Mastery Year 3: Interlude 2

Hi, all, Daniel of 2019, here.

And as seems to happen often, the holiday has snuck up on me—we’re delaying the celebration until Saturday (which still seems a lot closer than I thought it was) but the holiday is actually on Wednesday. June and I have thought about having a private family celebration on the actual day, but we’re not sure how that will work. The school tradition, which is really the only way to celebrate Beltane that I’m familiar with, is so community-based. We can’t dance a Maypole just the three of us. Maybe we’ll get take-out and Netflix a David Attenborough documentary. That seems a pretty good way to celebrate the fecundity of the planet.

If the school still existed in the same form it used to, I suppose we’d be preparing to go to the Island. For all the times I went with Charlie as an assistant, I never did go as one of the Six. Maybe one day I will.

The funny thing about being of the Six only now, with the community in a kind of exile, is that there is a constant looking back, a constant attention to how things would be, or how they’re supposed to be, the present defined by the shadow of the past, a past I wasn’t even part of the six for. But Charlie would say that such a sense of dislocation is normal, that everything is always in the process of becoming something else. The idea that either the past or the future is solid or stable is an illusion, though a persistent one.

My mind is foggy today. I’ve had a persistent head-cold for a while lately and all I want to do is sleep, but I can’t really afford to take any time off. For one thing, I’ve got a holiday to help plan. And I’m not even all that sick.

I’m just under the weather enough that I can’t tell whether what I’ve just written about change and time and all of that is profound or just nonsensical.

In any case, happy early Beltane.

-D.

Mastery Years 3: Part 2: Post 5: Earth Day

"Are we doing anything for Earth Day?" asked a yearling named Adam. "I had thought we would, but I haven't heard anything."

I must have looked quite blank, because June laughed at me.

"Today's Monday, you know," she informed me. "In April, if you want be precise."

"I know what day it is!" I retorted. "I just didn't know it was Earth Day. It's Earth Day? Really?"

"Sure. My school's doing a whole big thing about it. We've been planning it for weeks." June, you might remember, has a job as an environmental education coordinator at a private school nearby. Sometimes she tells me about her work, but apparently she hasn't lately. I sat there, probably looking confused, a bit disconcerted by this apparent lack of communication between my wife and I.

"So, we're not doing anything here?" pressed Adam.

"We're not," I told him, "not that I know of, and we haven't before, but you can."

"Why not? I would have thought you would."

"Well, we will if you make it happen," said June. "Come on, be the change!"

But Adam shook his head.

"I'm not going to try to change anything until I understand why things are the way they are. Maybe there's a good reason and I've missed something." Smart man, Adam.

"You know, I don't know," I admitted. "We've never talked about it since I've been here. Maybe we don't need it? Unless you think we do?"

"I don't know, I'm just used to environmentalists celebrating Earth Day."

We were quiet for a while, eating, and then somebody brought up an unrelated topic, and we talked about that until they called for announcements at the end of breakfast. None of the announcements were particularly interesting, except that somebody said something about rescheduling a workshop on something or other, and I think that gave Adam an idea.

"Hey, Daniel," he said, just as we were heading up to put our trays away, "you lead workshops. Do you think you could do one about environmental stuff on campus? Like, why do we do the things we do here? How does it all work? I was thinking, maybe you all are already perfect and don't need Earth Day or whatever, but how am I supposed to participate if I don't know what's going on? Maybe if we knew more about how campus runs, we could figure out ways to run it better?"

And I stood there like a bell that had been struck, not doing anything but ringing. I'd been worrying there might not be much I could add to the curriculum, but he's totally right, I could teach that--and it's not a workshop, it's a class.

Out of the mouths of yearlings, I suppose.

Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Post 4: Easter Greenery

Note: In 2009, when this is set, Easter had already occurred by April 17th, and Passover was in progress. -D.

Happy Easter! June and I went to my parents' place for the weekend after I swore up and down that we'd make an extended visit to her parents sometime this year. The problem--the reason why this is an issue--is that her parents live so far away that we can't really make it a trip of less than a week, but June and I almost never have a week off at the same time. After I earn my ring, we won't have this problem. And in the meantime her parents are coming here to visit for a week sometime this summer.

