Part 8: Post 11: What's Eating Rick

The babies, as rick called them, were good. The only thing I didn't like about the meal was how crowded it was--there are a lot of people back on campus now, and the Great Hall is really too small to work as a dining space for all of us now. Some of the dorms have gone back to eating separately, and breakfast, when we all have to eat together, is chaotic. I'm kind of missing the peace and quiet. Sometimes I want all these people to go away again, even though they are my friends.

Speaking of friends, Rick has gone right on with his bad mood. It's not like he's being an ass in any obvious way, but there's an edge to him that makes ordinary statements sound combative. He doesn't smile as much as he should.

"So, do you want to tell me about what's wrong?" I asked him, as we were getting dressed to go out tracking.

"Who said anything is wrong?" he asked me, frowning.

"I did. You're being a bit of an ass lately."

"Sorry."

"So? Why?"

"Why?" he reiterated, caustically. He had turned away from me and was examining the leave of a potted avocado. "Do you think I'll feel better if I just share my troubles?"

Rick is one of those people who really prefers to think things through on his own. So am I, usually, but we both know people who aren't, and I bet I'm not the first person to press him to talk.

"No," I told him, bluntly. "I expect I'll feel better if you tell me why you've been an ass. Anyway, I might be able to help, depending on what the problem is." I sat down in one of the wicker chairs in the Green Room and took off one of my layers of uniform shirts to wait.

"It's kind of stupid," he warned me, still

"Well, I can't help with that, you'll need to go to one of the masters or something."

That made Rick laugh, finally, and he took off his outer layer and sat down in the other chair.

"Well, in less than two weeks I'm going to start living outside. You know that, right?"

"I know," I reminded him. He laughed again. Of course I know, I've been talking with him about it for months.

Sleeping Outdoors

"Well, I'm nervous."

"Is that all?"

"All?" he looked at me, "I'm going to have to sleep outside on more nights than not, in this kind of clothing, no synthetic anything, and eat only the food I've gathered and stored myself. If mice get into my cache in the basement or I can't shoot enough squirrels I'll either starve or I fail Charlie. I should think that's enough!"

"Yeah, ok," I conceded, "I guess that's enough."

"And the worst part," he continued, quietly, "is that I don't know for sure I can do it. I don't mean morally, I know I've got the will to, I mean practically. What if it gets colder than I expected? What if I'm not prepared? If I can't keep myself warm enough? I know I'll be uncomfortable sometimes, I'm ok with that, but I don't know the difference between uncomfortable and in danger. What does it feel like when you start to freeze to death?"

He met my eyes for a moment and he really did look frightened. I thought for a moment.

"Why don't you ask?" I suggested.

"What?"

"Ask what the early stages of hypothermia feel like. Ask Sharon for the number of the ally who teaches the Wilderness First Responder classes and ask. And Andy had chronic hypothermia last year. You can ask him what that felt like."

"Whoa," said Rick, surprised, I suppose, that he hadn't thought of it himself.

"You could also," I began, "start sleeping outside early. I mean, if you go sleep outside now, you can come in if you get really cold. Charlie won't mind. I'm not even sure he's on campus right now. So you won't have to worry about it. And if you stay out and you're fine, then you'll know that on nights like that when you feel like that you'll be fine."

"Sounds sound."

"I mean, the whole point is you want to know what it's like to be in the paleolithic, right? But paleolithic people would have known what kind of night they could get through. They wouldn't do this for the first time as adults."

"You're right."

I nodded a little. I was trying not to get all high and mighty, since I was really surprised that I'd been able to talk him down and it was giving me a bit of an ego boost. The thing about real paleolithic people, though, he's been talking a lot about that over the last few months. That's one of the standards Charlie uses. Rick doesn't have to make all his own tools and equipment and he doesn't have to limit himself to materials available here, on campus because, as Charlie says, paleolithic peoples traded for goods from other regions and they had some division of labor within their societies so not everyone had to do everything. So he'd had to learn how to make clothing from animal hides, but mostly he can wear his wool school uniform. He has to know how to make his tools, but mostly he'll use his steel-bladed deer knife and shoot steel-pointed hunting arrows. He has to learn how to make an animal-proof food cache, but most of his food is in the Dining Hall basement next to ours. I was just applying the same logic.

