was still dropping, because the flakes were smaller, swirling down out of a pale grey sky in the winter's first true, heavy snowstorm. Inside, the wood stove was going strong and everything was gloriously warm. The Great Hall smelled of hot stove and oatmeal and peppermint and chocolate and evergreens, and each of us had a bag of goodies and little toys to open (organized by a student committee--everybody but the yearlings had kicked in a few dollars. It's possible to be a kid and a grown-up at the same time). The Sprouts were there, along with their relevant adults, so many people that the party sprawled out into the Bird Room and the Rose Room and the Library, because we couldn't all fit in the Great Hall.
We played with our toys and ate cookies and candy until, one by one, we all more or less crashed.
The last thing I noticed before I fell asleep myself was that Greg had not gone upstairs to bed as he had in years past. Instead he had fallen asleep on the floor, stretched out behind one of the couches, apparently mid-way through breakfast. And Greg's Cat was drinking his coffee.
I just realized I've forgotten to tell you about the Yule tree. I've written about it in years past, but this year, no mention. It was already up when I and the other "elves" decorated the Great Hall that night, trimming the tree is an informal campus activity. None of the masters helped--it's our tree--though soon after we finished both Kit and Joy arrived from nowhere (none of us could tell whether they'd been on campus or just arrived) and sat together in a little love-seat, wrapped in the same blanket and drinking mugs of something, looking at the tree. At one point they both sang "Oh, Christmas Tree," except Kit sang it in German, to the obvious surprise of Joy. Also, Joy can't sing on key, something I hadn't known before. When they were done, they giggled like school-girls and spilled some of their chocolate on the blanket. I fetched them a dish-towel from the Great Hall Kitchen.
Anyway, the tree itself is artificial but scented with fir-oil so it smells right, and it looks realistic. It's quite tall, because the Great Hall has a high ceiling, maybe twelve feet. All the decorations are in the same color range, all on the same theme, and the lights are white--the whole thing looks very elegant. In the interior of the tree are balls of various sizes, yellow and orange and red, they look like fruit and catch and reflect the light. Then there are ivory-colored ribbons rimmed with gold, like vines hanging from the branches--this year we added a long string of bright red cranberries and another of popped corn. On the outermost branches clung blown-glass birds, each one detailed and lifelike and different from the others, and all of no species I've ever seen this side of a dream. On the very top of the tree is a pose-able doll clinging to the top leader like she's climbing it, a fairy dressed in a short Greek tunic with a bow and a quiver full of arrows slung over her shoulder.
The masters all clearly like the tree, because they take the time to come look at it, but it's not their tree. They have their own--I remember seeing it my first year when I was on the janitor team--it's a little live red cedar, which is really a species of juniper, in a big pot. It usually lives in their outdoor courtyard, but they bring it in for a few days around Yule and decorate it. As I remember, the decorations are a motley lot. I expect that each master (except maybe Greg?) brought in a few treasured family ornaments and added them.
This year, just like the last two, we had a party on Yule night and a lot of the people who had gone home came back to join us. Kit and Greg attended the party, but the others didn't. I assume they had their own party up on the fourth floor. They must have been up there and they could not have been sleeping, because we on the first floor were making too much noise, singing and dancing and goofing around. Hours went by.
And, the whole time the weather was awful--a cold, driving rain and wind, with the temperature gradually dropping through the night. The weather worried me because I knew we'd have to go out in it, but the yearlings didn't know and I didn't tell them. They danced on, unconcerned.
Long about dawn, Lou broke it to them--we were going out. It took some cajoling to get everyone to agree to it without knowing why, and frankly I wasn't sure there was much point, given that dawn would be just about invisible, but I put on a brave face and helped shepherd everyone out the door into the frigid, wet dark. Sometimes, you just have to act on faith.
As I said, the temperature had been dropping, and by that point the air hovered just around freezing. The wind had died back a bit, but the rain had turned to an intermittent spitting sleet. The ground was sloppy with an inch or so of slush and a and we splashed along, breaking a thin crust of ice with every step, our toes freezing already, and none of us allowed to talk as per the rules of the ritual.
We climbed the mountain and sat down to wait for the dawn. Before long, Charlie--invisible in the dark behind us--began to play "Here Comes the Sun" on his tin whistle, repeating the song over and over. The others joined him, but given the weather, their instruments were different. I heard no guitar, no violin. Instead I heard a harmonica (Kit can play any instrument she picks up), two kazoos, and a rattle. The song went over and over and over as the sky grew gradually lighter, and the rising sun was visible for just a moment before it lifted into the dense cloud. At that moment of sunshine we all began to sing here comes the sun! although the sun was gone again before the song was over--but before the song was over, I am not kidding, the sleet switched over into snow.
It was a thick, warm snow and it built up quickly on the wet but frigid ground and all along the winter trees and on our shoulders and hair and eyelashes. Song finished, we shrieked and laughed and threw slush-balls at each other in the first morning of winter (though Kit calls it mid-winter), the first morning of the returning sun.
The masters had not brought up drinks and candy this time. They played in the snow like the rest of us (Charlie thanked us for bringing the nicer weather up) for a few minutes but then Joy and Charlie insisted we all get back to the Mansion before we froze. And in fact we were all shivering pretty seriously by that point. As we got inside, Joy, who, remember, in our Healing Master, ordered us to all take warm showers and put on dry clothes before breakfast and presents. So we did, racing upstairs like a herd of obedient children.
By the time we got back it was well after nine in the morning and the view out through the windows was a white wonderland. The temperature was still dropping, because the flakes were smaller, swirling down out of a pale grey sky in the winter's first true, heavy snowstorm. Inside, the wood stove was going strong and everything was gloriously warm. The Great Hall smelled of hot stove and oatmeal and peppermint and chocolate and evergreens, and each of us had a bag of goodies and little toys to open (organized by a student committee--everybody but the yearlings had kicked in a few dollars. It's possible to be a kid and a grown-up at the same time). The Sprouts were there, along with their relevant adults, so many people that the party sprawled out into the Bird Room and the Rose Room and the Library, because we couldn't all fit in the Great Hall.
We played with our toys and ate cookies and candy until, one by one, we all more or less crashed.
The last thing I noticed before I fell asleep myself was that Greg had not gone upstairs to bed as he had in years past. Instead he had fallen asleep on the floor, stretched out behind one of the couches, apparently mid-way through breakfast. And Greg's Cat was drinking his coffee.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Year 3: Part 4: Post 8: Watching
I was working by myself in the formal garden this morning, pulling out a few weeds and transplanting a couple of native annuals into the beds. Charlie hopes the annuals will flower and set seed and so come up again next year. Much of what we do here is shaping, creating assemblies of plants that function in ways similar to wild communities, but we also weed out exotics and add in natives that Charlie thinks belong here and are missing--that is one reason why we encourage her plants to self-maintain and to spread. Where we put a plant is always secondary to the design--because if we do it right, it's going to move and find its own place.
