Mastery Year 2: Part 1: Brigid

Happy Brigid! A new year, a new group of yearlings, several newly-awarded Green Rings, and, best of all, I think my wife is going to talk to me again!

I exaggerate; June never stopped talking to me, but I think she considered it. She's still angry.

She's angry with me, of course, for not telling her about the Ordeal which, in case you have forgotten, involves an about-to-graduate student being more or less kidnapped and stuck in a dark room alone for three days. Of course I didn't tell her; for the Ordeal to work, it has to be a surprise.

It's not hazing, it's the thing that hazing is a debased echo of--an initiatory experience. The word "experience" here is key. It's not an initiatory ritual or an initiatory event, it's an experience, and the experience does not occur if you're not in the right head-space for it. Not all forms of initiation require surprise, but many do. You can't be braced against the change you're about to experience.

Then, too, you have to decide real fast whether you trust your teachers when one of them pops a black-out bag over your head.

The thing that separates what we do from what many college fraternities and such do is that our initiation is not meant to be unpleasant or degrading. The person undergoing initiation is always reminded that they are free to quit, and they are encouraged to do so if they run into any sort of physical or mental trouble. They are closely monitored, offered plenty of food and water and opportunity to sleep. They are asked to trust, never to submit.

And yet being taken out of your day-to-day life and hidden away for an undetermined about of time is no joke. And to have it done by the masters--who have always obviously been up to something, that's part of the point--while to realize that your spouse is complicit is something else again.

She must be wondering whose side I'm on. She'll realize eventually that I am on the side of the masters and that now, so is she--that's what the initiation experience is for.

It's not as if I wasn't worried. It's one thing to go through the Ordeal yourself and afterwards to know that it doesn't hurt, it isn't scary (except for that first startling moment under the black-out bag, in the seconds before you hear their reassurances). It's not actually all that much different than a long trip on a Greyhound bus, except there's no view and the toilet doesn't stink. But it's quite another thing to watch your wife leave your dorm-room to go to a meeting and to know she thinks she's coming back in an hour--and she's wrong. And you don't say anything. To spend those three days, however you spend them and whatever you're doing, periodically casting your attention to your wife, knowing that at that very moment she is in the dark, sworn not to speak, and she doesn't know where she is or when she's getting out. To spend all the hours of that final day constantly looking at your watch thinking ok, now they're going to get her. Now she's seeing daylight again for the first time in the wing of the stage in the Chapel. Now the sun has set and she's still in the wing with all the other new initiates, in the dark again, waiting for the ceremony to start.

It's warm down in the basement, where the Ordeal rooms are, but it's cold in the wing of the Chapel.

Then I was back in the audience, sitting in a cold, metal folding chair in a dim room that smelled of wool and honey, and the little bell was ringing, ding! ding! ding! as the masters processed in carrying their as yet unlit candles. I was sitting with Ebony and Eddie and Aidan (it was his seventh birthday), as I often have before, but for only the second time in my experience of Brigid in that hall, Kayla wasn't sitting with me. She was waiting in the wing with June to graduate.

Was the Ordeal a surprise for Kayla? She certainly knew the rooms were down there, because that's where she went to be out of the way when she thought she was dying but was actually giving birth to Aidan when she was twelve. Did she know what those rooms were used for? She learned a lot of the school's secrets, just being a kid on campus, and of course secrecy is mostly maintained using the principles of stage magic--and when you're not part of the target audience, frequently the illusion does not work. I never once saw anyone being escorted to their Ordeal the whole time I was a novice, but this year, not being the target of the illusion anymore, I saw three of them without even trying to look. So, I imagine Kayla had seen some of them, too, over the years, and probably asked questions about them. Direct questions always receive honest (though sometimes legalistically narrow) answers around here. So maybe she knew.

On the other hand, would she really have asked all the right questions? Might the masters have evaded her, at least partly, in case she grew up to want to join the school? I don't know.

In any case, watching that twenty-year-old woman walk across the stage, a young but not prodigious college graduate, and thinking about where she was and why eight years earlier, was quite something. Almost as big a deal to me as watching June walk across the stage and knowing that the period of our being on different sides of a divide, of it being part of my job to keep secrets from her and hold distance from her, was over. We're both initiates, now, both entitled to wear the brown uniform, and I knew that starting that night, and from here on in, we'd share the same room.