"And I really thought you couldn't do anything about it," he said, wonderingly. I said nothing. "So, are you ready to go tracking?" he asked, then, in a very different voice.

"Sure, gimme a minute." And I finished lacing my boots, put my sweater back on, then my second uniform shirt, my cowl on over that (have you ever worn a cowl? It's a hood that covers your neck and shoulders and keeps snow from falling down your neck. They're incredibly practical) and then my cloak on over that, then my gloves and mittens.

I own a snow suit. It's blue and synthetic and waterproof, and its warmer and lighter than all my wool and wool-linen blend layers. But, anymore, it feels funny, and of course this way I don't need to change my clothes for dinner. It's only moments like this, when I kind of notice what I'm doing, that I remember I've been living for nearly a year in a truly strange place and living in a way that would shock my other friends and family as extreme or even deprived.

The rest of the time my life just seems normal.

[Next Post: Monday, January 27th: Calling Your Name]

Part 8: Post 10: Having Kids for Dinner

"We're eating babies for dinner," commented Rick, as he moved his black bishop.

"Excuse me?" I asked. Ollie looked up from his book in at least mild surprise.

"Lambs and kids," Rick explained. "A group of them were born a few weeks ago? Three lambs and two kids didn't make it."

"Oh, that's sad," said Ollie, mildly. "The same thing happened last year."

"So now we're eating them?" I asked. I moved my own bishop, and suddenly realized I was going to lose the game. I didn't know how, yet, but I just had that feeling.

"Waste not, want not," said Rick, shrugging, taking my bishop.

"Wait, I thought they gave birth in April? They did last year, right? Dern it, that was my bishop!"

"It sure wasn't mine," Rick told me, smiling.

"'Dern it'? You said 'dern it'?" Ollie asked me, smiling. "You're getting to sound like me."

"Not cursing is contagious. Anyway, what about April?"

"You drank milk last February, didn't you? Where did you think it came from?" Rick said.

"From goats and sheep? What, I don't know these things work."

Rick laughed at me, a sort of a grunt of a laugh. He was in a bad mood, for whatever reason, and I didn't appreciate his jeering. Or his winning the game. I moved a pawn. He took it. Of course, I knew we hadn't had any fresh milk for over three months, I just hadn't stopped to think about the logistics of dairy production. I felt like an idiot. I still didn't understand about April, though. Ollie took pity on me and explained.

"Goats can wean at eight weeks, sheep in five, so they breed some of the ewes and does in August so they'll give birth at the beginning of January so we can start getting milk when the new students get here. But the mortality rate is always high, and anyway, after a few months production drops off a lot. So they have a second kidding and lambing in April to freshen more milkers and produce most of our slaughter animals for the fall."

"You know what I don't understand?" said Rick, while I tried a daring raid on his king with my castle. "Why don't they just routinely slaughter the January lambs and kids in January? Then we wouldn't have to heat the barns, we wouldn't need as much hay, and we'd get more milk for ourselves?" He looked back over the board for a moment and took my castle with his bishop. He didn't say so, but he'd put me in check. I looked at the board for a while and then resigned.

"You don't think the lambs and kids should have some time to live?" asked Ollie. He'd put his book down and was looking at the board. He'd asked to play the winner. He is a lot better at chess than I am.

"Why?" Rick replied, a bit exasperated. "Plenty of newborn animals die. If they were wild, a coyote might take them, or a bobcat. Or me, if I were hungry enough. What's the difference? The farmers thin out newborn plants, no problem."

"I forgot," said Ollie, starting to catch Rick's bad mood, "Charlie teaches you to be natural and heartless, doesn't he?" Rick and I locked eyes with each other a moment. We didn't have to say anything. We both wear the deer knife, after all. He opened his mouth to reply, and I cut him off before he could say something he might regret later.

"Well, what is the difference, Ollie?" I asked. "Why is human predation different than animal predation? Why is culling a newborn animal different than thinning out a newly sprouted plant?"

Ollie sat back in his chair, the intellectual problem calming him and engaging his attention.