Specifically, I was working around the little frog pond on the edge of the garden. It's cool there and relatively dark under the trees, though you can see the bright, sunny meadows through the line of northern white ceders along one side and look over to the Mansion and its gardens through the pines and hemlocks along the other side, a little further away. The pond is artificial, with a deliberately waterproofed bottom, since it sits well above the water table, but it provides good nursery habitat to half a dozen different amphibians. Deer and foxes drink here, and the air smells of water and stone.
I paused for a minute in my work and happened to see movement through the trees, near the Mansion. I got up and walked over to see who it was, and spotted Karen coming along the margins of the gardens. She didn't seem to have noticed me. She did notice Greg's Cat, who was walking along the same path but in the opposite direction. He saw her, looked up, and meowed. She spoke to him, but I could not hear her words. She held out a hand to the cat, to greet and to pet him, but he turned a little away from her. He had raised his tail, as cats usually do around humans, and he still looked towards her, but he seemed tense. She knelt, holding out her hand, and he turned and trotted back the way he had come. He won't let anyone but Greg touch him.
Karen stared after him for a moment, then stood and took a couple of steps backward before looking up at the Mansion. From where she stood, I think she could see Greg's window and was staring at it, almost reverently. Then she came out of her reverie and walked on. She came to the secret door, looked both ways to be sure no one was watching her, then unlocked the door and went in.
I think it bothers Karen that she can't pet Greg's cat, and it bothers her because he is Greg's. She wants to be like him, but the cat clearly recognizes some difference. She is the youngest of the Masters, the most recently hired, and the quietest. I mean that she is shy, and also that when she walks by, not speaking, a kind of silence follows her the way noise, even subtle noise, follows most other people. Greg, I think, is the only one she ever seeks out, the only person whose regard she really wants. I think, sometimes, that Greg has the devotion of two cats and that Karen is the other one.
I also think that I am getting altogether too good at spying on people. I do not mean to spy, and today, in fact, I would have been perfectly visible to Karen if she had just looked in my direction. Perhaps she did look and I did not catch it--she's quite aware of her surroundings, as you'd expect of a martial artist. But still, it's like I watch but am not in turn watched. Why do I do it? How do I do it? Is it ok to do?
Even as I had those thoughts, I turned and looked up towards the branches of the young pine trees, knowing what I would see.
Charlie had been watching me, watching Karen.
Specifically, I was working around the little frog pond on the edge of the garden. It's cool there and relatively dark under the trees, though you can see the bright, sunny meadows through the line of northern white ceders along one side and look over to the Mansion and its gardens through the pines and hemlocks along the other side, a little further away. The pond is artificial, with a deliberately waterproofed bottom, since it sits well above the water table, but it provides good nursery habitat to half a dozen different amphibians. Deer and foxes drink here, and the air smells of water and stone.
I paused for a minute in my work and happened to see movement through the trees, near the Mansion. I got up and walked over to see who it was, and spotted Karen coming along the margins of the gardens. She didn't seem to have noticed me. She did notice Greg's Cat, who was walking along the same path but in the opposite direction. He saw her, looked up, and meowed. She spoke to him, but I could not hear her words. She held out a hand to the cat, to greet and to pet him, but he turned a little away from her. He had raised his tail, as cats usually do around humans, and he still looked towards her, but he seemed tense. She knelt, holding out her hand, and he turned and trotted back the way he had come. He won't let anyone but Greg touch him.
Karen stared after him for a moment, then stood and took a couple of steps backward before looking up at the Mansion. From where she stood, I think she could see Greg's window and was staring at it, almost reverently. Then she came out of her reverie and walked on. She came to the secret door, looked both ways to be sure no one was watching her, then unlocked the door and went in.
I think it bothers Karen that she can't pet Greg's cat, and it bothers her because he is Greg's. She wants to be like him, but the cat clearly recognizes some difference. She is the youngest of the Masters, the most recently hired, and the quietest. I mean that she is shy, and also that when she walks by, not speaking, a kind of silence follows her the way noise, even subtle noise, follows most other people. Greg, I think, is the only one she ever seeks out, the only person whose regard she really wants. I think, sometimes, that Greg has the devotion of two cats and that Karen is the other one.
I also think that I am getting altogether too good at spying on people. I do not mean to spy, and today, in fact, I would have been perfectly visible to Karen if she had just looked in my direction. Perhaps she did look and I did not catch it--she's quite aware of her surroundings, as you'd expect of a martial artist. But still, it's like I watch but am not in turn watched. Why do I do it? How do I do it? Is it ok to do?
Even as I had those thoughts, I turned and looked up towards the branches of the young pine trees, knowing what I would see.
Charlie had been watching me, watching Karen.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Year 3: Part 3: Post 6: Greg's Cat
[For anyone who gets this blog emailed automatically: if you have not gotten the most recent post, the one I posted on Saturday, go to the blog's website. I've discovered that the site did not notify readers that I'd changed the "notice" to a real post. --D.]
A few days ago, we returned to campus from the Island and I had a short but oddly startling conversation.
I rode back with the students and masters, as I said, because Allen and his family are staying on the Island for another week. The school uses a pair of fifteen-passenger vans (converted to veggie-diesel) for these trips, and I was in the first van to get back. The other one stopped to get dinner on the way, while we voted to wait and eat on campus. That both Charlie and I were in the same van and voted the same way probably had something to do with the difference. I'm not doing it on purpose, but I'm getting more and more like him in certain ways--I don't like being in fast food or chain restaurants anymore, even supposedly healthy ones, like Panera. The light in there looks strange and the food doesn't smell right. Or something.
Anyway, so we pulled into the little parking lot between the Mansion and the Formal Garden, piled out, and unloaded our stuff. The yearlings scattered pretty quickly, going inside with their personal gear or carrying the group equipment and leftover food to the Mansion basement or the Dining Hall, but I didn't have anything to do--not being a yearling means it isn't my job to put stuff away. So I just stood around for a while, stretching after the long van ride and looking and sniffing around. As expected, spring sprung while we were away. The trees are completely leafed out now and the azaleas are mostly done flowering. Some of the roses are about to start. After the cold, early spring conditions on the Island, this explosion of green is kind of overwhelming.
So as I was standing around, a car pulled up. It was one of the campus cars (veggie diesel also) but any car, even one of ours, driving on campus is rare. I waited to find out who had been driving it and why.
A man got out. He was tall, gray-haired with pale golden skin, and he wore black jeans and a blue plaid shirt. It was only when he greeted me that I realized the man was Greg--I'd never seen him out of uniform before.
"I didn't even know you could drive," I said, before I could stop myself. He laughed.
"I haven't always been cloistered," he told me. "How do you think I got by before we built this place?"
I actually hadn't thought about it. I've heard he was a carpenter.
Anyway, I asked him what he'd gone out for and in answer he reached in to the passenger's side of the car and pulled out a blue plastic cat carrier occupied by the black and white cat who loves him.
"He was in the hospital for a couple of days," Greg explained, setting the carrier on the ground. "He's fine, now." I could hear the relief in his voice.
"What was wrong?"
