Mastery Year 3: Part 8: Post 7: Brigid

The day dawns when everything changes: Brigid.

I woke the morning before Brigid--what would be the morning of Brigid except that our holidays begin with the evening, as do those of Jews--feeling very odd. The sunlight was very bright in my room, I'd slept late, but June was sleeping still later, so I lay there alone beside her in a kind of well-lit, exalted terror, without thinking much of anything, aware only of the Total Now.

The Total Now, of course, doesn't last very long. You think "ah, here is the Total Now," and then, just like that, it isn't. Thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, creep in. I'm not enlightened. I'm not even all that different from the doofus who came to this school so many years ago, with no clear plan but a vague desire to belong to a place that looked like a scene from Harry Potter. And yet much has shifted since then, and I knew without doubt that I'd earned the ring I'd be getting later that day. It was simply the enormity of a day longed for, worked for, daydreamed about for so long finally arriving that weirded me out.


As you may have noticed, I can talk myself into a state very easily.

June woke up. I can't tell you how I knew she woke up, as she didn't move, but I did know, as so I said "Today is The Day."

"So is every other day," she reminded me. "Have we missed breakfast? Is there coffee?"

We hadn't missed breakfast completely, but it was well in progress by the time we got down to it and some people were already trickling out, finished, which was just as well because the morning before Brigid is always very crowded--almost the entire campus has returned from winter break, but we're still eating in the Great Hall, all of us except the masters and, of course, the graduating novices. They, the ones graduating, are all in the utter, timeless blackness of the individual cells of The Ordeal, a fact which nobody ever notices until their own Ordeal begins. Once one knows about the Ordeal, the sudden absence of twenty or so people for three days is obvious, but those who don't know to look never see. I've often wondered whether that curious obliviousness is cured by training for mastery, if our ability to see things that were once invisible--and, for some of us, to become invisible ourselves--translates into an ability to see what we're actually seeing instead of only what we're looking for. Perhaps it doesn't, but as they don't play such mind games with candidates I don't really know. Anyway, breakfast was crowded.

After breakfast, June and I went for a very long walk together. It hasn't snowed in over a week, and there's been some melting, so there were plenty of trampled paths almost everywhere we wanted to go, and even elsewhere, up in the woods, the snow was not deep. The air temperature hovered around freezing, warm for this time of year. The sun flitted between quickly-moving, fleecy clouds.

Do you know, I can't think of a time anyone here has ever remarked on whether Punxsutawney Phill has seen his shadow?

We got back to the Mansion around two and had lunch. Then I left June to her own devices for the rest of the day, took a shower, and put on my uniform. By three I was waiting in the Great Hall with the other graduating candidates, as instructed.

"We're supposed to go up, now," said Raven, "as long as no one can see us go."

No one else was in the Great Hall at the moment, so we climbed the stairs, up one flight, two flights, three flights, and then, after looking around one more time to assure ourselves of having no witnesses, we climbed the fourth flight up to the Masters' floor and Raven knocked on the door.

Allen answered, and bowed us inside.

I hadn't been up there since my first year, when I was on the janitorial team. The others had never been on that team, so they had never been up there at all. It looked about as I remembered it--quiet, simple, and somewhat cramped, but every object a work of art, and most of them gifts from students over the years. The interior lights were off, and only a little indirect sunlight drifted into the hallway from one or two open suit doors. No one seemed to be about. Allen gestured for silence and directed us into a side room I'd never seen before. It had always been closed when I'd come up to clean.

The room had no windows. It was entirely interior. Inside it were narrow shelves along the walls of evidently symbolic knick-knacks, tall, heavy vases set on the floor filled with dry plant stems and other items, a small round table, much candle-light, and the Six.

A seventh master stood around the table also, a woman I didn't know, an ally

We hadn't been coached on the contents of the ritual, only its purpose, so we all stood in a clump by the door and waited to be told what to do. Allen closed the door behind us and went to join the others, all six of them standing in a ring around the table, but a step  or two back from it.

"Here is where we make masters," said Kit. "Enter the Circle, if you wish."

We all stepped between the masters and made a smaller ring around the table within theirs. On the table lay various ritual implements and symbolic objects, several of the candles lighting the room, five brown cloth belts each rolled in a tight spiral, and a small bowl containing five green rings. I couldn't take my eyes from that bowl until Kit again began to speak. Then I looked at her.