"I don't know," he began. "I suppose the plant/animal thing is pure bias on our part." He was quiet for a few minutes. "Unless it has something to do with the organism's own survival strategy? Plants have more offspring than animals do, so maybe the individual plant offspring are less important?" He frowned. "But applying human values to animals and plants is screwy. I'm not sure there's any way to do it that makes sense. I suppose, we have to look at as--maybe that's at least why human predation is different? Either way a lamb dies, but when a human does it the act comes under the jurisdiction of our morality?"

I thought I knew what he meant, and I thought maybe it was a good answer, but I don't think Rick did.

"But you're forgetting that half the babies die anyway," he said.

"But we don't kill them," replied Ollie.

"Yes, we do!" insisted Rick. "We kill them when we decide to make them be born in January!"

"No, we don't. We put them at risk, but we try to save them."

"But it isn't a surprise that we eat babies, is it? If the farm were a separate business, the loss of the January lambs and kids would be built into the business plan. We're culpable."

"Excuse me?" I interjected, "but, why are you two arguing about this? Do either of you actually disagree with the way we manage the farm animals?"

They both blinked.

"No, I don't disagree," said Rick. "I just think it would be simpler if we slaughtered them ourselves."

"That's true, that is where you started," said Ollie. "So why were you arguing that it's a bad thing now?"

"I'm not arguing that it's bad. I'm culpable for everything I do. I just want to acknowledge it."

"Well, I acknowledge that, to the extent that I'm involved in the decision at all, I am culpable for the deaths of these animals, but I do not think that putting an animal at risk of dying is the same thing, morally, as killing it." Ollie may have been offering an olive branch. Or, he might not. Arguing isn't hostility for him, it's a way to connect, a way to have a true meeting of the minds.

Ordinarily, I agree with him. Ordinarily, Rick agrees with him. Rational argument isn't the same thing as fighting. I've learned that here. But however rational Rick was being, he was also in a foul mood. And, however rational his words, I kind of thought the combative subtext needed to take a break. But--how to say so?

The others were heading into the Bird Room for dinner, a buffet tonight. I could indeed smell meat cooking, an unusual thing here, even in winter.

"Well, shall, we eat, gentlemen?" I supplied

Part 8: Post 9: A Winter's Conversation

“Well, it’s National White People Think About Race Day,” said Jahred, cynically. He is white, by the way.

“What?” I asked, startled. A group of us were sitting around the Great Hall. It was snowing outside, hard but very pretty, and I had been reading while the others played cards or talked. Joanna was telling one of the Ravens about her tarot deck while Willa looked on. This was just the other day.

“It’s Martin Luther King Day,” explained Jahred.

“Is it?” asked Ollie. “It’s what comes of not watching TV, I suppose. Not knowing.”

“And not being in high school,” I added. “No day off, and no thematically related lessons.”

“Exactly,” said Jahred, leaning forward, engaged. “No teachers to tell you to think about race, this day, as if they really thought it was important. But they don’t talk about it the rest of the year.”

“Martin Luther King Jr. has always been a relatively safe black man,” commented Greg, dryly. “Since he died.”

“Like Jesus,” said Andy.

“Huh?” said I. “Jesus wasn’t black, was he?”

“You’re talking like a pagan now!” crowed Joanna. “You said ‘was,’ not ‘is’!” I ignored her. The others ignored me. Ollie put down his cards.

“You’re right,” he told Andy. “Jesus was a radical, as was Martin Luther King, His follower. Neither of them were easy to deal with or "safe" politically. They weren’t domesticated. We forget that about them. I didn’t know you thought about that sort of thing.”

“I didn’t used to,” Andy replied.

"Tarot of the Cat People" Card

“Not thinking about race is a privilege of white people,” put in Greg, maybe steering the conversation back, trying to deny us that privilege. Or maybe he was just saying whatever came into his head. He didn’t look like he was in teaching mode. He looked casual, almost sleepy, with his feet curled up into his robes, his head leaning against his pale brown fist. I could see the falling snow reflected in his glasses when I looked at him.

“We are all white here,” said Jim, looking around. “Why?”

“Hey!” objected Oak, who looks, maybe, Indian. I mean, from India. I’ve never asked, though.

“You don’t count. You’re adopted,” Jim declared. Oak looked dumbfounded. “I mean, why don’t non-white people come here? As students, I mean.” He nodded at Greg, who never was a student, acknowledging him. “What about this place doesn’t attract people of color?”