"Urinary tract infection. I found him pissing blood last week."
It sounded strange to hear him use a word like "pissing." He's so reserved, I tend to fall into thinking he's more formal than he really is.
"Too bad Joy was away," I told him. "You wouldn't have had to take him to an outside vet."
"Yes, I would. I made an appointment when I found the blood and I was going to keep him in my room until then, so I could keep an eye on him. But that night, he stopped going at all. A cat that can't piss has a couple of hours. Joy doesn't have the equipment to intubate him, so I would have needed to take him in anyway. He has lost his penis, but kept his life."
"Lost his penis? Why?"
"In the judgment of the vet, his risk for a recurrence is high, especially since we can't monitor him well here. A cat's urethra is very narrow through the penis, so it blocks easily. Removing it reduces the risk."
He had been looking in through the carrier at the cat, but he looked up at me and saw my expression and chuckled a little.
"He would have lost it anyway, if he'd died," Greg explained. "Funny how many men don't think clearly about that type of choice?"
I wasn't sure how to respond to that.
Greg looked over his shoulder a minute, frowning. I guessed that he wanted to take the cat inside, so he could recover from surgery up in the masters' quarters, but since we're not supposed to have animals in the Mansion he wanted to use the secret stairwell, which I'm not supposed to know about. He'd actually looked right at the door to it.
"I know about the stairwell," I told him. "I caught Charlie using it last year."
"Really? He didn't tell me."
"Well, I don't tell anyone else."
"Nor should you. Every magic school ought to have a secret stairwell, don't you think?"
"Yeah. I used to think there were ghosts in the walls. I think a lot of people still do."
"There may be ghosts, too. Just because there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for something doesn't mean that explanation's accurate."
"Ok."
Greg reached back into the car and grabbed a cloth bag full of something and a couple of pieces of paper. He removed one piece, presumably a debit card slip, and handed the other two me.
"You might find this interesting," he told me.
It was the vet bill. It seemed unremarkable to me, except that it listed Greg, not the school, as owner, which was kind of interesting. But then I noticed the name listed for the cat: Greg's Cat Monroe. Monroe in Greg's last name, but....
"Greg's Cat Monroe?" I asked. He smiled.
"Nobody ever calls him anything else," he said, somewhat embarrassed. "I suppose that's his name, now."
Generally the cats on campus don't have names, although the dogs do. Sarah says she's not sure it makes sense to name animals who don't seem to care what their names are, except for human need or convenience. Greg looked pleased that his cat had a name, now.
"Meoww!" said Greg's Cat.
"I'd better get him inside so I can let him out," Greg said, and wished me good evening.
I walked around campus for a while, thinking. What Greg said about choices? I don't think he just meant that men don't think clearly about anything that threatens male genitals. That would kind of be a cheap shot, for him, and anyway, how many men actually have to choose between life and penis? It's not something that really happens for most people.
I think by "that type of choice" Greg meant a kind of false choice. When he first told me about the operation, I was on the point of making some uncomfortable joke based on the idea that the cat had made a choice between sexlessness and something else. Something along the lines of what's more important, life or sex? But that's not really what the situation was--I don't know if neutered cats actually have sex, but I'm pretty confident dead ones don't.
How often do we try to hold on to something we are bound to lose, and lose something even bigger because of it?
A few days ago, we returned to campus from the Island and I had a short but oddly startling conversation.
I rode back with the students and masters, as I said, because Allen and his family are staying on the Island for another week. The school uses a pair of fifteen-passenger vans (converted to veggie-diesel) for these trips, and I was in the first van to get back. The other one stopped to get dinner on the way, while we voted to wait and eat on campus. That both Charlie and I were in the same van and voted the same way probably had something to do with the difference. I'm not doing it on purpose, but I'm getting more and more like him in certain ways--I don't like being in fast food or chain restaurants anymore, even supposedly healthy ones, like Panera. The light in there looks strange and the food doesn't smell right. Or something.
Anyway, so we pulled into the little parking lot between the Mansion and the Formal Garden, piled out, and unloaded our stuff. The yearlings scattered pretty quickly, going inside with their personal gear or carrying the group equipment and leftover food to the Mansion basement or the Dining Hall, but I didn't have anything to do--not being a yearling means it isn't my job to put stuff away. So I just stood around for a while, stretching after the long van ride and looking and sniffing around. As expected, spring sprung while we were away. The trees are completely leafed out now and the azaleas are mostly done flowering. Some of the roses are about to start. After the cold, early spring conditions on the Island, this explosion of green is kind of overwhelming.
So as I was standing around, a car pulled up. It was one of the campus cars (veggie diesel also) but any car, even one of ours, driving on campus is rare. I waited to find out who had been driving it and why.
A man got out. He was tall, gray-haired with pale golden skin, and he wore black jeans and a blue plaid shirt. It was only when he greeted me that I realized the man was Greg--I'd never seen him out of uniform before.
"I didn't even know you could drive," I said, before I could stop myself. He laughed.
"I haven't always been cloistered," he told me. "How do you think I got by before we built this place?"
I actually hadn't thought about it. I've heard he was a carpenter.
Anyway, I asked him what he'd gone out for and in answer he reached in to the passenger's side of the car and pulled out a blue plastic cat carrier occupied by the black and white cat who loves him.
"He was in the hospital for a couple of days," Greg explained, setting the carrier on the ground. "He's fine, now." I could hear the relief in his voice.
"What was wrong?"
"Urinary tract infection. I found him pissing blood last week."
It sounded strange to hear him use a word like "pissing." He's so reserved, I tend to fall into thinking he's more formal than he really is.
"Too bad Joy was away," I told him. "You wouldn't have had to take him to an outside vet."
"Yes, I would. I made an appointment when I found the blood and I was going to keep him in my room until then, so I could keep an eye on him. But that night, he stopped going at all. A cat that can't piss has a couple of hours. Joy doesn't have the equipment to intubate him, so I would have needed to take him in anyway. He has lost his penis, but kept his life."
"Lost his penis? Why?"
"In the judgment of the vet, his risk for a recurrence is high, especially since we can't monitor him well here. A cat's urethra is very narrow through the penis, so it blocks easily. Removing it reduces the risk."
He had been looking in through the carrier at the cat, but he looked up at me and saw my expression and chuckled a little.
"He would have lost it anyway, if he'd died," Greg explained. "Funny how many men don't think clearly about that type of choice?"
I wasn't sure how to respond to that.
Greg looked over his shoulder a minute, frowning. I guessed that he wanted to take the cat inside, so he could recover from surgery up in the masters' quarters, but since we're not supposed to have animals in the Mansion he wanted to use the secret stairwell, which I'm not supposed to know about. He'd actually looked right at the door to it.
"I know about the stairwell," I told him. "I caught Charlie using it last year."
"Really? He didn't tell me."
"Well, I don't tell anyone else."
"Nor should you. Every magic school ought to have a secret stairwell, don't you think?"
"Yeah. I used to think there were ghosts in the walls. I think a lot of people still do."