The thing about uniforms--of course, novices wear white uniforms with black cloaks, candidates and allies without the Green Ring wear brown except for white belts, and people with the Ring wear all brown. So the symbolism of dress is important, here. When you graduate, one of the masters takes off your cloak and underneath is the outfit you choose to symbolize your life after the school. At least one person almost every year is naked and everybody laughs, and otherwise you get everything from suits to graduation gowns to jeans. When it was my turn I wore cargo pants, a turtleneck, and a flannel, which was my guess as to what I might be wearing in grad school (a good guess, as it happened). June hadn't told me her plans. She ended up wearing the same brown uniform she'll be entitled to wear every other day she spends on campus, unless and until she gets her ring.

"Because I don't think I'm leaving," she explained, later.

Afterwards, we watched Andy and Veronica receive their rings--I found Andy's graduation very moving, too, considering where he started and how far he has come--and then the masters processed away again, to do whatever it is they do on Brigid Night.

But I hadn't gotten a good look when the newly arrived candidates stood to introduce themselves at the beginning of the ceremony. I was sitting fr back and couldn't see or hear them well, I could only gather that there were two of them, a man and a woman. Afterwards, I sought them out to see who it was and found that the returnees are Raven G. and Steve.

Steve Bees is back.

Mastery Year 1: Part 6: Post 4: Leaves and Leaving

I went for a walk with Kayla the other day. I hadn’t spent much time with her in a while, and we hadn’t really talked about her studies, her career through the school, in years. 

“You’re graduating this year,” I said, after a bit.

“Yes.”

“Is it weird? I mean, you’ve been here forever.”

“Not forever,” she corrected me. “Just my whole life. And yes, it’s weird.”

“I’d be scared, if I were you,” I said. She laughed.

“Is that your big-brotherly advice? To be scared?”

“No, it’s just what I would do. I’m not saying it’s a good idea.”

“I’m not scared. Maybe I should be? I’m going to miss all of you, though.”

She has this deal, to make sure she goes out and experiences the “real world,” where she’ll be barred from campus for a year, not even allowed to call. If she wants to come back for her ring, she’ll have to be Absent, or at least living and working elsewhere, for ten years, not the normal three.

“We can visit you, though,” I pointed out.

“Only one at a time,” she reminded me. “And honestly, you won’t. Not very often. You’ll get all wrapped up in your lives here, and you’ll forget to visit.” I started to protest, but she overrode me. “No, it’s ok, I think that’s part of the point. If they thought you’d all come by my apartment every other minute, they’d probably put tighter restrictions on me.”

“They’re tough.”

“They are.”

“What about Aidan?” He's an exception to the one-at-a-time rule, I knew that.

“He has to come visit me. Every day and twice on Sundays. I told Mom I’ll reveal the location of her secret chocolate stash if she doesn’t take him.”

“Ooo! So, what’s your plan? When you leave?”

“Did I tell you I joined Joe’s company?” Impressive news, though apparently a non-sequitur. Joe, my former boss on the janitor’s team, you may remember, has a dance company off-campus. Hardly any students ever dance with him, though, because he does not teach beginners. You have to audition. She had passed.

“That’s great! So?”

“Well, he does pay his dancers. Not much, but with that on my resume, and the dance classes I’ve been teaching at the summer camp, I should be able to get a job as a dance instructor, somewhere.”

“Kayla, I’ve never asked you—what do you study here?”  Her first few years, of course, she was just taking the occasional course and mostly being a kid. She only really got serious about earning her degree while I was away in by own Absence.

“When I was little,” she said, “and I’d ask my Mom how she knew something, she’d always say ‘it’s something I learned in Mom School.’ Well, I guess I’ve been going to Mom School.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I met my healing requirement by learning how to take care of a small child, everything from baby CPR to how to splint a fracture, to reading all this child-development stuff. Magic is stage magic so I can entertain my kid and make things he shouldn’t have in the first place disappear. My spiritual studies revolve around what it means to be a mother and how to integrate my experience of…having Aidan, you know? My Craft is cooking, but I’m going to try to argue it’s building a human being… Mom School.”

“But your Mom is mostly raising Aidan.” As soon as I said it, I knew I should not have, but she appeared not to take offense.