Anyway. Yes, Easter. Nothing unusual happened except that I severely wished I'd stayed home on campus. Not that I wasn't glad to see my family, and Easter is a traditional time for us all to gather now, so I really couldn't miss it, but I've only really been on campus for Easter once and it was lovely. I wish I could do that again--and it suddenly occurred to me, right there in church, that now I never will, not as a student, anyway.

I could almost have wept.

It's a very strange thing to be charging forward to complete something that I don't entirely want to end.

We were able to attend a seder this year on campus, my second one. We're not Jewish, but we have friends who are, and we were invited. It's curious--far more of the campus community were raised Christian than Jewish, and very few remain monotheists of any stripe here. Depending on what definition you use, we don't actually have any practicing Jews, and yet the Passover seder is well-attended, as are several other Jewish holiday gatherings over the year. The non-practicing Christian component doesn't do anything like that. Most like to pretend that they don't even know when the Christian holidays are. I get people asking whether I go to church, though I've been going openly and regularly the whole time I've been here, as if they're hoping I'm going to tell them I've stopped. It's like all religions are OK but that one, and people want to forget they ever belonged to it. Our Jewish pagans want to remember their origins, though, and so they hold seders.

In other news, the forest turned green this morning. The leaves aren't really out, yet, of course, most of the trees are still quite skeletal, and those that aren't have flowers, not leaves. But the leaf buds are bursting, and the tiny tips of the newborn leaves poking out cast a kind of green mist over proceedings. It literally just happened this morning, or possibly over night. I noticed it on my morning walk with Steve.

Steve didn't notice at first, and I didn't say anything because I wanted to see when he'd figure it out. It's a strange thing to be an expert, however relative, because there's this constant temptation to lord it over the less-knowledgeable in one way or another, and there are so many ways. Was I waiting for him to figure it out--or fail to figure it out--so I could say "gotcha, I already know"? I wasn't even sure myself and it bothered me, but on the other hand I really did think giving him a chance to notice the green on his own was the best thing to do.

He didn't say anything. He seemed to be in a good mood, which didn't surprise me because the morning was gorgeous--cool and dew-kissed, with the sunlight on everything a clear, bright sort of apricot just past dawn, and a wonderful smell in the air of flowers and damp earth and growing things--but he didn't say anything. We just walked and looked around.

I was beginning to think he wouldn't say anything, and I was wondering whether I should, and how to do it without coming off like an ass, when we came up the the magnolia on our way back--it's just starting to flower now--and there was Charlie examining one of the unfolding flowers. We greeted him and I asked him what he was looking at, so he gave some smart-assed reply the way he does, and I had to decide whether to argue back or not--and then Steve spoke up.

"Hey, Charlie," he said, "you must be happy, it really feels like spring today!"

And Charlie looked at me, and I looked back at him, and I felt bizarrely as though my teacher had complimented me somehow.

Note

Hi, all;

I'll post on Wednesday this week.

-D.

Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Post 3: Ug

I'm ill. Really quite ill. I haven't been this sick for years, and it's really, seriously, unpleasant. The worst of it is Charlie has the same bug at the same time, so I'm missing an opportunity to sub for him. I'm not sure who he got. Probably Raven--though it might actually be June. Come to think of it, I haven't seen her since this morning. Where is she?

Ug. I don't want to be awake and I can't sleep. When I get up I get dizzy and nauseated. I think I have a fever, but nobody around here has anything as mundane as a thermometer. There's all sorts of things I should be doing--Steve and I were supposed to go walking today, I have tutoring appointments in the afternoon--I can't even read or I get sea-sick.

I'm pretty sure I have a sinus infection.

So, I'm lying here in my boxer shorts on top of the covers, sitting up sometimes to drink the tea someone brought me (cedar, licorice, and ginger, with honey, supposedly medicinal) and then flopping back down. The balcony door is open. The day outside is warm. The breeze from outside washes over me. It feels nice.

The Mansion is silent, except that sometimes someone speaks in the distance or Sean cries. He's sick, too, poor boy. I can hear frogs and birds singing outside.