"There may be ghosts, too. Just because there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for something doesn't mean that explanation's accurate."
"Ok."
Greg reached back into the car and grabbed a cloth bag full of something and a couple of pieces of paper. He removed one piece, presumably a debit card slip, and handed the other two me.
"You might find this interesting," he told me.
It was the vet bill. It seemed unremarkable to me, except that it listed Greg, not the school, as owner, which was kind of interesting. But then I noticed the name listed for the cat: Greg's Cat Monroe. Monroe in Greg's last name, but....
"Greg's Cat Monroe?" I asked. He smiled.
"Nobody ever calls him anything else," he said, somewhat embarrassed. "I suppose that's his name, now."
Generally the cats on campus don't have names, although the dogs do. Sarah says she's not sure it makes sense to name animals who don't seem to care what their names are, except for human need or convenience. Greg looked pleased that his cat had a name, now.
"Meoww!" said Greg's Cat.
"I'd better get him inside so I can let him out," Greg said, and wished me good evening.
I walked around campus for a while, thinking. What Greg said about choices? I don't think he just meant that men don't think clearly about anything that threatens male genitals. That would kind of be a cheap shot, for him, and anyway, how many men actually have to choose between life and penis? It's not something that really happens for most people.
I think by "that type of choice" Greg meant a kind of false choice. When he first told me about the operation, I was on the point of making some uncomfortable joke based on the idea that the cat had made a choice between sexlessness and something else. Something along the lines of what's more important, life or sex? But that's not really what the situation was--I don't know if neutered cats actually have sex, but I'm pretty confident dead ones don't.
How often do we try to hold on to something we are bound to lose, and lose something even bigger because of it?
Friday, February 27, 2015
Year 3: Part 1: Post 8: Devotion
Last night it snowed again and it kept snowing for hours on end.
I had to water the plants in the Green Room that afternoon, and when I went in there I found Charlie and Greg sitting in front of the big windows, wrapped up in blankets and watching the snow. When I was done I asked if I could join them and they grunted at me. I took that as a yes and pulled up a chair. Within a few minutes Rick and Eddie had joined us. I don't think I've mentioned Eddie before--he's in my dorm and arrived last year. We get along, but I don't know him very well. There was getting to be a crowd of us, and I made up my mind to leave if anyone else arrived, but fortunately no one did. For a long time, none of us spoke. We just watched the snow coming down.
It was relatively warm outside, but windy, so the flakes were huge, pale grey and swirling against the paler grey of the sky and the dark, almost black green of the arbor vitae hedge at the end of the Mansion garden. Looking off to either side there was just the varied browns and the greys of winter trees and the snow and ice-covered fields receding off into the kind of moving fog formed by the falling snow.
"It's like water," I said, remembering how Charlie had once said he wished there were running water on campus so he could sit and watch it. He heard me and tilted his head curiously for a moment, but did not turn away from the window.
"If it did this every day, I'd watch it all day long," he said.
Rick and I looked at each other over and behind Charlie's blanket-covered head. The thing is, Charlie does watch the campus all day every day. He keeps his finger on the pulse of it somehow.
Greg spoke, also not looking away from the window, and as he spoke his cat poked his small black and white face out from among the blankets and looked at me a moment before settling into invisibility again.
"Abba Moses, an early Christian Desert Father said 'go sit in your cell, your cell will teach you everything," Greg said. "But I think there is much to learn from sitting outside your cell, too."
"To me," began Rick, "the main advantage of a monk's cell would be that no one else was in it. I can't think clearly around other people."
"And yet you came to sit here with us," pointed out Greg, with a smile.
"I can't help where you were sitting," Rick replied, looking a little embarrassed. "And I did ask your permission."
Greg had to acknowledge the point.
"I can't think straight when I'm alone," said Eddie. The others looked at him. "I'm serious! It's like my thoughts turn inward when I'm all by myself for too long. I have to talk to other people or I don't even know what I'm thinking."
"You know what that sounds like?" asked Rick, with a hint of a grin.
"Shut up, I am not," Eddie replied.
(I need to explain that: Eddie is transgendered, although you can't guess by looking at him. Rick was implying that, in needing to talk, Eddie was betraying residual female characteristics. Rick is not misogynist, but he usually avoids them and I don't think he knows any women well. He refers to stereotypes about women a lot)
"I'm the same way," I pointed out. "I like to talk out my ideas."
"Is that what Moses meant, though?" Greg asked. "Was the cell important only because of what wasn't in the room? Or could the room itself teach something?"
"That snow could teach something," Charlie said. "As could the sea, a place in the forest, any place. Go and sit in the forest. I don't know about a room." And after a pause he gathered his blanket around him and stood up to go.
"Hey, Charlie, we can all shut up, if you want, if we're bothering you," I said. He looked at me with a hint of a smile, appreciating but rejecting my offer.
"If I wanted you all to shut up, Daniel, I'd tell you to shut up," he explained. "I have to go take a leak."
"What he said, it's like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, or The Outermost House," I said, when he had gone. There were books he had introduced me to. "Anchorites to a specific place."
"It's not just places," Greg said. "Did Charlie ever tell you about his dog?"
Rick and I shook our heads.
"Perhaps I shouldn't." Greg stroked his cat and smiled, while he debated with himself. "Well, it's not like it's actually private," he decided, finally. "When we first opened the campus, we had a problem with rats in the barns. So we decided to get a terrier. Eventually better food and seed storage and the presence of the the cats took care of the problem. That's why we don't have any terriers now. But that dog, he and Charlie just clicked."
"I've seen a picture of that dog! On Charlie's desk! A little grey dog, right?"
"Right. Milo. Sit in your room, sit by the ocean, love a dog, do something wholly and it will teach you everything."
"Is your cat like that?" I asked. He was still petting him inside the blanket.
"No," Greg said. "I have not given myself wholly to him. It is a great thing, to be devoted to an animal, and I have not managed it. But he is devoted to me. Perhaps I am the occasion of his spiritual practice?" And he smiled at the cat in his lap.
He spoke in a low voice, full of emotion. It was all news to me. And yet what he was saying seemed familiar, somehow.
"Who is it?" I asked. "Not Joy?" Joy is his primary master. But I knew the answer almost before I asked it.
"No, not Joy," he confirmed. "It's Kit." My stomach did something odd when he said it, as illogical as that is. "She doesn't know," he added.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Year 2: Part 7: Post 4: Winter Warmth
The snow didn't stick, of course. Afterwards, the day after the snowfall, the weather warmed up and stayed that way for a couple of days, but then a front moved in and we had a serious ice storm last night--sleet coming down and freezing to everything for hours on end. It's hard to get around campus now, because the roads are slick, and we lost a couple of trees up in the woods, plus some branches off a few of the sugar maples, but everything is so pretty. The sun is out now, and all the twigs on all the trees and bushes are completely circled in ice, just surrounded, and all of it is sparkling and glowing and the ice on the ground is white and crunchy like some kind of sugary snow. I expect it will start melting soon, but for now it's beautiful.