“Let’s just say that if Aidan comes into fatherhood early, I’ll know how to help him.”

While we’d been talking, we’d come down among the sugar maples on the side of the road. Most of the leaves are still up, and some of them are even still green, but a lot have fallen already. I’d been using my foot to idly push leaves into a small pile, as if I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Now, I knelt to tie my shoe.

“I know one thing you’re not prepared for though,” I said, while still kneeling.

“What?”

“A Sneak Leaf Attack!” I shouted, and tossed the pile at her. We were both wet and tired and covered with bits of vegetation when we made it back for Friday Dorm Dinner.

Mastery Year 1: Part 4: Litha

Happy Litha.

Once again the campus has been happily over-run with friends and family and sprouts--more of that latter group than I expected. Families have expanded and changed since the last time I celebrated the summer solstice here.

Everyone has grown older, this I knew, though it still somehow surprises me that Aidan is seven and not remotely a baby anymore. I mean, I remember seeing him nursing. And Charlie's brother, Mario, died a few years ago, as I'd known. But there are whole new families, too.

One new family is mine--my brother and sister-in-law are both here, and all three of their kids are sprouts--Paul, Ruthie, and Chris. As you can probably tell, my family likes Biblical names. Another belongs to the new treasurer, John (not to be confused with my brother, also John). He has a complicated family consisting of children from the wife he divorced, a child from the wife he buried, and two step-kids, mostly all grown, and starting to present him with grandchildren (who are now sprouts). Also, two more of Charlie's innumerable nephews have married, and one has sprouted twins.

My older niece and nephew are right in the middle of all of this--Paul and Ruthie are five and three, respectively, so John-the-treasurer's three grandkids fit right in--Kyle is four, and Justin and Aimee are both three, so the five of them form a developmentally similar sub-tribe and spent most of the day running around in a group.

Chris can't keep up. He's only two. But Janus and James, the twins, are eighteen months old, and he can play big brother to them.

Anyway, between visiting former students (Willa was here, of course), former faculty (Chuck and Malachi were both here, although Joe S., my old boss, was not), spouses, sprouts, former sprouts, parents, and various other hangers on, I think there must have been well over four hundred people on campus.

Good thing there was extra food.

Two pigs' worth of pork barbecued, fried, and smoked alongside kebabs of mushrooms and onions, tables practically sagged under bowls of steamed greens, salads, baked goods, cheeses, honey, and fruit, and later there were custards and pies and strawberry cake. From about 10 AM on, there was always plenty to eat and always a line up around the tables.

Not surprisingly, my Dad got in there to help with the grilling. He said it was extra-delicious because of "Kretzman magic," though, just between you and me, food here is always about equally delicious. It was good to see my Dad participating--weird that he used the word "magic." Maybe he's starting to come to terms more with what we do here.

I spent most of the day running around with Paul and Ruthie and them--kids their age are much more capable, and much smarter, and much more fun to be with than they get credit for. The day was hot, but not dangerously so. The older kids rode their bikes down to the lake to swim in the afternoon, but the littles were too little to go without an adult, so they ran around in the sprinklers we had set up to wet down the area around the Man.

The Man. This year he was an attractive purple and pale green of phragmites and loose-strife, all tied up with various vines and filled with notes written on little fluttering pieces of paper for the Man to take with him to the Spirit World when he burned.

I didn't see him light up this year. I didn't watch the sunset from up in the tree, either. Instead, I was so involved in playing hide-and-seek with the littles (I am very good and hide-and-seek, by the way. Being a naturalist helps) and totally failed to notice either until it was too late. When it got too dark for us to seek each other, we hunted lightening bugs until the various parents came to collect their children and left me to my own devices.

"Should I fetch you home to bed, too?" said my Dad, when he found me.
"Just cause I act like a kid doesn't mean I am one," I told him.
"Tomorrow, you'll be a married man."
"Yup, that I will."
"Where's June?" he asked.
"I don't know. We're supposed to be avoiding each other this week. Separation before conjunction and all that."
"Conjunction...? Are you talking magic again? or sex?"
"Same thing, I think," I said. That made him laugh.
"Is is it true we dance the sun up tonight?" Dad asked. He's never stayed the night at a Sabbat celebration before.
"Donno, Dad," I told him. "Let's find out."