"Identify yourselves vocally--who are you?" she asked.

We each said our names.

"You know who we are," she said, but then said her name anyway, and each of the others said theirs. The ally named herself as Mia. Ebony now knew not only who was in the room but where each person stood in relation to her, just as we knew. Details can be important in rituals, but they are only important if you know what they are.

"What do you want?" Kit asked.

"Our rings," we chorused in clumsy, unrehearsed unison.

"We have them for you," she acknowledged, "but there are things that must be said and done first." She then made a speech about the reason for the ritual and the meaning of the ring and the purposes of the school, all of which we had known already--just as they had known our names already--but the speech served a second purpose; Kit wove into it a detailed description of how the room looked. Ebony smiled.

"If you take these rings," Kit continued, "you must first swear to uphold the values of our community, the welfare of the school, and the welfare of the students, to the best of your ability forever. This step is not one you take for yourselves but for others. You can use what we gave you freely and anywhere, but if you accept the ring it will be because you wish to serve the community and its students. Do you swear?"

I think we all paused a little, just to be sure--it does not do to take major vows by rote--but we all swore. Then Mia spoke up.

"There is another vow you must make if you want the rings," she said, "but the Six can't ask it of you because it is to serve them, not as your masters, for we are all equals, but as your wards. They give their lives to this community, giving up the possibility of outside careers and achievements commensurate with their skills, and they are the only ones who make this sacrifice--even the non-teaching masters can put their work here on their resumes and leave at any time. Our job, yours and mine, is to make sure they never have cause to regret it. Should this school ever close, or should one of the Six have to leave us for any reason, we others who wear the Ring are responsible, individually and collectively, for making sure no one who has been of the Six will ever go hungry or suffer neglect. Do you swear?"

Again, after a pause, we all swore. I had expected the first vow, though I hadn't known the wording, but I had not thought about the second. It felt odd to make that vow, to imagine each of these people, as well as those few who had been of the Six but had left and were still alive, ill or infirm and in need, and what I might do to fulfill my vow. A quiet sense of responsibility settled on me--and a strange, new tenderness.

"We will each of us bless your rings," explained Kit, leaning forward to pick up the bowl. They passed it around the outer circle, each of the Six taking a  moment to place a hand over the rings and concentrate before passing the bowl along.

"You're all of different ring sizes," Kit said, "so you shouldn't have any trouble finding the one that's yours. Take your rings, but don't put them on. Daniel, you're biggest, why don't you go first?"

I took the bowl and sorted through the rings, found the largest of them, and took it. Then I looked around, trying to sort out who was next-biggest. It would be Raven or Veery, I knew. Both Ebony and Eddie have little hands. Raven waved as though volunteering, to I handed her the bowl. It took her longer to find her ring--she had to lay them out in a row on the table--because she's closer in size to the others than I am. She put the other three back in the bowl still in a line and passed the bowl to Veery, who took it and passed it to Eddie, who laughed silently and took the smallest ring, then passed the bowl to Ebony who has slightly bigger hands than he does.

Looking at least of them in turn like that, I felt a tremendous pride to be doing this with such a remarkable group of people, as well as an amused awareness that I stood in a circle with not one but two of my ex-girlfriends. I thought about Joanna and wondered how she was doing. Well, I hope.

We each held our rings. Mine felt cool and smooth and surprisingly light in my hands.

"Bless your rings however you will--make them yours" Kit instructed, "and then hand your ring to the master who will present to you."

I handed mine across the table to Charlie, who took it without comment or overt expression, then nodded slightly. I nodded back, though I'm not sure why.

Raven handed hers to Charlie, and Veery handed hers to Allen. Eddie handed his to Joy, who smiled warmly at him. Ebony seemed a little lost--she has poor spatial awareness and had probably forgotten where in the circle Allen was.

"Put out your hand, Ebony," he said, and she did and he took her hand and so she gave him her ring.

"There," said Kit. "Now is when you change--your belts, I mean."

You may or may not remember, but the color of our clothing has significance, here. Novices where white uniforms with black cloaks, and everybody else wears brown uniforms with brown cloaks, except that the masters have brown cloth belts while the candidates (and other graduates without rings, when they visit) wear white belts.