It's interesting to think that because we live here on campus the way we do, we're free to enjoy it. I understand that a lot of people in the outside world are without power, a really dangerous thing for those who heat and cook with electricity--I know some of our neighbors are not on the town water system and they depend on electricity to pump their well water. Some of the roads are closed, and probably the others should be. A lot of folks can't go to work, kids can't go to school, it's a big mess and a serious hardship. Except for us. We generate our own electricity, and even if we lost that I'm not sure we'd care, because we use so little. Our wood and our food is close at hand. We don't have anywhere we need to go.
I'm thinking of the others, though. Not so much my parents, which is embarrassing--I've called them and they're fine, and that's basically all I need to know--but Allen, Kit, Joy, and Sarah are not on campus right now. They're out in the world where ice storms are a serious inconvenience or worse, and they're stuck out there, because of the roads. They couldn't come to campus if they wanted to. It's not that I'm worried, exactly--I'm sure they're alright--it's that it seems unfair they should have to cope with a difficulty that is so obviously unnecessary. The way we live here--self-sufficient, but connected to the world when we want to be--seems so self-evidently better.
Rick had his last "shelter night" last night, meaning that Charlie made him spend the night outside with nothing except what he could gather and what he might normally have with him for a walk in the woods. I say Charlie "made" him, but of course, Rick could have refused. Charlie wouldn't want anyone to do anything just because he said so. But of course Rick did not refuse.
Rick and I are not in the same dorm--he is in Snake--so I didn't know about this until this morning when Rick walked into the Great Hall around breakfast time, coming in from outdoors and missing his oilskin poncho.
"I used my poncho to waterproof my shelter," he explained. "It froze solid overnight and I couldn't get it free this morning. I'll get it when the ice melts." He set about wolfing down scrambled eggs, re-stoking the fire within himself. Staying warm takes a lot of calories.
"Did you get any sleep?" I asked him. I know he often sleeps poorly when the weather is bad, and I couldn't imagine him lying down inside a shelter small enough for a poncho to cover.
"None at all," he answered. And indeed, almost as soon as he was done eating, his head started to bob, the way people's heads do when they fall asleep sitting up, jerk awake, and sleep again.
"Why don't you go to bed?" I suggested. I meant that he should go to his own room--he still has one in his dorm, even though he hasn't spent much time in it this year. But he responded by lying down on the floor where he was, on a sheepskin in front of the fire. Within a minute he was obviously asleep. I took a blanket from the couch and covered him up.
I was trying to figure out whether to leave him there--I thought maybe he might get stepped on if he were alone, he kind of looked like a pile of blankets with a pair of feet sticking out the end--when Greg's cat, who usually ignores everybody except Greg, ambled over. The animal sniffed Rick's hair and appeared to consider--his tail-tip twitched. Then, making up his mind, the cat climbed up over Rick and settled on his hip. Rick grunted and rolled over onto his belly, but the cat rode him like a rolling log, resettled on the man's rear, kneaded with his claws for a minute, and then curled up and went to sleep.
I just sat there, completely astounded.
Aidan walked up to me, munching ineffectively on a raw carrot.
"Doing?" he asked.
"Who, me? Or Rick?"
"You."
"Watching the cat sleep on Rick."
"Why?"
"Because that cat doesn't like anybody but Greg. Usually not, anyway." I suppose that was too complex for Aidan to follow, because he just stared at me for a while, chewing on his carrot.
"No; why seeping," he clarified. I suppose he meant sleeping.
"Because he's tired, I guess."
Aidan stared at me again,still chewing. I hadn't answered the right question. Or, he had another one he didn't know how to ask. So I just started talking.
"That cat likes Rick. I can tell, because cats only sleep on people they like. But I didn't know he liked Rick. It surprised me. I thought he only liked Greg."
"Seeping...foor."
"The floor? Yeah, the floor is a funny place for a man to sleep, huh? I guess Rick is really tired."
Aidan stood there for a while, chewing on his carrot and staring at Rick. He seems so thoughtful, but there is no way to ask what he's thinking.
"I can't wait until you really learn how to talk," I told him.
"Me!" he answered, definitively.
"Yeah, I bet you can't wait, either."
Rick groaned and rolled over again, this time onto his back. The cat fell off, then climbed back on and settled, fortunately without kneading, over Rick's groin.
"Here, let's go somewhere else so Rick can sleep, ok?" I told Aidan.
"Cawa," he said, brandishing his carrot.
"Yes, but bring your carrot over here, ok?"
"No, you!"
"I should bring your carrot?"
"No, you. Some?"
"I should have some of your carrot?"
"Mmm-hmmm."
"Ok, thanks, but over here."
It's funny. A year ago, Aidan was a toddler. Or, less than a year, I guess. I'm thinking of that party right before Brigid. Anyway, he was a toddler. He could walk and eat real food and talk a little. Now, he's still a toddler. He can walk and eat real food and talk a little. It's like nothing has changed. Toddlers take a long time. And yet, "talk a little" means something completely different than it did before. Inside the sameness is a world of difference.
It's interesting to think that because we live here on campus the way we do, we're free to enjoy it. I understand that a lot of people in the outside world are without power, a really dangerous thing for those who heat and cook with electricity--I know some of our neighbors are not on the town water system and they depend on electricity to pump their well water. Some of the roads are closed, and probably the others should be. A lot of folks can't go to work, kids can't go to school, it's a big mess and a serious hardship. Except for us. We generate our own electricity, and even if we lost that I'm not sure we'd care, because we use so little. Our wood and our food is close at hand. We don't have anywhere we need to go.
I'm thinking of the others, though. Not so much my parents, which is embarrassing--I've called them and they're fine, and that's basically all I need to know--but Allen, Kit, Joy, and Sarah are not on campus right now. They're out in the world where ice storms are a serious inconvenience or worse, and they're stuck out there, because of the roads. They couldn't come to campus if they wanted to. It's not that I'm worried, exactly--I'm sure they're alright--it's that it seems unfair they should have to cope with a difficulty that is so obviously unnecessary. The way we live here--self-sufficient, but connected to the world when we want to be--seems so self-evidently better.
Rick had his last "shelter night" last night, meaning that Charlie made him spend the night outside with nothing except what he could gather and what he might normally have with him for a walk in the woods. I say Charlie "made" him, but of course, Rick could have refused. Charlie wouldn't want anyone to do anything just because he said so. But of course Rick did not refuse.
Rick and I are not in the same dorm--he is in Snake--so I didn't know about this until this morning when Rick walked into the Great Hall around breakfast time, coming in from outdoors and missing his oilskin poncho.
"I used my poncho to waterproof my shelter," he explained. "It froze solid overnight and I couldn't get it free this morning. I'll get it when the ice melts." He set about wolfing down scrambled eggs, re-stoking the fire within himself. Staying warm takes a lot of calories.
"Did you get any sleep?" I asked him. I know he often sleeps poorly when the weather is bad, and I couldn't imagine him lying down inside a shelter small enough for a poncho to cover.