And we did.

Year 4: Part 7: Post 2: The Party

I remember attending the end-of-year party as a yearling, and then years went by when I didn't. Of course I didn't, the party is only for yearlings, graduating students, and faculty. The remarkable thing is for two years running, I was barely aware the party even happened. One year I heard noises from downstairs when I was doing my homework in my room and guessed that the party was in progress. I have no idea how it was planned and set up without my noticing. The next year I didn't notice it at all, although there were several events in the Great Hall that I didn't attend and I assume one of them was it.

How can things be kept secret in a community of less than two hundred people, all of whom live and entertain in the same building? Especially as no one ever said it was secret the year I attended? It's one of the magics of this place that I still have not plumbed.

This year, as October and the school year drew to a close, I again did not notice the party, either. No preparation, no invitation, nothing. Was there going to be no party? I was disappointed.

But then, yesterday, I went upstairs to go to dinner in my dorm and I met Eddie coming down.

"Are you coming?" he asked.
"Where?"
"To the party," he said.

It took me a  few seconds to figure out what he meant. Then I turned around and hurried down the stairs after him. And, sure enough, though the Great Hall had been empty when I'd passed through it less than a minute earlier, some twenty people had arrived, with more coming in. They were clearly setting up for a party.

"How do you know about these things when I don't?" I asked Eddie.
"Well, now you do know," he said.
"Yeah, but..."
"I have a talent for making things happen," he said. "And let's leave it at that." He was involved in making the Beltane play happen, after all. I shrugged and followed him into the party. We helped set up trays of food and drink and pushed the couches closer together to leave more room for dancing.

There were finally maybe forty or fifty people in attendance, not quite all the yearlings or graduates, but most of us, and all of the masters except Joe (the head of the Janitors) and Karen. There was less music this time, but more musicians--less a band than a series of people playing a couple of songs when the mood struck them. There was more food and perhaps less alcohol. There was a Mexican-style Day of the Dead altar opposite the rather withered and aged Thankyou Doll from Mabon still sitting in state above the fireplace.

But otherwise the party seemed much the same.

Even Kayla and Aidan were there, just like they were four years ago. Kayla has been part of the yearling group this year, since she'll be graduating with some of them. But four years ago, she was a twelve-year-old. She was a kid. And Aidan was a baby. Now, Aidan is a small child. He's three and a half, which is a much more mature age than I used to think it was. And Kayla is...not a woman, but a teenager. It makes a big difference.

So, we mingled and danced and chatted and ate. Yearlings came up to me and my fellow graduating students and asked us questions, just like I asked questions four years ago.

And as the party drew to a close, just like last year, a few people stayed longer than everybody else and sat together on the couches around the wood stove--lit for the first time that night. I joined the group, at least in part, because I wanted to see what these people would say. Some of them I actually hadn't ever really talked to before.

Kit and Charlie both stayed, though I caught them looking at each other with wary suspicion. Allen stayed, as did Malachi. I haven't talked much about Malachi, but he works in the office, alongside Sharon. He's the comptroller and quartermaster--the quartermaster on a ship is in charge of supplies, and that's what Malachi does. He orders pencils and notebooks and cleaning supplies and everything else and keeps it all within budget. I hardly know him.

Steve Bees and Eddie both stayed, as did Jutta and Raven G. and Joanna. Nora the yearling stayed, as did Kari and Chrystal, also both yearlings. We sat around, mostly drinking cocoa or cider, though a few people had brandy.

Joanna sat on my lap in one of the big, comfy, winged chairs. Other people noticed.

"So, uh, are you two an item now?" asked Raven. She did not sound so much disapproving as confused. It's true that Joanna and I don't make an obvious match. We don't really fit together, the way some couples do.

"Not exactly," I said, because we aren't exactly a couple.
"We're just sleeping together," Joanna asserted, "we're not actually dating." The others nodded, accepting the explanation, and I turned red. It's not exactly that I mind the others knowing what we're doing and why, but it's not something that I really want to talk about casually, either. Joanna and I haven't discussed how to talk about our relationship with others yet, and obviously we should have.

