Year 4: Part 7: Post 8: Yule

Note; in 2003, when these events happened, the solstice was on the 22nd, which was also the fourth night of Hanukah. This year, the solstice will not occur until the 21st, but I'm posting this as though today were the solstice, because it's close enough. -D.

I'm getting tired of this bitter-sweet parade of "lasts," seriously. Last spring, last summer, last fall, last Yule on campus...I've gotten used to celebrating Yule. I like it. I like it a lot. How am I going to greet the holiday season without it, next year?

I suppose you could say the winter solstice is going to happen everywhere, and that's true (at least everywhere in the northern hemisphere--in the southern hemisphere the solstice in December is for summer), but it's the community that makes it meaningful to me--just as long as we have we, as Dr. Seuss says.

I'm at the Yule celebration now, in the Great Hall. The whole room is full of decorations and the scent of good food, and bits of wrapping paper and gift bags and people in their pajamas--we changed into our pajamas this morning at Joy's request after  lot of us got wet and cold during a snow-ball fight on the lawn in front of the Mansion. After that, we came down here and all ran around the room, finding our gift bags, each with a student's name on it, each filled with chocolates, candy, and fruit and little "stocking stuffer" toys, and then we had breakfast--pancakes, freshly made, and each round and golden as the sun. That was hours ago, and a lot of people have crashed out, gone to sleep on the couches and out-of-the-way corners of the floor. I might take a nap, too. Tight, after dinner, we'll clear all this away and have dancing, those of us who are up for it.

When and where else am I ever going to have an opportunity to act like this much of a kid again?

Earlier in the day, me, Steve Bees, Raven G., Joanna, and Eddie were all sort of huddled together, working our collective way through a bag of nuts. We had a variety of nut-crackers, but none of them were working very well, and nuts kept escaping, slipping out of the crackers and popping up into the air and rolling away. We'd have to chase after them, not always with much success.

"This is why chocolates are inherently better," asserted Eddie. "They're easier to eat."
"Chocolate has to be processed, too," I pointed out. "It's just that we don't have to process them."
"Exactly. The processing makes them better. That's why processed foods are called 'value-added products.'"
"But don't you think this, with the nuts, is more fun?" said Raven.
"I can think of more fun things to do with nuts," asserted Joanna.
"Well, there is peanut butter," suggested Steve Bees.
"I wasn't talking about food," clarified Joanna.
"Neither was I," Steve replied.
"Ew," said Raven, "Steve, I don't want to think about you and peanut butter."
"What?" he protested. "Anybody on campus can talk openly about their bodies and sexual practices, but when I make one little crack, I get 'ew'?"
"I don't want to think bout your crack, either," said Raven, and just then the English walnut she was trying to open squeezed right out of the nut-cracker, shot straight up into the air, and fell, knocking over her hot chocolate. We all scrambled to get the spill cleaned up before it could stain anything.
"You'll shoot your eye out," sing-songed Joanna.

Alien Steve, the new Nora, and Evie, who is one of this year's one-hit wonders, we clustered beside us, and they jumped up to help deal with the chocolate spill, too.

"Merry Yule," said Alien Steve to Steve Bees, as we sat down again. The two Steves shook hands. Apparently they hadn't yet gotten a chance to interact today.
"Merry Yule to you, too," added Steve Bees, addressing Nora. "Those were some pancakes."
"Thanks. I think using yogurt, instead of milk, made a big difference."
"Well, something did. Yogurt, huh? Could I have the recipe?"
"Sure. I think it's still pinned up in the kitchen."
"How are you liking Yule?" Steve asked."You and Evie." Both Nora and Evie are yearlings.
"It's not new for me," asserted Evie. "I've been Wiccan for years. I like how you do it here, though."
"I like it," said Nora. "I didn't expect to."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Well, frankly I thought it would distract from the birth of Jesus. A fake Christmas."
"Historically speaking, it's the other way around," asserted Eddie.
"Yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me."

"I didn't know you were Christian," said Steve Bees.
"You never asked. But I'm not very Christian. I don't know. I shouldn't have worried about it. Maybe I'm just getting more sensitive because I feel like I'm the only Christian here."
"But you're not."
"I know."
"You know, sometimes Yule here feels more like Christmas to me than Christmas does?" said Steve. "It's like Christmas when I was a little kid."
"I feel the same way," I said.
"I don't," interjected Alien Steve, who is Jewish.
"Does this feel like Hanukah?" I asked.
"Of course. It is Hanukah. I don't know what you all mean about the feeling of this or that holiday. This is Hanukah, therefore, this is how Hanuka feels."
"How's your Hanuka going, then," asked Eddie.
"Oh, fine, fine.
"What you get?"