“We do, in fact, have some black students,” pointed out Ollie. “Not many, but there aren’t very many black people in college, right? Maybe we just aren’t any different, in that respect, than any other school?”

Jim shook his head.

“Nationally, almost 12 percent of college students are black. Our student body is 102 people, and we have four black students. That’s low. Plus Hispanics, Asians...I haven't counted it all up.”

“Well, most of us are Wiccan,” volunteered Raven. “Are there any black Wiccans?”

“Of course there are black Wiccans!” declared Willa. “Two of them go here!”

“I didn’t mean are there any, I meant there aren’t very many. Aren’t most black pagans into Vodou  or Santeria?”

“I thought Santeria was a form of Christianity? They worship the saints.” Joanna frowned a little as she said it.

“What is Santeria?” asked Andy.

“It is not Christianity,” asserted Ollie. “Even the Catholics don’t worship saints. They venerate them.”

“’Venerate’ from ‘Venus,’ same as ‘venereal,’” giggled Willa. “The original sacredness!”

“Whatever you say,” said Ollie. Will stopped giggling and frowned.

“In any case,” added Willa, “no, not all black pagans are in the African diaspora religions. Religion isn’t about skin color. You can be in whatever religion you want to be, however the gods call you.”

“You can’t always tell, anyway,” said Oak. “I’m mostly Pakistani, but my great-grandfather was British, or maybe Scottish. I’ve always thought that’s why Celtic Wicca appealed to me.” Raven was nodding.

“You can’t tell,” she affirmed. “And anyway, the color you are now might not be the color you were in a past life. I’m mostly Scandinavian, but I have strong past-life memories of being Greek. Even when I was being raised Christian, I was always fascinated by the Greek gods and goddesses. And, you know, there are people here who feel Celtic, or who feel Native American, no matter what their color. It’s probably all past-life stuff.”

“Does that even make sense?” questioned Ollie. “You’re supposing that race is directly linked to religious affiliation, and if it doesn’t seem to be, you must have a distant ancestor or a past life!”

“That isn’t what I meant!”

“Why can’t we all just focus on finding the truth,” asked Andy. “The truth is color-blind.” But everyone ignored him.

“Do you think religious affiliation should be color-blind?” Greg asked. “Should everyone be able to adopt Native American traditions, for example?”

“Why not?” said Raven. “You teach Buddhism to people whose ancestry isn’t Japanese.”

“Buddhism wanders. The Japanese do not own it. Anyway, I don’t think Japan has anything to worry about from imperialism.” Greg smiled a little as he said it. That smile the only time I've ever seen him express any hint of pride in Japan as a world power. It seemed odd, coming from him.

“I think it’s ok for a white person to become a…"Joanna paused for a moment, thinking, "--whatever you call someone with Native American beliefs, or a Vodouisant, or whatever else, but you’ve got to really do it. Join the tribe, or whatever else, whatever that tradition demands that you do. Hanging a dream catcher on your rear-view mirror isn’t a religion.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Ollie. “I wouldn’t like it if someone were running around saying

Rose Hips in Snow

they were Christian and they’d never been baptized.”

“Or didn’t really believe,” added Andy. “Except that’s all you have to do, is believe. Christianity isn’t for saints. Not particularly.”

“You know whose birthday is on the same day as King’s?” asked Jim. “Dian Fossey. Now there is another subsequently domesticated martyr.”

I looked out the window. The snow was piling up on the porch railing, covering the rose bushes, making them soft, white humps. I was drinking white cedar tea. It smelled good.

Part 8: Post 8: Considering Buddhism

We're only a few weeks away from Brigit, now--in a little over two weeks, I'll have been here a year!

Preparations are afoot. Some of them I expected. For example, a lot of prospective students are coming in now, sometimes two or three a day. They just happen to come in, just as Sharon said. It's one of the weird, and weirdly useful, coincidences of this place that they do it so often right before the new school year starts. I always know what they're doing here--they have a certain kind of immediately recognizable confusion. I really wish I could talk to them, because I remember what it's like to be new, but for the same reason I mostly ignore them, just like all the strange people in the Harry Potter robes ignored me when I first got here.