"It's weird being here as a graduating student," I said, to change the subject. "Last time I attended this party, I was a yearling."
"Imagine how it is for me," said Jutta. "I'm here twice."
Four years ago Arthur, who was, like Jutta, a one-hit wonder, said almost exactly the same thing.
"Do you wish you had more time here?" asked Allen, and they talked about time and coming and going and belonging for a while. The masters must have nearly the same conversations every year. All of us, all us students, think of ourselves as so unusual, so unique, and yet we're so predictable.

I watched the conversation play out, noticing body language and vocal tone, how the talk flowed from one person to the next, and I noticed something odd. Nora was sitting, not on a couch, though there was room, but literally at Charlie's feet. They did not speak to each other nor look at each other, nor had I been aware of any particular connection between them before. He isn't one of her masters. She mostly works with Joy. And yet her sitting with him could not be a coincidence. The way she had folded her legs under herself, the way she held her arms, echoed his posture. He laid his hand on her shoulder at one point, just for a few minutes. He doesn't normally touch anyone. I've never seen him give anyone a hug.

I felt a spike of weird jealousy and also something like guilt. Usually it's me, consciously or unconsciously mimicking him, and here I was with a girl on my lap. Woman, excuse me. I had thought his reassurance to me on Samhain that it's ok for me not to be celibate as he is, had been silly, an example of him expecting me to have a problem that of course I wouldn't have. But at that moment I needed the reassurance. I felt like I was letting him down, choosing something superficial and hormone-addled over the deeper truths, the truer dedication he had taught me.

"How come you're all here?" asked Steve, addressing the masters in the room. "It's after Samhain. I thought you all had to turn into pumpkins, or something?"
"We don't have to do anything," asserted Charlie.
"How do you know we're not all pumpkins together?" asked Allen.
"I think they came out of pumpkinitude for the night because this party was a lot easier to schedule after most of the other students have gone away," said Eddie, and Charlie pointed at him and said "ding!ding!ding!ding!"

"Wait, what?" said Kari.
"Haven't you noticed?" said Chrystal. "Most of the students who aren't yearlings or graduators have moved out. And more are going."
"Hey, that's true," said Kari, and I envied her her discovery of this place, her place at the beginning of the process.
"I wish I could head out," said Steve, "I just have a few things I've got to finish up here first. No offense, it's not like I want to get away from any of you people...It's just that I...."
"You have a girlfriend," said Joanna, in her teasing way.
"Yes, I have a girlfriend," he asserted with proud dignity.

He's actually had this girlfriend for a while now. She knows about us and some of us have met her on her short visits to campus. He often spends weekends away, and talks to her from campus on a cell phone, something very few of us actually do. It feels like cell phones ought to be against the rules or something, but they're not.

"Why don't you bring her up for a few days?" suggested Raven. "Let her get to know the school a little better."
"I wanted to," said Steve, "but we couldn't get it arranged before the school year ended. I guess I've lost my chance, now."
"Why?" asked Charlie. "Bring her over now anyway. After all, we haven't all turned into pumpkins.

Year 4: Part 2: Post 7: Seasons of Change

Every year I talk about how spring seems to always be just now arriving, from the first blooming of trees in March to the full greening of campus late in April or early May. I keep thinking "ok, now it's spring." And then the next week something else sprouts or blooms and I think it again.

I've noticed the same thing with how Aidan is growing. It seems like for years now he's been just starting to talk.

He said his first words when he was just over a year old, though I didn't actually hear him talk until months later. Then, when he was around two, he started using a lot more words, a lot more complex sentences, so it seemed like he had really started to talk. I think I posted about it. Now, he's just past three, and he's really talking, using more or less complete grammar and mostly correct pronunciation (except he still says "gweens" and "aminals" and such things).

Not that he talks often. He's kind of a quiet boy.

I don't babysit him much, but I understand that watching him is getting both easier and harder. Easier because he can follow rules and instructions and some sense of judgment, so you can tell him "stay where I can see you" and he will. Harder because he's also able to make innocent  mistakes or to disobey, so when he gets in trouble he can get in trouble seriously. And one minute he seems to know everything and be able to do everything, so you let him do things, and then the next minute he's obviously a toddler again.

All this, too, is a process that has been unfolding since he learned how to crawl.