For answer, Alien Steve pulled something out of his gift bag and put it on his head, wearing an expression as though he really did not deserve such ridiculous indignity. It was a head-band with alien-type antennae on it. We all laughed.

"You totally had that coming, though," said Eddie.
"Did not. I take my identity very seriously. It's not a joke."
"It's because you take it so seriously that it is a joke," I told him.
"Your identity, my sexuality," commiserated the other Steve. "Nobody gives us any respect."
"I could make some comments," said the alien.
"But you won't, because I'm better at making comments than you are," warned Eddie. Alien Steve threw up one hand in a gesture of resignation.

Steve Bees and Raven made a run for more chocolate and brought back a handful of candy canes to share.

"Now, these are easy," said Eddie, sucking on the straight end of a candy cane, and we all giggled. He looked at his candy cane a moment with an odd expression. "Not everything I do or say is a sex joke, you know," he said.
"We know," said Raven. "If it were, we wouldn't be able to tease you."
"Just tease back," suggested Joanna.

"I've been wondering," said Steve Bees, "If Yule is like Christmas for children, what is Yule for grown-ups? Wicca isn't more childlike than Christianity, is it?"

"Maybe only children still notice the important part of the holiday," suggested Evie.
"Maybe the grown-up part is what you have to be a grown-up to notice?" suggested Eddie.

Last night, when we started our Yule party (and lit three Hanukah candles), it was raining, not hard, but it was a cold, spitting rain, and I worried we were going to have another wet walk up the mountain. By the time we all headed out, though, the rain was over and the sky clear and full of stars. The air had gotten very cold and I could feel the ground crunching under my feet, but in the moonless dark I thought I was feeling frozen grass, or maybe a little slush.

Then we got to the top of the mountain, all silent, and waited, shivering, for the dawn and the music of the hidden masters. And when the sun lifted clear of the horizon, it did so all golden and clear and glowing, shining out on a world covered in...snow!

Everything was white, all the ground, covered with about a half inch to an inch, all the shrubs and the twigs and branches of the trees and the windward side of all the tree trunks, all painted white with clinging snow and ice, the whole world golden and white spreading as far as we could see out over the hills and ridges to the horizon.

And that's when we came back down to campus and had the snowball fight.

Year 4: Part 6: Post 3: Standing Out.

Please note that in 2003, Rosh Hashanah occurred about a week earlier, relative to the standard calendar, which is why the holiday is referred to here as having just happened.

I just realized that I really didn’t know what Alien Steve has been studying. We spoke often in my second winter here, but not that much since then. And even when we did talk a lot, we were mostly discussing identity, belonging, and what it was like for him to be an alien, not mundane matters like school. So, today I asked him.

“I’m an alchemist,” he told me, as if I should have known. I should say that ‘alchemist,’ as we use the term here, doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with turning lead into gold. Instead, it’s about transforming the self so as to effect practical change in the world. Something like that.

“But you’re not working with Greg, are you?” Greg, as you may recall, is the alchemist on staff.

“No,” he told me. “I mean, I’ve talked with him. He’s helped me, some. But I’m working with Joy on magic and spirituality. They’re the only two areas I need.”

“But I didn’t think Joy was an alchemist.”

“She’s not, not especially, anyway. But there are alchemical dimensions to her magical practice.”

“Why alchemy?”

“Why not? What else is an alien going to do?”

“Ok, what does that mean?” I was confused.

“I’m different,” he told me, grinning a little. “Different people are disruptive by definition. Think about a dance, like a group dance, like square dancing? If there’s somebody in the dance, just one person, who is doing something different than anybody else, then the entire pattern changes. Do you see?”

“I suppose so.” I was imagining, not a dance, but a traffic pattern—somebody drives the wrong way and everyone swerves around and crashes.

“So, the question is, how do I insert myself in a system to effect the change I want?”

“How do you?”

“Be very careful about what I compromise about and what I don’t.”

“Oh?”

“Consider; Frederick Douglas became free, without compromise, before he even ran away from slavery. And he helped free all the slaves. Mahatma Gandhi also made himself free, without compromise, and helped free India. If you don’t move, everyone else has to.”