Each of us reached out and took the belt in front of us, removed our white belts and tied the brown ones on. The belts are just like those you'd wear in a martial arts class, only perhaps a little narrower, and in martial arts classes when you switch belts you turn away from your teacher--or at least, that's what Karen had us do. Something about not changing your clothes in full view. Now, though, with our teachers surrounding us in a ring, there was no turning away. I felt a little self-conscious about that.

Now, for the first time, Greg spoke up, saying "come to Chapel Hall like normal, and sit in the front row. You'll come up on stage, as you recall--Charlie's students, then Allen's, then Joy's. If you have any questions about that, stay back and ask. Otherwise you're free to go, but you're between things right now, with brown belts but without your rings, and the ritual won't be closed until tonight. So I suggest you avoid mixing with the others or attempting anything psychologically strenuous. Good luck."

Allen spoke a kind of benediction over us, saying "Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." It sounds very Zen and ancient, but it's actually lyrics from a Leonard Cohen song.

We filed out. The masters came out after us. Kit extinguished the candles. Once we were out of the room, I caught Charlie.

"Which of us will go first?" I asked him. Raven heard and came over, also curious.

"Which of you wants to?" he asked. She and I looked at each other and shrugged.

"I can," I said.

"Good. You remember what to say?"

"Yes."

"OK. Raven, you want to say anything different, or does the standard work for you?"

There's a dialogue that people getting their rings go through, and the first one who does it every year must always do it the same way. The others can improvise. Raven chose not to improvise.

It was almost four by then. I occupied myself for two hours by wandering around the lesser-used parts of campus and up into the woods again. The temperature was dropping. The sky was growing a high, thickening haze.

At dusk I went to the Chapel and sat down in the front row. Eddie was already there. The others came in a few minutes later. We all sat together bit did not speak. The room filled up behind us.

The ceremony went as it had before. This post is already plenty long enough, so I won't give a full description. When it was time, Charlie stood at center stage and waited. I joined him.

"What do you seek?" he asked me.

"I seek my Mastery," I told him.

"Why do you seek it?"

"Because it is mine."

"Take then this ring from my hand. It is already yours. Congratulations." And he handed me my ring. I put it on. That was it, the heart of the matter. He shook my hand, the other heart of the matter, and I took my seat on the stage among the other masters and looked out at the audience, the students, and I let them look at me.

Everything changes every day. It is always today. It is always Brigid.

Mastery Year 3: Part 8: Post 3: Poetry and Prose

I'm back on campus now. June and I spent Christmas and New Years at her parents', then she went back to work and I spent a few days with my parents--and so did she, simply commuting to work from my parents' house, rather than from campus. We just got back to school this afternoon.

We're doing an odd thing, June and I, over the next few weeks; we're going apartment-hunting.

For all that I've been working for the past three years to become a master, there's no reason to believe there's going to be an opening. It's not that none of the Six are likely to retire--for one thing, Greg is semi-retired already, and while I think he may choose to stay on until he dies, he also could choose to retire wholly at any time--or a medical problem could force the issue. The non-teaching masters also come and go somewhat faster, or the Master's Group could decide to expand. But I am not qualified to replace Greg, there is no obvious place for me among the non-teaching masters, and no reason to expand the group. Realistically, I'd only get hired if Charlie retired, and that he will, quite obviously, never do. In any case, I'm sure Rick or Raven would be a better match for the role than I am. So I'm going to remain an ally--in more standard terms, an adjunct--for the time being. And allies don't get on-campus housing.

So, we're looking for something affordable within biking distance from campus, probably a mother-in-law apartment off the back of somebody's house. We're thinking about renter's insurance and transportation, furnished vs. unfurnished, accessibility to shopping. Shopping? I haven't bought a load of groceries for three years. All of it seems so banal, so mundane. So normal. It's bizarrely disappointing, but I suppose it has to be done.

And we're all going through it--Eddie, Raven, Ebony, Veery, and I, putting together the circumstances of our lives out in the real world. It's melancholy. I think all of us have thrown around the idea of all getting a house together, but it doesn't seem quite right somehow and we're not taking the idea seriously. There's no avoiding what comes next in this strange trip of ours--leaving, and, in a way, leaving for good.

But at the moment, there are no such errands to run, no practical steps on the hunting of houses to take. And I have no classes to take or to teach, no votes to secure, no madcap challenges from Charlie to tackle (except that one, and it is well in hand and needs no action today). There is nothing to do.

And so I sit at the table by the window in the Great Hall all alone, watching the sun turn the snowy world golden.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 2: Puppy

Happy Veteran's Day, I suppose.