We're cleaning and repairing things, too, getting the Mansion and the Dining Hall ready for new people. We're even dusting light bulbs and so forth. And gradually more and more people are coming back. 


But there are other things I hadn't thought about. Like whether we're going to keep going to zazen. It's required for yearlings, optional for everybody else. I knew that. I figured I'd just complete my year and then decide what I wanted to do. I figured it would feel strange to have the option, but I'd get over the strangeness. But it turns out, there's more to the decision than that.

Greg talked to us about it this morning. I forget if I've said so, but we don't just sit zazen during morning meditation. On Fridays we have shortened zazen sessions and Greg does short lectures, called dharma talks. In the beginning, he mostly talked about the history and basic tenets of Buddhism, but he's also talked about different types of Buddhism, details of Zen teaching, and a little about his own experience. Today he talked about why we meditate, and why we might or might not want to keep doing it. He said he wants us to have a few weeks to make our decision, though as far as I know we don't have to finalize our decisions by Brigid anyway. I remember senior students have come and gone all year long. It's not all or nothing thing.

Anyway.

"Why do you meditate?" He asked.

"To clarify our minds."

"To achieve enlightenment."

"To reduce suffering."

"Because you tell us to." That was me, my answer. Everyone looked at me. "What? I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to tell us...." Greg smiled.

"I wasn't looking for a specific right answer," Greg commented, "but I suspect Daniel answered a different question than the rest of you. Daniel said why he meditates, but you others said why one meditates, right?" Nobody said anything, and Greg continued. "But that is a point I wanted to get to--what question you're trying to answer. For example, Andy, what would you say is the answer? I mean, outside of the context of this room and what we do here, fill in the blank; 'blank' is the answer."

"Jesus," he answered, promptly.

"And Joanna, what do you think of his answer?"

"Honestly?" Joanna looked nervous.

"Of course," said Greg.

"I think it's wrong. That's not the answer. Not for me, anyway. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell or Jesus, or any of that. But if being Christian makes Andy happy, then maybe it's right for him."

"I'm guessing that sounds strange to you, Andy?" Greg asked.

"Me? I'm not in any position to judge."

Greg rolled his eyes.

"Yes, I'm sure we're all very non-judgmental here" he said. "We've established that. Now, can we please start talking about the judgments we actually do make? No one is going to die of it, I promise."

There was a little titter of laughter. Andy smiled nervously and tried again.

"Well, according to the Bible, Jesus said 'nobody gets to the Father except through Me.'  So that means you can't get to Heaven without believing in Jesus. You go to Hell instead. I don't want anyone to go to Hell." He paused for a minute and then turned to Joanna. "So Jesus is the answer. Whether you believe in him yet or not. I'm sorry, Joanna, I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the truth."

"But I don't believe in any of that!" she reiterated.

"I didn't believe in homelessness," Any said, "but I went there anyway."

"So Jesus is the answer. What is the question?" asked Greg.

"How to get to Heaven," Andy answered promptly. "And how to avoid Hell."

"Joanna, what is your question?"

"How to be happy," Joanna told Greg. "How to treat other people well."

"You see what different worlds we live in?" Greg commented, "or, seem to live in, anyway. Without the delusion of the conditioned mind, perhaps we could all experience the real world together? But of course, that is my Zen Buddhist conditioning talking." He almost chuckled a little, a kind of bubbly smile. "And of course, the first Buddhists were not particularly Zen about it. Buddhism arose in a cultural context where people not only believed in heavens and hells and eternity, they believed that throughout eternity souls could cycle through the various heavens and hells and Earths in the middle. There were things they thought they could do to assure themselves of being reborn into a better life, even a heaven, when they died, but they also believed that assignment would be no more permanent than this one. No matter how delicious the heaven you went to, eventually you'd die again and fall back down into one of the hells. There was no escape but to escape. That is what Lord Buddha offered them--the chance, not to be reborn into heaven, but to avoid being reborn at all."

He let that sink in a bit. He'd said as much before, but this time it seemed starker, more alien somehow.

"Now, is there anyone in this room who is honestly concerned about escaping the endless cycle of samsara?"

No one raised their hands.