“I bet you don’t include Jesus on your list,” I teased him. Jesus was the first person I thought of adding to the list, but Alien Steve is slightly hostile to Christianity.”

“I’m not sure he existed.”

Steve is pagan, but with the subject up in my mind I remembered that he’s specifically Jewish pagan.

“Hey, you just had a holiday, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Rosh Hashanah. No really my thing, religiously speaking,” he told me. “I did go home to my parents’ for a big dinner.”

“Are they ok with your being pagan?”

“They don’t care. They’re both atheists.”

“Huh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. Then—“hey, there are a lot of Jewish people here, aren’t there?” There aren’t a lot who identify as Jewish now, though Steve does, are nine or ten students, plus Aaron, who were raised Jewish and sometimes show up at campus Seders and such. That’s about ten percent of the student body, which is much higher than the national average. “Is that odd? I thought most neopagans used to be Christian.”

“No, it’s the other way around. Most of Christianity used to be pagan. The rest was Jewish.”

“I knew that part. I mean now. Individuals. The holidays are so similar, it just seems weird to me, Jewish pagans.”

“It shouldn’t. European magic has deep ties to European Jewry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Remember Nicholas Flamel?”

“Was he real? And Jewish?” Nicholas Flamel, you may recall, was one of the couple who created the Sorcerer’s Stone in the Harry Potter book.

“Real, yes, Jewish, no. He was something like a clerk, but he endowed a couple of churches and hospitals and things. How did he do that, if he didn’t have some unusual way of making gold? He claimed to have created the philosopher’s stone. But when he was first figuring out alchemy, the first thing he did was to go to Spain to look for a Jewish scholar who could teach him the Qabalah. The first thing that occurred to him.”

“Huh.”

“I mean, if you think about it, we, too, are different and so change the world.”

Year 4: Part 5: Post 7: Interlude

Hi, Daniel-of-2016 here, and I'm going to do something unusual. This blog is due for an interlude, but because I skipped a week a while back, there's an "episode" I wanted to cover before Mabon that I haven't gotten to yet. Normally when this happens, I just post whatever it is after the holiday, with a note if necessary, but I don't want to do that this time because part of my holiday post depends on your having read this episode first. So, for the first time ever, I'm basically skipping an interlude. I don't have very much to say right now, anyway. We're all fine. Carly just started pre-school, three days a week. It's quiet around here without her. Note that  the following events occurred on a Thursday. -- D.

For the better part of four years I have occasionally daydreamed about doing violence to my teacher--as in "he wants me to do what? I'm gonna kill him!"

Today I actually came close.

After Healer's Health class, I went to lunch, like normal. The weather was nice and cool and mostly cloudy. I think it'll rain later. The trees are just starting to turn. I'd been planning to eat outside, but Eddie and Alien Steve saw me and called me over and I ended up eating with them. Afterwards, on my way out, Charlie ambushed me. He'd been waiting for me just outside the Dinning Hall. When I passed, he stepped out and asked me to walk with him. He had something to tell me.

Charlie had never acted like that with me before--he seemed very serious and uncomfortable. He wouldn't look me in the face. Frankly, he scared me. But he wouldn't tell me what he wanted to talk to me about. As we walked along through the maple corridors he actually made small talk, asking me about my classes and my family and whether my nephew would come to campus for Mabon again this year. When we got to the Martin House, I stopped him and insisted he come out with it. He faced me.

"Daniel," he told me, "I've got some bad news. The land trust had to raise some money and they've approved a small timber sale. Your 'spot' in the woods is included. I'm sorry."

I felt all the blood drain from my face. I turned away and could not speak. I didn't know how to respond. My spot! My place in the woods! My home!

"Did you hear me?" Charlie asked. "I said they're going to cut your trees down. The spot you've been living in for a year is going to be gone."

"I don't believe it," I mumbled. And then, in a very different tone of voice, "I don't believe it. My spot is on our side of the boundary! Anyway, the land trust wouldn't do that." I looked at Charlie. He was having trouble keeping a straight face and not entirely succeeding. "You lied to me! What the hell?"

Charlie shifted his stance, subtly readying himself for self-defense the way Karen taught her senior students. He thought I was going to hit him. And I might have, if his defensive posture hadn't made me think. My hands had made fists of themselves. I turned away.

"Why did you lie to me?" I asked.

"It was necessary," he said, calmly. "But it won't be again. You have my vote to graduate."

"This was a test?"