Kayla hardly ever babysits him these days. She's busy being a student and being a teenager, and since he's been weaned completely for about a year now, there are whole days that go by when she hardly sees him. That's ok--the idea was always for Sadie to raise him.

During the day, Sadie is usually in the kitchens or off-campus at this restaurant she's started. He can't really go with her, so he gets passed around the various masters. Sometimes he'll even turn up in class and sit quietly in the back, coloring.

Actually, this past week we were talking about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in class--the anniversary of his death was April 4th--and Aidan jumped into the conversation.

"He didn't get killed because he was black," the child asserted. "He got killed because he was nice to all the people and mean people are scared of nice people so the mean people killed him."

Greg looked a bit startled, but recovered himself.

"Interesting point, Aidan," he said, speaking as he might to any other student. "Do you care to elaborate?"

Aidan put down his crayons and spoke up.

"A lot of people think Martin Lufer King was killed because he was black and because he was nice to black people on buses and stuff. But he was nice to white people and pink people and green people and purple people, too. Like, if they didn't have any money he would help them get money and if people were mean to them and told them to take out the garbage all the time he would say 'no, you have to be nice!' And that is why mean people killed him. Because sometimes mean people just want to be mean, so if you tell them not to be mean they kill you or put you in jail. So that's why it's important to be brave and nice, not just nice all by itself."

And he picked up his crayon again and went back to coloring.

"You are right, for the most part," said Greg. "Where did you learn all that?"

"I don't know. It might have been Steve Bees or somebody like that."

Steve is in American History of Dissent, of course, and he shrugged helplessly and looked completely dumbfounded. Aidan seemed completely unaware he'd said anything extraordinary. His drawing just looked like multicolored scribbles, no hint of a recognizable image at all.

The boy is starting to talk, but the thing is he hears everything and remembers most of it.

Year 4: Interlude 1

Hi, all, It's Daniel-of-2016 here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day (I'm writing this Thursday night), although as far as I know, none of my heritage is Irish. My last name sounds German, but I really don't know much about where my family is from. Perhaps I'll ask my parents, see if they know. Anyway, June's family isn't Irish, either, but we're celebrating anyway. Largely, I think, because June and I are bored and needed an excuse to do something different.

Not that “bored” means “having nothing to do,” you understand. We have a three year old. But we got bored with our typical version of busy and decided to do something else.

What we did was to invite over a pile of people and serve pizza (it was Pi Day earlier this week, after all) and green cupcakes and watch The Secret of Roan Innish.

The guest list—you’ve heard of most of them, Allen, Lo, Alexis, Kayla and Aidan—but Steve Bees wasn’t married thirteen years ago, so I haven’t told you about his wife and their two kids. I don’t know Sarah very well (this is not the same Sarah as the farm manager from school, obviously), since she’s seldom healthy enough to socialize much, but our families have spent a lot of time together because their younger son, Charlie (yes, named after my teacher) is just a year older than Carly and they play together. Their older son, Sean, is almost eight and is sort of an unofficial kid brother to Aidan, who was a Sprout with Alexis.

Anyway, we actually got take-out pizza, which I hardly ever do, but we made the cupcakes from scratch. Not that Carly actually cares what the cupcakes are as long as there is icing on top. She actually iced all of them for us, after we showed her how, while telling us this long, involved story about how she had supposedly had cupcakes in all different colors, “pink and gween and lellow and puple,” when she had a St. Patrick’s Day party when she was our age. She says that a lot, “when I was your age,” and I have friends who are convinced it’s evidence she has past life memories, but actually that’s what she does with phrases she hears but doesn’t understand. For a whole week she found a way to introduce almost every statement with the word “technically.” We’ve been following the primary coverage, so she’s started talking about “superdelegates.” She has no idea what any of these things mean.

I'm thinking of bumping back up to two posts per week, though I don't know if I'll have time. After all,I’ve started to teach workshops and things for the group of new students we have, plus a group of us are trying to get this interconnected group of businesses off the ground, and none of this is paid yet so I have to keep doing everything else I was doing for money before. Plus, as I said, I have a three year old. So, we’ll see.

I like to add some extra information about the narrative during these interludes, but nothing jumps out at me right now. Maybe it’s because I’m tired. My attention has been pre-empted by My Little Pony cartoons, “gween” icing, and the prospect of little naked seal babies beaching their cradles upon formerly abandoned islands.