"Well, then, Buddhism isn't your answer, because Buddhism isn't your question. And there is nothing I can do to make it your question, even if I were inclined to try. The answer only becomes the answer when it has the question for context."

"Like 42," said one of the Ravens.

"Exactly."

"Why did you tell us to meditate, though?" I asked.

"Because meditation does other things,"he told us. "This form of meditation is good for improving your powers of concentration and focus, your ability to make decisions and stay with them, and your awareness of your own mental states. Sitting like this reduces stress and improves posture. Doing something in the morning for spiritual reasons is a good habit to establish, whatever practices you choose to adopt later, for whatever reasons. There are other ways to do all of these things, but we do this thing here, because I am available and a different teacher is not. All communities use the resources they have."

He let that sink in a moment, and then spoke again.

"So if you wish to continue using zazen for its subsidiary benefits, by all means, do so, either here with me or on your own. You may actually want to practice meditating on your own, as you will not always have me to hold space for you. Likewise, if you wish to explore Buddhism as such, you may do so with me. You may also come to me if you wish my help in exploring other, non-Buddhist paths. Some of you are doing so already. After February 1st, you may come and go from this room as you like, and I will not question you, unless you wish to be questioned. However, I ask you not to continue with Zen Buddhist meditation simply out of a belief that it is what you are supposed to do,or based on the unexamined assumption that all spiritual practices are functionally the same. That is not what Buddhism is for. I do not want to help you waste your time, nor do I need your help in wasting mine."

And then we were quiet and he rang the bell to resume meditation.

When it was time to leave and get ready for breakfast I stayed behind.

"Greg," I began, "you didn't raise your hand."

"When did you expect me to?"

"When you asked who was concerned about the Wheel of Samsara."

"I am not concerned about it. I do not try to escape the present moment."

Hmmm.

Part 8: Post 7: Wild Books

I've just finished Sand Country Almanac, and now I'm beginning The Practice of the Wild today. I've found the secret of getting through my book list in a reasonable time frame is to read every minute I'm not doing something else. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep right away I take my blanket and I go out to my dorm's sitting-room and I read for a while by the stove. This morning I woke up there when Joanna nearly tripped over me on her way to zazen. I guess I fell asleep over my book.

The language of these books is incredible. In one way or another...reading them I can almost feel how good they are in my mouth, as though they were literally delicious, as though I were reading them aloud and the rhythm and balance of the words tasted good rolling off my tongue.

Why, in high school, did they make us bother with Shakespear and Too Late the Phalarope? Why didn't they have us read this?

Ok, I exaggerate a little--I really liked Too Late the Phalarope, and some of Shakespear's stuff, too, really, though honestly I think it makes more sense to see plays on a stage. We read Julius Caesar to each other in English class and none of us could read aloud very well, we were all sputtering and stammering and laughing over the weird language ("He is ta'en! He is ta'en" laments Cassius of Brutus on the battlefield. Ta'en? Really? We all cracked up and it kind of killed the mood). Anyway, my point is that these books I'm reading now are also good and deserve to count as classics, too.

I can see Charlie in all of them, and not just because he writes in his books. More importantly, maybe, I can see things that I see in Charlie in these books as well.

If the lad or lass is among us who knows where the secret heart of this Growth-Monster is hidden, let them please tell us where to shoot the arrow that will slow it down. And if the secret heart stays hidden and our work is made no easier, I for one will keep working for wildness day by day.

So says Gary Snyder.

These books comment on each other, support each other. Reading those lines, I think back to The Farthest Shore, which I read months ago, now. There are a few lines in it I wrote down, because they struck me as interesting or because Charlie had underlined them and I didn't know why. One line--he had written "global warming?" next to it for no apparent reason, jumped out at my memory this morning when I was reading Gary Snyder right before breakfast. Snyder asked "where is the secret heart of the Growth-Monster?" and Ursula K. LeGuin answers,

In our minds, lad, In our minds. The traitor, the self;the self that cries I was to live;let the world burn so long as I can live!

And further down on the same page, Gary Snyder replies,

I hope to investigate the meaning of "wild" and how it connects with the meaning of "free" and what one would do with these meanings. To be truly free one must take on the basic conditions as they are--painful, impermanent, open, imperfect--and then be grateful for impermanence and the freedom it grants us.