I must go back to sleep.

Note

Hi all,

I'm OK, I'm just frightfully busy this week, so much so that I've decided to skip posting. I'll see you all next week. Or, I probably won't actually SEE you, but you'll see what I write. You know what I mean.

-best, D.

Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Post 2: I Forgot

Classes have started.

I always like this time of year--there's a kind of upbeat energy to campus, a sense of getting this moving, as the first classes start and academics begin again.

The new yearlings are settling in, feeling like part of the community now--both to themselves and to the rest of us. It's funny, I see the same thing every year and I've started to notice the pattern, how each yearling class, regardless of who is in the class or what they think, want, or are capable of as individuals, collectively acts exactly the same until around mid-May. They go through the same stages.

There are the first few weeks when they all wander around looking confused and acting like rather shocked outsiders, and then they get really excited about the school and it's possibilities and they think they understand what's going on around here but they don't. Then classes start, and the new students get a bit overwhelmed and somewhat surprised that this strange and magical place has rather prosaic requirements such as homework--not that they'd admit to such a silly reaction, they knew this is an accredited liberal arts college, but there's a fantasy that happens, and fantasies seldom include real work. Mid-May is when they start to differentiate, to pursue their own paths through the school, and from there on in they are less predictable. To me, anyway. I imagine the masters are aware of deeper patterns and that we all appear quite predictable to them. It's embarrassing.

Anyway.

I'm not taking any classes except for the two required for candidates, and they don't meet every week. Instead I'm teaching. Charlie asked me, last year (or was it the year before?) to teach everything I learned at grad school to the students here, which didn't work well--I don't mean I did a bad job, I mean that most people here really aren't interested in a lot of the material, and since workshops and talks by candidates tend not to be that well attended anyway, attracting students was difficult. And it was expected to be difficult. I wasn't expected to win any popularity contests, and the few people who did show up gave me good reviews, and the long and the short of it is I'm done, now. Done and able to move on to putting together workshops that better fit the needs of my audience.

I've been thinking more about my role in the school, what I might be able to bring to the community once I earn my ring. The problem is that most of the things I could teach that the school does need are already being taught by Charlie--except for statistical literacy, and Allen does that. I make a fine substitute teacher, but fortunately Charlie doesn't get sick that often.

What I can do, though, is write--Charlie can too, obviously, but he doesn't do much about teaching it. No one does. Writing is part of most classes, but no class focuses on it.

So, I've put together a series of workshops and talks on different aspects of writing and editing and I'm also making myself available twice a week as a tutor and coach for people who need help with their homework. It's a need the school has that I can fill.

I'm still teaching tracking, and I'm also doing seminars on different aspects of plant and insect identification--Charlie covers that to some extent, but not in as focused and detailed a way. Again, a need I can fill.

That works out to a very full schedule, since I'm working off-campus at the landscaping company three days a week--ten hours a day makes 30 hours a week, and since I've gotten some promotions over the years, my hourly rate is pretty good, now. I'm not entirely destitute.

I feel...a bit like a grown-up. Which sounds funny, as I'm getting close to 30, but I've never had a full-time job, I've never lived on my own without housemates, I've never made a major purchase if you don't count paying for grad school, there's a lot of adult things I've never done. But I'm a married man, I'm an adjunct college professor, I'm paying down my student loans, and I have a slowly-growing savings account. All of which sounds not too shabby.

Remember John Crain? I mentioned him the other day. He's the treasurer, just started a few years ago. I had lunch with him today, more or less interviewed him as part of my efforts to learn more about this place. It's funny--I think of him as new, because he's been hired since I've been here, but he was one of the first students to come through after the school got accredited. Not that he needed the degree, he already had several. He's had a long, fairly successful career as an accountant, and this is more or less a retirement job for him. The point is he's been part of the community for decades. He's a recent hire, but he's not new.

But as a recent hire--what's that like? What's it like to move...from the outside to the inside, as it were? Is it weird? Do you spend half your time pinching yourself, trying to convince yourself it's real? What's it like?

And I forgot to ask him.