"None at all," he answered. And indeed, almost as soon as he was done eating, his head started to bob, the way people's heads do when they fall asleep sitting up, jerk awake, and sleep again.
"Why don't you go to bed?" I suggested. I meant that he should go to his own room--he still has one in his dorm, even though he hasn't spent much time in it this year. But he responded by lying down on the floor where he was, on a sheepskin in front of the fire. Within a minute he was obviously asleep. I took a blanket from the couch and covered him up.
I was trying to figure out whether to leave him there--I thought maybe he might get stepped on if he were alone, he kind of looked like a pile of blankets with a pair of feet sticking out the end--when Greg's cat, who usually ignores everybody except Greg, ambled over. The animal sniffed Rick's hair and appeared to consider--his tail-tip twitched. Then, making up his mind, the cat climbed up over Rick and settled on his hip. Rick grunted and rolled over onto his belly, but the cat rode him like a rolling log, resettled on the man's rear, kneaded with his claws for a minute, and then curled up and went to sleep.
I just sat there, completely astounded.
Aidan walked up to me, munching ineffectively on a raw carrot.
"Doing?" he asked.
"Who, me? Or Rick?"
"You."
"Watching the cat sleep on Rick."
"Why?"
"Because that cat doesn't like anybody but Greg. Usually not, anyway." I suppose that was too complex for Aidan to follow, because he just stared at me for a while, chewing on his carrot.
"No; why seeping," he clarified. I suppose he meant sleeping.
"Because he's tired, I guess."
Aidan stared at me again,still chewing. I hadn't answered the right question. Or, he had another one he didn't know how to ask. So I just started talking.
"That cat likes Rick. I can tell, because cats only sleep on people they like. But I didn't know he liked Rick. It surprised me. I thought he only liked Greg."
"Seeping...foor."
"The floor? Yeah, the floor is a funny place for a man to sleep, huh? I guess Rick is really tired."
Aidan stood there for a while, chewing on his carrot and staring at Rick. He seems so thoughtful, but there is no way to ask what he's thinking.
"I can't wait until you really learn how to talk," I told him.
"Me!" he answered, definitively.
"Yeah, I bet you can't wait, either."
Rick groaned and rolled over again, this time onto his back. The cat fell off, then climbed back on and settled, fortunately without kneading, over Rick's groin.
"Here, let's go somewhere else so Rick can sleep, ok?" I told Aidan.
"Cawa," he said, brandishing his carrot.
"Yes, but bring your carrot over here, ok?"
"No, you!"
"I should bring your carrot?"
"No, you. Some?"
"I should have some of your carrot?"
"Mmm-hmmm."
"Ok, thanks, but over here."
It's funny. A year ago, Aidan was a toddler. Or, less than a year, I guess. I'm thinking of that party right before Brigid. Anyway, he was a toddler. He could walk and eat real food and talk a little. Now, he's still a toddler. He can walk and eat real food and talk a little. It's like nothing has changed. Toddlers take a long time. And yet, "talk a little" means something completely different than it did before. Inside the sameness is a world of difference.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Year 2: Part 1: Post 4: Working Cats and Working Students
I forget if I've mentioned it before, but the campus has a group of working cats we keep to control rodents in the barns, basements, and greenhouses. Mostly they're kept inside, so they don't hunt birds, although the do get out sometimes--the black and white cat who comes into the Mansion to hang out with Greg is one of them.
They're not just ordinary barn cats. We get most of them from area shelters. Usually they're cats who would otherwise be killed for whatever reason, but who have a record of hunting. They get their shots, they get spayed or neutered, then they come here. I think there are six, now, but I've heard they've varied from three to ten, over the years. Most of them are mean or skittish--that's why they were given up. A lot of them will scratch you if you get close. The black and white one is the friendliest, but he hardly ever lets anyone but Greg touch him. Some of them are old, ill, or--as close to ugly as cats come, anyway. Sarah's people move them around to different buildings as needed. Sometimes, as I said, they get out.
They're only fed once a day, and not much. They're supposed to hunt. But Joy gives them each a medical exam every week, including a weigh-in. If a cat can't or won't hunt or needs more care than we can give it here, they adopt it out. And that's what's happened to this cat. Apparently, he has diabetes. He's a grey tabby, at least ten years old, and he's not violent, though he doesn't like to be touched and he's afraid of children. His name is Sam and he needs regular, carefully prepared meals, but not insulin injections. Not yet. We're supposed to see if any of our friends and family can take him.
Anyone want a grey tabby cat?
Anyway, the campus job fair was a few days ago. It kind of snuck up on me. I mean, last year I
But I looked it up in my journal--it's actually a few days later this year. Time flies, I suppose.
Anyway, as intended, I am now officially a member of Charlie's landscaping team.
There are six of us. I don't know most of the others well, and most of them, like me, are new on the crew. Two of the people from last year graduated, and one, Will, didn't re-apply because he has an outside job as a landscaper lined up and doesn't think he'll have the time to work on-campus, too. There were only five on last year's team, so that leaves Lou as the only veteran. He's in Turtle Dorm, like me, so I know him fairly well, though we've never really hung out.
Lou is something like team captain. We'll be working mostly under his direction, not Charlie's, though Charlie says he'll do training sessions for us once or twice a week once the weather warms up. And he'll inspect our work.
Now, of course, there isn't much to do. Lou has us cleaning and sharpening tools (though most of
Though, I suppose this was the first Thanksgiving that I've ever done the holiday dishes for my Mom without even being asked. I guess being on the cleaning crew changed me, somehow.
[Next Post: February 17th: Ham and Eggs]
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Part 7: Post 8: Cool Cats and Warm Friends
But today I still have my ordinary schedule and chores. After breakfast I
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| Simplified Diagram |
(The way it works is that all the black water from the building's toilets goes through a chamber in the basement divided by a micro-perforated barrier that catches the solid fraction of the waste. The liquid fraction then
passes through a series of charcoal filters on its way out to the septic system. Once a day, someone has to close off the pipe, let the collected waste drain for an hour, then throw a pair of levers that open the screen and dumps the waste into a modified Clivus Multitrum composter. Then you reset the system and everyone can go back to using the Mansion toilets, if they want to. There's a separate gray water system, so you can keep using the sinks and everything the whole time. It's a pretty neat system. Other than clearing the screens and adding bark chips every day, the whole thing requires no maintenance at all.)
Anyway, I walked into the Mansion around ten, ready to work, and there was Greg, asleep on the couch. I don't think he meant to be asleep there--I'd seen him reading there after breakfast, and he still had his book, lying there on his chest. His glasses were still on. I went over to look at him and his eyes were closed and his mouth was open. He looked almost unrecognizable, in comparison to his stern, waking self. I had the most intense desire to drop something into his open mouth, steal his glasses, or otherwise take advantage of the situation. I'd never do that, but I'm not sure the cat sitting on Greg's chest believed me. He, the black and white cat, looked up at me with defiant, protective suspicion.