The conversation is happening only in my mind; I don't think either author was thinking of the other when they wrote. But in my mind is growing this whole, this constellation of ideas, that exists where the ideas from all these various books I'm reading intersect. I think I have been assigned not so much twenty individual books but a whole set, that it is the wholeness of the collection, the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, that I'm meant to absorb.


I'm not the only one here to read these books, though I don't think this exact book list has been given to anyone else--Charlie had to take a few days after assigning me the project before he could get the list together--but others have read books assigned by their masters and the assignments must overlap. How much, I wonder? I haven't been talking about my reading with anyone, but maybe I should? Then there will be intersections among the intersections.

This morning, I was lying on the couch by the stove in the Great Hall and Greg walked by me on the way to breakfast, carrying his mug of black coffee. He's the only one of the masters who eats breakfast with us these days, as I think I mentioned. He must have seen my book, because he startled me by speaking to me.

"The Practice of the Wild? I assign that book to my students." He had half a fond smile on his face and he walked on, into the Bird Room, for oatmeal or whatever else. His students? He didn't mean zazen, because he never assigned us any books. It's not history class. He must be talking about students he takes on as master, though what he teaches them is as much a mystery to me as Charlie is to everybody else.

Anyway, it's not just the books overlapping with each other--they're overlapping with my life. Last week I read Sand Country Almanac and Aldo Leopold starts out talking about a January thaw. And last week we had a January thaw. The temperature went up above thirty-five degrees three or four days in a row and on Wednesday in rained, sending up mist from the melting snow. That night the rain turned to ice and when we got up in the morning the snow cover was down to only an inch or two of solid white ice with a dull sheen to it like a sheet of spiderweb. You could walk on it, even jump on it, and not make a dent. The sun was shining and the rime-ice on all the trees and the telephone lines along the streets sparkled like diamond. A cold front was coming through and the ice creaked and shattered in the wind.

Now, the cold is back--colder, I think, than it ever got last year. We load wood into the stove at night and we load wood and we load wood and it hardly gets any warmer. The cold outside is just sucking the warmth out through the walls. Perfect weather for sitting and reading.

But I don't just read. It snowed again last night so we're going out tracking tomorrow. I'm getting better. I can see  the tracks now, it's the wildest thing. You wouldn't think that's the problem, but it really is. Snow is uneven, after the first few hours. Clumps of snow fall from the trees, branches and shrubs on the ground shield the ground and interrupt the surface of snow cover, and of course everything is white. You look over the ground, and one white on white irregularity looks like another. Only now, anymore, I look and the patterns of the tracks jump out of me. One minute I don't see anything and then all of a sudden there are the tracks of two foxes crossed by signs of a hopping squirrel.

And I'm asking the right questions, wondering whether the two foxes walked side by side or one after the other (or, was it the same fox twice?) whether the squirrel came before or after the foxes and whether either reacted to the scent of the other. What gait was the animal using? Why? Each question leads me to read more in the tracks and ask more questions and seek more answers. It's incredible, being able to see the actions and interactions of all these creatures I hardly ever see. But they are aware of each other and aware of us. If they weren't aware of us they wouldn't avoid us and I'd see them more often. These are thinking, feeling beings out there we share our land with.

I'm learning to ask the right questions because Rick keeps asking me the questions. We go tracking together, and when we find something and he asks me how many toes, how many pads, how many inches is the print, the stride, the straddle, what gait was the animal using, and so on. Now, when I see a track myself, I'm in the habit and I wonder the same things. And I mean, I really wonder. I'm curious. I'm used to asking, and because of Rick I'm used to finding out. So now, when I see the tracks, I want to find out.

I think, in the same way, I'm going through the motions of thinking new thoughts by reading Charlie's marginal notes. I read the notes as I'm reading the books and so I think pieces of his thoughts when reading--I mean that I read his thoughts and, in reading, my mind goes through the motions of thinking the same thing, the way my hands copied his motions when he taught me to prune and plant and hand-pick pest insects last spring. I look up from my books and I look out on the world and I can feel his habits of thought in my mind for a moment.

And so, by day and night, indoors and out, I track my teacher and the movements of the living land that he loves.