"Almost four years ago, you said you want what I have. The only thing I really have is love--and I know of only one way to check if you have it, too. You have my vote. I'm sorry it had to hurt. I won't lie t you again."

"I don't know what to say," I told him. I didn't want to hit him anymore, but I couldn't just absorb something like that as if it were nothing. For a moment I'd thought he was screwing with me. I couldn't get that feeling out of my head. I looked over at him again, unable to instantly forgive him, and I saw the most extraordinary sadness on his face, just for a moment. It was a subtle thing, something in his eyes. The rest of his face did not move.

"For horticulture today," he told me, "survey some of the forest trails for exotics. You don't have to speak to anyone, if you don't want to."

He meant, I'm sure, that I don't have to speak to him.

Year 4: Part 5: Post 4: Living on Earth

I've never talked about Dan much, except to insist that he isn't me. We have the same first name, where the same age, and we've both been here three years and counting. But there, I like to insist, the resemblance ends, because he's always putting his foot in his mouth.

Except, I suppose, so am I.

Anyway, over the past several years he's matured into a talented musician. A group of us went to the Great Hall the other night to watch him play. It wasn't an official Event, but it didn't need to be. He just checked to see that nothing else was scheduled and put the word out that he planned to play. Maybe fifty of us showed up, which is enough to make a pretty good crowd in that room, which isn't all that large as performance venues go.

He played the cello and he did it wonderfully, with skill and passion and his longish, black hair flopping all over the place, his face starting to shine with sweat from concentration and effort. I did not recognize most of the songs, and many of them were classical pieces, which I don't normally listen to, but he was really good and it was fun just watching someone I know be talented.

He played for about an hour, and afterwards most of the crowd meandered away, draining slowly out of the room with much chatter and congratulations of Dan, off to do homework or something. A couple of us stayed behind to chat while Dan drank a bottle of water and kind of recovered.

By chance, all of us were part of this year's graduating group. Me and Dan, of course, plus Joanna and Raven G. from our group of yearlings, and Space Alien Steve and Eddie, who are in their third year, and Steve Bees in his second. Plus Jutta, who is a yearling and a one-hit-wonder, as we say.

Her name is pronounced "Yoo ta." It's German. She isn't, except by descent.

Anyway, we all sort of collected on the couches. Jutta was asking Steve why people call him Space Alien, which we used to do behind his back, but then we found out that he knew and didn't mind, so we dropped the pretense.

"Because I used to think I was a space alien," he explained.

"Used to?" I asked. He shrugged.

"Mostly used to," he amended. We all laughed, because of the way he said it.

"What changed?" I asked. This was big news. I mean, I haven't hung out with Alien Steve much since my second winter here, but his alien status was so much a part of him. We used to have these long conversations about it, late into the night, about identity and possibility and the definition of truth. And now he was saying "never mind?"

"Well, I still think I could be one," he said,"and I still feel like an alien, but...I guess I'm not sure the answer's so simple anymore."

"Ok, but I'm still a dude, ok?" put in Eddie, and we all laughed again. Eddie's masculinity was another part of those conversations.

"I don't get what's so simple about space aliens, though," said Raven, and held out her hand for the water bottle so she could have a sip. "You know, I wish we had the stove on so we could make chocolate or tea."

"With wintergreen!" said Eddie, because that's what we drank that winter, wintergreen and chocolate.

"You could start the stove, if you want," said Dan.

"No, she can't," said Joanna. It was almost eighty degrees inside. The day had been hot, and while the evening was cooling outdoors, the Great Hall hadn't caught up yet--not with fifty people and their body heat in it until recently.

"I don't get the part about space aliens at all, honestly," said the other Steve, Steve Bees, who wasn't there for those conversations.

"I've always felt like an alien," explained Alien Steve, "so I just assumed that I was one."

"Literally?" asked Jutta.

"Yes, literally."

"But that's impossible."

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is."

"How do you know?"

There followed a long and involved discussion about speed-of-light travel and resource limitations and whether science could legitimately say anything was impossible, anyway. Much shouting and giggling occurred.

"Forget chocolate," said Raven, "you guys need some pot."

"Except evidently we don't," Joanna told her.

"Anyway. Aliens and simplicity," said Raven.

"I feel like an alien so I thought I was one. That's simple."

"Overcoming the speed of light barrier, etc., etc., isn't."