Year 4: Part 1: Brigid

And so a new school year begins. I got back to campus a couple of days ago, since I wanted to spend at least one night outside before the beginning of February. I ended up managing two--both extraordinarily cold, but fortunately no precipitation. I sleep in a hammock, so it doesn't matter to me whether there is snow on the ground, except that I have to be careful not to drop anything. There's eighteen inches in places, and I wouldn't want to have to dig for some small piece of gear.

I had wanted to talk to some of the graduating students, especially Ebony and Rick, but except for a brief conversation with Ebony when I first got back (she told me about her plans to appear sighted for graduation), I haven't seen them. I've noticed graduating students often go missing in January. I assume they're finishing up last-minute requirements or, I don't know, partying together somewhere or something. There were plenty of people on campus to talk with otherwise, though--everyone else got back the same time I did, and the Great Hall seems very crowded. The masters were back, too, but I hardly saw any of them until the ceremony.

I did get to give two new students their tours--I happened to be in the office when they came in so Sharon asked me. I still haven't been asked to be anyone's buddy--a long-term new student guide--and I still don't understand how that works. Should I have volunteered? When? Was there any special training involved? I guess I didn't want to be a buddy badly enough to find out.

So on the evening of Brigit, I entered the Chapel along with everyone else and found a seat between Kayla and Steve Bees. Eddie sat on Kayla's other side. I don't know where Nora was.

"Where's Aidan?" I asked.
"With a baby-sitter in the Mansion. He's three, he can't sit still for this long."
"That's right, it's his birthday."
"We'll have a party for him later. Not having him here is my present to him."
"I kinda miss him being here."
"You wouldn't if he were here and decided to pitch a fit."
"Aren't the terrible twos supposed to be over now?"
"My son is never terrible. But he has his moments."

Actually, Aidan is a pretty well-behaved kid, but taking care of him is still a full-time job for whoever is watching him. I guess Kayla wanted to be able to focus on being at the ceremony. It's still weird to think that four years ago she wasn't here because she was busy giving birth in the basement alone.

"I'm excited," said Steve, who doesn't know Kayla's story, I don't think. "Last year Brigid was just a blur, I'm looking forward to seeing what it's really like."
"It's always blurry," put in Eddie. "That's deliberate. They put something in the air. Can't you smell it?"
It took Steve a couple of seconds to realize Eddie was joking. He smirked and rolled his eyes. And then the ceremony began.

The ding! ding! ding! of tiny, silver-sounding, seemingly endless bells, on and on, mind-numbing, and then the rustling and squeaking chairs as we all turned around in our seats to watch the masters file in. They are all, really, ordinary people--brilliant and generous, but ordinary too. Human. But that's not how they look processing in, the hoods of their brown robes drawn up, the honey-colored gloom of candle-light half hiding, half illuminating them, the air full of the mixed scents of snow, of beeswax, of wet wool and cold buildings, and the ceiling of the Chapel lost in shadow above so it might as well have been the clear sky....

I wasn't sitting on the end of a row, so I didn't get to light anyone's candle, but I saw the room brighten perceptibly. The fourteen masters took the stage together, set their candles in holders, and sat down. Seven empty chairs sat beside them on the stage, space for the candidates graduating this year.

Kit, the current Head of the Masters' Group called everyone to order, but her voice was noticeably hoarse. She seemed to have a cold. She got through introducing the new students, but then, as she moved into the graduation part of the ceremony, she touched her throat and winced and Allen said something to her. I couldn't hear him but she nodded and they switched places. And so, when Ebony crossed the stage it was Allen who waited for her. She did, indeed, look like she was sighted--the illusion worked. I'm sure the new students didn't understand why she gave a little jump of surprise when she heard Allen's voice, but of course until he spoke she would have thought it was Kit standing there.

The ritual worked just as well with him, of course, ad the illusion was maintained. In the candlelight I could see Ebony's face, but as usual she was almost expressionless. I could not see Allen's. After he handed her the diploma they hugged and held each other for a long time.