[Next Post: Monday, January 13: Considering Buddhism]

Part 8: Post 6: January Observations

They’ve boarded up the broken windows until they can get them repaired and a couple of people have had to move rooms, but the rest of us are back to sleeping in our own beds and the masters have vanished back into their off-season privacy. The branches of the elm are already trimmed way back; I think Charlie or one of his students did it with a pole-saw a few days ago. The holidays are over and life is back to normal here.

Life is back to normal? Normal keeps changing. Without the Yule tree, without any decoration, actually, the Great Hall looks spare and quiet in a way it never did before. With no holiday to prepare for in the next few weeks, it really feels like there’s nothing particular to do. At the same time, the people who went away for the holidays are coming back, and even some of the people who left for the winter are back now. The schedule has firmed up again, no more informal zazen based on the honor system—we all have to walk around in the dark to start meditating at six AM again.

It’s not that I like getting up in the dark. It’s cold, really cold, since the wood stoves usually all but go out overnight and anyway, not a lot of heat gets through a closed bedroom door. Some people sleep with their doors open, but I don’t. So I wake up, and my first thought every morning is that I want to go back to sleep. But I can’t, so I get up and I throw my uniform on over my long underwear and I go down the stairs and out through the crystal night and in through the Meditation Hall door where I stamp the snow off my boots beside two dozen other yearlings, find my meditation cushion, and sit with my thoughts. With my boring, self-important thoughts that consist chiefly of wondering when zazen is going to be over. Just like I’ve done more days than not for nearly a year. But while I don’t like all of the details, I like the rhythm of life here, I like its familiarity.

It feels like I’m back in the world as it was last year, the school as I first knew it.

I don't come from that far away from here--this winter and last are basically exactly the same, weather-wise, as every other winter I've ever known. There's always snow and it's always cold and whatever the birds and beasts do here, they must be doing about the same back home. But I'm not sure I ever really noticed winter before. Except for playing in the snow, mostly when I was a little kid, winter was always just something to work around. It got in the way and you adapted to it so it didn't get in the way too much.

Here, we're really in winter. The food we eat is different, the pace of life is different, the Mansion once again smells like wet wool and snow...and the silence. In the evening, as the sunlight drains out of the sky, I can stand near the elm tree and look out over the valley to the distant hills and the silence is so deep you'd think you could stand there and let all the complications of life bleed out into the stillness...but then you get cold and your toes twinge a bit and you remember there's cocoa on the stove inside and you go in and there are people there who are glad to see you and someone says hey, there's stew for dinner, and good bread,you want some?

Speaking of going home, I spent this past weekend with my family, a sort of post-Christmas Christmas party. We exchanged gifts, ate another locally grown free-range turkey, and my mother maintained her annual fiction that all three of us are still children and believe in Santa Clause. We happily went along with her.

I have to say that this visit with my extended family went a lot better than my last one. There were no annoying questions from my uncle. Maybe my novelty has worn off. Maybe my brother and my sister-in-law just stole my thunder with their stories about their cruise. In any case, I’m happy to have my thunder stolen.

My sister has no sympathy for my busy college lifestyle, by the way. I’ve told her I have homework over my winter break, but she’s still in high school and has homework over the break, too—and a much shorter break, of course. She’s not very impressed of my tale of being forced by my teacher to spend all my time reading nature books and hiking and snow shoeing.

And really, I’m not complaining. I’m busy, in that I have a lot of things I have to do. I don’t have much time to just sit around doing whatever I like. But I’m having a lot of fun, I must admit.

I really thought I was doomed when I found out I had to do all this reading. And it isn’t easy—I’ve been able to keep my average up, so I’m on track to get all the books done on time, but only by keeping a book with me and reading through every spare moment. If I can’t sleep at night I get up and read for a while. And I don’t read anything that isn’t on my list. I don’t have time. But I’m doing it. And the books are fantastic. How could I not have read them before?

Aldo Leopold wrote "January observations can be almost as simple and peaceful as snow, and almost as continuous as cold. There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate as to why."

Sounds about right to me.

Part 8: Post 5: To Be Merry Another Year

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

I should explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cavradyne drive?" asked Arther.

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

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

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

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

Anyway, along around 11, Andy giggled.

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

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

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

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

hic!

hic!

hic!

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

Exactly.