"Yes, it is," Steve told her. "It's not unreasonable to suppose that a discovery we haven't made yet makes interstellar travel feasible. I have no idea if such a discovery is out there to be made, but I can't prove it isn't, and lots of things that used to seem impossible are possible now. Expanding possibilities are an established feature of our reality. But to feel alien and not really be? What does it mean if I can't tell if I'm human or not? Do I belong and not know it? How is that possible? Or am I alien in some other way, and if so, what way? What does it mean to be human? All of that. That's complicated."

"Ok, said Raven."Except I still wish I could get you high."

"I'm going to miss all you people," said the other Steve, Steve Bees. 

Year 4: Part 2: Post 11: Spirituality

"What is spirituality?" asked Rena at breakfast. She's one of the yearlings. She and, obviously, I, were sitting with Steve Bees, Alien Steve, Greg, Charlie, Allen, Joy, and Karen--as far as I know, the group had assembled by chance. I'm not sure if she asked her question because most of the masters happened to be sitting there, or if that, too,was coincidence. She seemed to be addressing the group at large.

"Who are you asking?" asked Allen. "Because you'll get a different answer from each of us."

"Really? Why?"

"Because we don't all agree."

"How can you run a school if you don't agree on what one of the degree criteria even means? How do you even know it should be a degree criterion?"

I thought that was a very good question. So did Allen, who chuckled. He was leaning forward to talk to her around Charlie, who sat between them, trying to stay out of the way and looking increasingly irritated.

"We all agree that spirituality is important, even though we don't all agree on what it is," explained Allen.

"That's screwy. No offense," said Rena, scowling. A couple of professorial eyebrows went up. They aren't used to being questioned that way, but they held their peace.

"No, it isn't," said Alien Steve. "They don't agree on a singular athletic pursuit or a single type of craft. What's the difference?"

"The difference," explained Rena, "is that they do agree on what athletics is. Don't you? All the different options are means to the same end--physical health and skill."

"And happiness and spiritual attainment," put in Greg. "Physicality is a way in, for some."

Rena looked at him, confused, but didn't speak.

"I still don't see the difference," said Steve. "Spirituality is the same way. There is a common goal. To improve ourselves and to learn to love better."

"Andy would have said it differently," I said. "He'd have said the point of spirituality was to get in touch with God." Actually, Andy would say that the point of spirituality is Jesus. He tends to take "Jesus is the answer" quite literally by answering an awful lot of questions simply "Jesus."

"Well, he was wrong," asserted Steve. "Andy has a good heart, but he gets bogged down in monotheism a lot."

"Who's Andy?" asked Rena.

"He graduated when you came in," explained the other Steve, Steve Bees. "He's extremely Christian. So am I."

"But you're not that kind of Christian," said Alien Steve. Steve Bees chuckled and agreed.

"What are you?" asked Rena, of the Alien.

"Hebrew pagan."

"Really? So am I!"

"Oh, wow! How did you--? We'll talk later. Anyway, I don't think Andy was as different from the rest of us as he liked to think."

"Curious," said Greg. "I disagree with both of you."

"About Andy?"

"About religion."

"You don't believe in God, right? You're Buddhist." This was Rena again.

"There are Buddhists who do, but I am agnostic. Spirituality as I understand it does not require a God, as such. Also, I don't believe in self-improvement. I don't believe in the self."

"Who shouts when you hit your thumb with a hammer?" asked Charlie.

"Some illusions are very convincing."

"Ok, who here believes what?" asked Rena, pointing her finger briefly at all the masters at the table. "What is spirituality? What is the point of spiritual practice?"

"To see and understand the universe as it is, not as we hope it to be," announced Charlie, without hesitation.

"That's close to what I think," said Allen. "Except I'm more interested in the process of thought and perception than you are. I think you are more focused on what we see and understand than how."  By "you" he meant Charlie, who nodded."

"I'd agree with Charlie," said Greg, who was the next one down from Allen. "Except my process also addresses the process of the mind, rather than its content."

"I disagree with Charlie," asserted Joy. "The truth is critically important, of course, but the truth--of universal love--only appears when we realize it. Otherwise, it's elusive. Charlie, you might say we need a search image." He grunted in acknowledgement. He has talked about how nests and tracks and so forth usually only become visible once you start looking for them. "So I entrain with the archetypes in order to teach my mind to recognize the truth."

Karen was the only one left. She did not initially speak.

"You agree with Greg, right?" guessed Rena. "You're both Buddhists."