When the graduates come out they're wearing their black student cloaks and you can't see what they have on underneath until they take the ropes off. The newly revealed outfit is supposed to symbolize the next phase of their lives. Usually some of the outfits are outlandish and often someone is naked. I had kind of expected Rick to be the naked one but he wasn't. He was wearing a suit and looking quite uncomfortable in it, symbolic, I suppose, of having to live and work among humans for a while. I should have known--he'd know better than to be naked in a room no warmer than 40 degrees.

Instead, the naked one was Raven F.

The graduation of the candidates took a long time because there were seven of them. Usually there are three or four. This is not what you'd call a big school. But finally the ceremony was over, the masters processed away, and we had the first of the evening's many receptions. Raven, still naked (you can't put your cloak back on once you take it off, something Raven seemed to have forgotten), was very cold. We teased her a bit for that before someone gave her something to wrap up in.

It's good to be back among the familiar, mystical wackiness of school. I've seen this ceremony four times, now--the only thing is that sometime during the ceremony I realized that I'm what outsiders call a senior now. I have sat in this audience as a novice for the last time.

Year 3: Fourth Interlude

Hi, there, Daniel-of-2015 here.

Sorry about last Friday. As I said, we had a problem with our internet connection and then by the time we got it fixed I had other commitments I needed to meet. My schedule is too full these days to let me adjust to unexpected events—an obvious problem. In fact, for the next few months I’ll shift back to doing just one post per week, on Mondays.

My parents know I’m overworking myself and they ask why I can’t just drop this blog completely. After all, I’m not being paid for the project, and I’ve hidden my identity here so I can’t even put it on my resume. I’ve tried to explain to them that I have a duty to continue, a duty laid upon me by the others in the community. The thing is, at the moment the school doesn’t exist. If we don’t manage to re-establish ourselves somehow, then what we achieved, what we built and learned, will more or less evaporate and be lost. The reason I write this blog is to disseminate the principles and the sense of our community so as to hopefully inspire other people to pick up where we were forced to leave off. It’s our legacy. And that’s why I can’t just quit the blog because I’m too busy. The project is bigger than I am.

But we are making progress on other aspects of our legacy. As I’ve mentioned, Aiden has joined our school as its first new student since campus closed—so far, that doesn’t make much practical difference to him, since we’re just helping him through his homeschool program, which all of us would have done anyway. But it’s a big deal for him emotionally and it’s huge for us. For the first time in years, we’re thinking as a group about how to design a curriculum. We don’t know whether, or even if, we’ll have more students, but it feels good to be acting like a faculty again.

At the same time, we’re making progress in other areas.

I mentioned, a few months ago, how we’d had a conversation about whether to move forward as a group, to become something more than a group of friends who used to have a school together. Since then, we’ve been talking a lot about what we could do, how our interests and resources could come together to create some kind of educational or service community—because that’s what we’ve always been and that’s what we’ll need to be again if we’re to continue, if we’re to have a reason to exist.

We don’t yet have a hard and fast answer to the question, but what we’ve been doing is talking about our individual projects to maybe see how they fit together, whether one or more of them could become the new medium of community activity.

For example, there's Andy's bicycle shop, Sadie's restaurant, Karen's martial arts studio....

And there’s the homeschooling network. Some of the families in the community have always homeschooled, but they always did it independently of each other. That changed when Allen and Lo got involved. They had to get David re-enrolled in something quickly, so they didn’t have a lot of time to research and weigh their options. So they talked to Sadie and to Sarah and her husband about different ways to do homeschooling, and the three families formed a loose network. Through those conversations, Allen has gotten interested in children’s education as an extension of his work as a therapist. This fall, he and a group of other parents plan to open an after-school center that will also work as a resource room and community facility for homeschoolers.

Allen didn’t initially plan on his learning center having anything to do with our community as a whole, but we’ve been talking about it and throwing around ideas. Perhaps our community could develop new members through a high school rather than a college? Perhaps we could become a training program for teachers and camp counselors? Perhaps the community of parents with kids in the learning center might have some role in our future?

Anyway, among the group of us we have at least half a dozen projects either already launched or still in development around which we are having these kinds of discussions.

It’s exciting.

And in the meantime, my daughter is really starting to talk—whole sentences and everything—June is doing well in her career, I am still a mostly stay-at-home dad with way too many projects to look after, and this blog will continue for the foreseeable future.

It's the least and the most I can do for the community at present.