The black and white cat. He's not supposed to be in here. He's not supposed to be upstairs in the masters' quarters, either, but I know they've given up and let him him come and go as he pleases now, but he's not supposed to be down here. I mean, I like cats, I think we all do, but we could get a new student who's allergic or something. I think that's why we have the rule. So who let the cat in? And how is he allowed to say here?
He's allowed to stay because no one has evicted him, I suddenly realized. Was I going to evict the cat? No, I wasn't. Not with him looking at me like that. The anonymous "someone" who enforces rules and chances toilet paper roles suddenly became me. I sighed and sat down on the other couch. Looks like we have a cat.
I wasn't going to evict the cat and I wasn't going to wake Greg up by moving around and cleaning, either, but I didn't have anything to do in the afternoon, so I figured it could wait. I shut off the black water pipe, locked the Great Hall bathroom, and fetched my book. I've learned that the way to get through my reading list is to never pass up an opportunity to read.
I finished all three books in the Earthsea trilogy. Now I'm reading "A Reason for Hope," by Jane Goodall. I'm almost done with it, actually. I've heard of her, of course, but I've never thought of her as especially spiritual--she's the chimpanzee woman. But I really see why Charlie put it on the list.
I was reading about how after her second husband died she went back to the forest at Gombe, not to do research (she has assistants for that, now), but just to feel better. Not just because the forest was peaceful and beautiful and familiar, but because, as she said, "death is not hidden--or, only accidentally, by the fallen leaves." Chimpanzees live and die and new ones are born and everything just sort of is, and somehow that helped her accept her husband's death and restored her faith in God, gave her "the peace that passeth all understanding."
That's so different from the ideas I was raised with, but it's kind of like some of the things Greg says in his Dharma talks on Fridays. Except Goodall isn't Buddhist; she's Christian. I expect she was raised Anglican, being British. I'm not sure I understand it at all...I've never heard about Charlie talk about this sort of thing, but somehow it seems like him. I'm not the only person to think so--there's an inscription in the front of the book--
Charlie--
I read this and thought of you. It sounds like you, so I'm giving you my copy. Merry Christmas.
--love, Mary Anne
Who is Mary Anne? A girlfriend? I've never heard of Charlie having a girlfriend. Would I? I suppose I might not. But he lives on campus. How would he hide her? And the book only came out last year, so this isn't someone from long ago.
But, thinking about it--Charlie's sister introduced herself as Maria when I met her at Litha, but when I asked her how she seemed so much more ethnically Italian than Charlie is she'd laughed and said her ethnicity is "an act." She learned to speak Italian in school, not from her parents. The culture is an interest of hers. The family really is Italian-American, and their last name sounds Italian, but like many immigrants, their parents did their best to assimilate. They named their second son Charlie, after all. That's not exactly a traditional Italian name. Is it possible they actually named their daughter Mary?
I was looking out the window, thinking about this stuff, when movement caught my eye. Greg had shifted in her sleep. The book fell off his chest and hit the floor with a thump. The cat leaped free and hit the floor with no sound at all. Greg's glasses had fallen askew on his face as he turned his face ti the side, towards the couch. I was afraid he'd crush his glasses, but he didn't wake. The cat paused in his escape and looked back at Greg, one paw in the air. He turned, returned, and stood for a moment, forepaws up on the couch, his black and white body all long and muscular, staring intently into the face of the sleeping man. After a moment he hopped back up on the couch and began to lick Greg's face and hair, licking and licking, the way cats groom the heads of their friends.
[Next Post:November 29th: Thanksgiving]
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Part 3: Post I: Beltane
 |
| A Simplified Maypole |
I didn't ask, but I did ask Charlie how Beltane could be the beginning of Summer.
"It's Wiccan," he explained, with a distracted, dismissive wave of his hand. "Wicca is Western European. It's warmer there."
"I'd heard that," I told him, "But we're not in Europe. Why don't we adjust things? Or celebrate North American pagan holidays? Like Native American holidays, or something?"
"The last thing modern Native Americans need is white people like you and I taking something else from them without permission. Anyway, it's not just holidays and so forth we brought over; most of our culture is European, and half our plants. The exotic grasses all think it's Summer. You noticed?"
I had not noticed that I noticed, but it took me only a moment to realize what he meant.
"The grass on the roadside--it's all green! Some of it's flowering. And the grass on campus isn't because...you planted it, didn't you? It's native!" That won me an approving nod. "Funny how much difference the Gulf Steam makes," I added.
"The what?" Charlie looked up at me in some surprise.
"The Gulf Stream! Warm water flowing northwest--that's why Western Europe is warm, isn't it?" I'd always heard this, except suddenly I wasn't sure. See, this is the only thing I still don't like about Charlie. It seems he's always ready to pounce on you if you're wrong.
"Well, what the hell is going on with Seattle, then? No Gulf Stream there," he growled. And he's right. Seattle is warmer than the equivalent latitude in the East. Of course he's right. Charlie is always right. That's why I put up with his growling smart-assedness.
Anyway, the Beltane celebration was run by Sarah and Kit, working together. They make an odd team. Kit is so assertively Wiccan, and Sarah is...not. She's a practicing Catholic. She's also a graduate of the school, I think everyone who works here is, and she wears the green ring, so she can't always have been this way, but she actually discourages her kids from getting to know students. She thinks we're a bad influence, I guess. I don't see how they can work together when both of them are so passionate about the ideological gulf between them, and indeed I might have thought they didn't work together, because Sarah had full charge of the morning and Kit had full charge of the afternoon.
Except that in between, during the picnic feast we had at lunchtime, they sang a song together, a song about Summer, in Middle English, I think. I'm not sure how to spell the words;
Soomer ist a-coomin in, loodly sing cuckoo
bloweth sed and bloweth med
and springth the wood anew
sing, cuckoo!
And they were fantastic. Sarah's voice was this sweet, powerful soprano of a needle embroidering the rich, contralto linen of Kit. I'd known they were musical; I'd heard each of them singing to herself occasionally, and I know Kit teaches music and plays the cello, and Sarah's husband makes musical instruments. But I'd never heard either of them perform, much less heard them perform together. They sang the song twice, once in what I guess is its original language and once in translation to modern English, and I wished they would have kept on singing forever. And after singing, they held hands a moment, and bowed. I've heard they were classmates once.
In the morning, Sarah brought in a priest-friend of hers to bless the fields and the orchards and the animals. The blessing of animals was a bit chaotic, since they all had to be brought to one central area, including the cats, who of course are difficult to herd. Most of the cats were brought over in carrier boxes, though Greg carried one cat in his arms. It was the black and white male I'd seen on the bed the day I cleaned the faculty rooms. He wore a harness, but rested easily in Greg's embrace, looking around at the other animals and people with mild, cattish curiosity. After he'd been blessed, Greg unhooked the collar and let the cat go and the animal leaped from him like water.
In the afternoon, we danced the Maypole. I've never danced around a maypole before, so I don't know how typical Kit's version of the ritual was, but I'm guessing she made a few innovations.