"I have learned a great deal from Greg," said Karen, so softly I could barely hear her from my end of the table. "We share the same process, but not the same reason. He believes in reincarnation. I do not."

"Now that that's settled," said Charlie, "we should all change what we think, to keep them guessing." The others all laughed.

"I can't change what I think on purpose," protested Allen. "I can't even pretend to. I can change how I think, but I don't want to right now."

"What about you," asked Reina, of Steve Bees and I.

Neither of us spoke for a bit. We were thinking. Finally I told her the story of the bird in church the other day, and my reaction to it.

"See, I would have watched the bird," said Steve.

Year 4: Part 2: Post 6: Fools in April

We've just had April Fool's Day. I forget whether I've mentioned it before, but the first of April is interesting around here because the community encompasses not one but several ideas about what it means.

I don't want to make this sound like a bigger deal than it is. Most of us just go about our business--it isn't a major school holiday or anything, just a few people playing pranks or doing other things, just like anywhere else. Usually one or two of the pranks are funny enough--or disastrous enough--that the whole campus finds out and everybody talks about it for days. Most pass ignored except by those most immediately involved.

My second year, Space Alien Steve was a yearling, and rebelled against the campus dietary choices by keeping his own stash of Frosted Lucky Charms. The cereal became kind of A Thing with him, he refused to share, and people started teasing him about it. It all came to a head on April 1st that year when someone--we never found out who--stole his box of Lucky Charms and removed all the marshmallows, then replaced the box in its spot on his dresser. Suspecting nothing, Steve came to breakfast, box in hand, poured himself a big bowl, and proceeded to freak out. He stood up in the middle of breakfast and started shouting "where are my marshmallows? Who took my marshmallows? Bring back my marshmallows!" But in his very melodrama it was obvious that on some level he appreciated the joke. He was making a clown of himself. And the marshmallows turned out to be hidden in an otherwise empty milk pitcher on his table, a nice touch, since none of us were ever able to figure out how it happened. He kept talking about his marshmallows, trying to track down the guilty party, for days. It was great.

Last year someone tried to play a prank on Andy--I forget what it was, other than that it was classic April Fools in that it involved someone lying to him and then saying "April Fools!" when he reacted. That did not go so well. Andy was completely taken in by the lie and it really upset him, and then when he found out it was a joke he actually started to cry. The thing is, we all basically like Andy, but Andy himself doesn't know it or can't believe it. He is estranged from his surviving family and he lost all his old friends during his long years of using drugs. I guess, on some level he's convinced he's going to be rejected again, so he takes any hint of disrespect very personally. And I know he always felt very self-conscious as one of the few Christians in the community. The prankster hadn't realized that and felt just awful afterwards.

Anyway, but, as I said, pranks aren't the only thing that happens here on this day. Ideas about what the First of April means include:

• Pranks are ok all day
• Pranks before noon confer good luck, but playing pranks after noon is bad luck
• It's bad luck for the victim to not find the prank funny
• Pranks are never ok, and the whole tradition is stupid
• The tradition is a remnant of paleolithic Laughing Festivals and so the day is a good time for jokes of all sorts
• The tradition goes back to making fun of people who were slow to accept the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century
• The tradition goes back to a form of Saturnalia in France in the 13th century, which was eventually suppressed by the Catholic Church, and is therefor a good time for drinking and raucous behavior
• The tradition is Christian in origin
• The tradition is pagan in origin
• The tradition is actually part of Ostar
• The tradition is actually part of Beltane

Greg says that most of these ideas are at least partially based on misunderstandings of history and shakes his head at it, but he makes no serious attempt to intervene.

"Far be it from me to enforce a singular, approved truth," he says.

This year he said something different, speculating at breakfast that the day may be called "April Fools'" because so many people behaved foolishly on it. I've heard he was considering doing a talk on the history of the day to try to set the record straight, but gave it up as a lost cause--in any case, he seemed to be in A Mood over it.

Allen, who was sitting at the same table with us--I think he and Greg were deliberately eating together, whereas the rest of us were at that particular table only incidentally--seemed to be in a different kind of mood.

"That's not what I think of," he told Greg, in an odd, distracted voice. He was swirling around a cup of something, milk or coffee, I think, and looking at it as though he expected something important to rise from its depths.

"Oh?" said Greg.

"You remember the idea that the fools of the Middle Ages were actually autistic, right?"

"Yeah, sure. The Holy Fools of Russia."

"April is also Autism Awareness month," Allen explained, still in an odd voice.