The pole itself was some thirty feet tall, like a wooden flagpole. The faculty carried it in from somewhere near the Mansion (I'm guessing it's stored in the basement there) and set it in a deep hole in the field in the center of campus. I'd never noticed the hole before; it's lined with stainless steel, and must be capped with something when not in use. Erecting the pole was a bit difficult; a few of us had to pull on the ribbons attached to the top to get it to stand upright and to keep it straight while Greg and Joy tamped soil down into the hole so the pole wouldn't wobble too badly. This part didn't feel much like a ritual, but most of us were there because we'd had lunch in the same field. By the time Kit was ready to explain what we would be doing, pretty much everyone was assembled.
Here is the way it worked.
The cloth ribbons tied to the top of the pole were of two colors, red and green, and maybe half an inch wide. There weren't enough for everybody, but yearlings got first dibs on dancing, if we wanted it, and everyone else helped make music. Kit handed out drums and tambourines and bells to everyone who didn't have their own instruments, but a lot of people around here play something. The red ribbons were for women, the green for men. Each dancer took a ribbon, the women facing one way, the men the other, so all the dancers stood in a circle facing each other in boy/girl pairs. Then we all stepped around our partners to the left, so that each woman drew her ribbon under a man's ribbon and everyone was facing a new partner, whom we passed on the right. This time, each man's ribbon went under a woman's. And then repeat, women going around and around the circle one way and men the other, weaving our ribbons together around the pole. I know it doesn't sound like much of a dance, but with the music going, and trying to keep the ribbon straight so it wouldn't tangle without running into anybody or tripping it had a fun zaniness to it. The first song was actually "Celebration,"by Kool and the Gang, which was a lot more pop-culturish and prosaic than I'd expected, and we all shouted "woo-hoo!" and the right parts and laughed a lot. Then the music morphed into an instrumental sort of Celtic thing with a lot of drums and the drums, and the repetitive steps, got me into a kind of weird head-space, half trance, so when we finally wrapped up the pole completely with ribbon and stood facing each other in about as small a circle as could be, I wasn't really thinking of anything, but I felt good, warm, sweaty, and limber, like I'd just run a long race. My mind felt clean.
But in giving us a dance where men and women moved differently, Kit had not defined "man" and "woman" biologically. Anyone could dance either part, simply by grabbing a red or a green ribbon. So at the end of the dance, I found myself facing a dude. It was J.C., a yearling from the Elk dorm, and as far as I know he's not gay or ambiguously gendered. I suppose he just wanted to know what it felt like to act like a woman for the afternoon. I won't lie, I felt kind of awkward about it, because of what came next, but I adapted.
It wasn't anything overtly sexual--there was no orgy, nothing like that--but the metaphor was quite clear. The person we ended up partnered with at the end of the dance was our partner for the rest of the night, to sit with at the feast and to work with; as pairs, we drew chores by lot. J.C. and I ended up setting the tables. At the feast we had to toast each other, tell everyone at our table exactly how awesome our partner was, in detail. J.C. and I had never talked before, so this was difficult, but we took it seriously and came up with something. I kept my eye out all evening for the best of him, so I'd have something to say, and I saw that he is detail oriented, funny, in a goofy and self-deprecating way, and of course there's his willingness to play with his own identity in a way not many men are brave enough, or light-hearted enough to do. I said as much when I toasted him. And he said some very nice things about me, all true, and I was touched and humbled that he'd noticed and cared enough to remember. It was a nice, warm feeling, about a man I hadn't ever thought or felt much about before. Literal love making, I suppose.
But before that, when we stood in the circle with the ribbons, there was the "five-fold kiss." It's a ritual blessing, it has nothing to do with actual kissing, but it was the awkward part. Again, I think Kit put her own innovation on something someone else originally created. To give the "kiss," you bless different parts of the other person's body with ritual phrases. You start with bending down to touch their feet, saying "blessed be thy feet, that walk upon the Earth."
At the knees; "blessed be thy knees, that hold you proud and strong,"
At the hips; "blessed be thy phallus, that dances to Her rhythm,"
At the chest; "blessed be thy heart, that dances to your own,"
And at the face; "blessed be thy voice, which thou mayst raise to justice."
Kit said that to bless a woman the third and fourth blessings are "blessed be thy yoni, the drum that beats Her rhythm," and "blessed be thy heart, the drum that beats your own." The word "yoni" is from Sanscrit, I think, and it means either vulva or vagina or both, I'm not sure. Since J.C. doesn't have one, I decided to use the male version of the blessing, his red ribbon notwithstanding. So, like I said, awkward. But not bad.
I did notice Kit didn't dance with us, or even help make music. None of the masters did, though they were all present, except Sarah. I asked Kit about this later, after we'd set the table and before the food came out. I asked her a lot of questions about the dance, and she answered most of them. I think she's the only one of the masters, except maybe Joy, who seems to have no interest in the sort of smart-ass obfuscation that the others like. I suppose there must be a reason for their reticence--I don't suppose you could still call them "mysteries" if everyone talked about everything all the time--but I really like that I can ask Kit questions and get clear answers. I don't feel stupid when I talk with her. About her non-participation, she said that, even symbolically, we shouldn't risk students and faculty becoming partners.
Kit wasn't the only person I had questions for, though. I like to understand what makes people tick, and I've noticed that if I ask questions, people usually answer them. Maybe I'm being nosy, but I've also noticed that some people seem to like being better understood. Some people tell me things without my even asking. I don't tell anybody else what they tell me.
So I wanted to talk to the priest. He'd stayed to watch the Maypole Dance, even though Sarah hadn't. What did he think of all of this? Was he comfortable with us here? If so, why, when Sarah wasn't?
"Sarah is still young in her faith," he suggested. "She wasn't raised in the Church, you know. I think maybe that makes her more strident. Of course, there are worse vices to have, in my opinion!"
"But you don't mind all this?" I asked.
"Mind? It's not my place to mind. Judgment is the Lord's, you know. Anyway, if I minded this, I'd have to mind half the congregation of any church! At least you all are trying to know God. You make certain mistakes, obviously, but we all make mistakes. I pray and trust the Lord God will forgive us and bring all honest seekers to the right path, in the end."
I could imagine Kit feeling very put out by what could be read as an arrogant condescension, but it was a good deal more charitable than anything I expect she'd say about him and his kind. She's angry, and while I think I know what she's angry about, I'm not sure I know why. Not all Wiccans are like that. In any case, at least he's reaching out a little. That's a lot less boring than any likely alternative.
"So, if Sarah is so...up-tight...why does she stay?" I asked. "Why doesn't she take her kids and go out somewhere where more people agree with her?"
The priest raised his eyebrows.
"I'm not sure there is such a place. Even the most decidedly Catholic neighborhoods have their share of people who are...not trying. This is not a particularly supportive time, for the religious. Anyway, she is entirely sincere about loving this land. And there is Charlie."
"Charlie?"
"The groundskeeper? He teaches ecology, too, I think. You know him?"
"Know him? He's my teacher!"
"Ah," the priest said, as though I had explained much to him. "He is hers, too."
[Next Post: Friday, May 6th: Healing]
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