We don't do anything for Veteran's Day, here, because the school year is over, the masters have retreated away from the school community, and the campus is quiet--as a school, we're not doing anything about anything until Yule. And there's the issue that patriotism itself isn't really much of a thing, here. A lot of the community members are pacifists of one kind or another, and many, whether they believe in violence or not, have little interest in mundane entities such as the United States of America.

But there are community members who have served--there are some serving now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there was a non-teaching master named Aurora in the first few years of the school who had retired after a career in the military. I think she did something or other in Korea, not combat, obviously, but something. And of course, Charlie's brother was a veteran. They should be acknowledged, somehow.

I think if Veteran's Day fell inside the school year and not outside it, Greg would do something, give some kind of talk.

Campus is particularly quiet, this year. Pretty much everybody except the yearlings and a few of the candidates are gone already. Chapel Hall is closed for the year, as is the Dining Hall, so the few of us who are left eat in the Great Hall and spend most of our time reading, hiking, or working on whatever catch-up projects we need to for this or that assignment while looking out the windows at the pale gray-brown and often-frozen world. The quiet is both metaphoric and literal.

And yet Eddie has a puppy.

Eddie, you may remember, doesn't have his master's vote to finish yet, despite his intention to receive his ring this coming Brigid. He hasn't asked for the vote because he feels he's not ready--he still hasn't recovered from the death of his dog, Elmo.

Maybe recovery isn't the right word. Integrated? Processed? Because Elmo didn't just die, he was shot by Joy after trying to kill Eddie--a crisis deliberately instigated by the masters, who assigned Eddie the task of training a dog he himself considered untrainable. He was set up to fail, in order to learn whatever he could from failure. And he hasn't learned it yet, so he says. He's stuck, not in grief, but in failure.

I'm unclear whether the masters couldn't offer useful help to Eddie, or of Eddie just didn't ask because he's so stuck, but either way, the school year ended without Eddie having any clear idea how to prepare himself to get his ring when he wants to. Steve asked him about it, and he reportedly shrugged.

"That's that," he said.

That's when Steve called a meeting of the candidate's group. Over the summer we pulled together to figure out how to get Steve and his wife and son out to visit a dying relative--that was the first time we acted as a problem-solving group. This was the second. We discussed how to get Eddie ready to receive his ring.

The thing is, besides Steve, there are four others who plan to finish on Brigid, and we all have our votes. That mean in theory, we should have everything it takes to be masters, including the ability to coach one of our own towards his ring.

Not that any of us had any idea what we are doing, but as Raven said, the actual masters didn't have any idea what they were doing when they started, either. So we gave it a shot.

We sat in a circle in the Great Hall, the eight of us, and talked and listened and threw around ideas, until Raven suggested the thing that clicked for all of us:

Eddie is stuck in the past, therefore he needs something to pull his attention into the present--and he's stuck in pain and therefore needs something to pull him towards joy. A puppy will accomplish both.

So now Eddie is fostering a puppy for one of the rescue centers he's worked with in the past. The pup has some medical needs and won't be up for adoption for a couple of months, so we're hoping Eddie can fall in love with the animal and then let her go on a happy note, and maybe that will help.

Maybe it won't. I'd never really appreciated before how uncertain, how vulnerable, this helping people is. But as Raven said, the actual masters are in the same boat, and what they do usually works out, so we're trying it.

And now Eddie has a puppy.

Mastery Year 3: Part: 7: Samhain

Happy (belated) Samhain.

I always get a case of "the lasts" at this time of year--I get obsessed with the idea that I'm doing or experiencing things for the last time. It's seasonally appropriate, I suppose, and the feeling always eases up a bit after the holiday. I guess I get over my obsession and just get on with the year actually ending. But this year, of course, it was especially bad. If all goes well--and I expect it to--my candidacy is basically over.

I was sitting in the audience, breathing in that old, familiar scent of beeswax, wool, and autumn leaves, thinking about how I'd never be a student sitting in this audience again, because at Brigid I'll be on the stage as a newly-minted master, when I suddenly realized I didn't know the actual procedure. What has to happen between now and February to ensure I am sitting on that stage?

So after the ceremony I found Charlie.

"How does the next few months go?" I asked him. "When do I interview? How will I know? Is there something weird happening before then that I need to be on campus for? I forgot to ask!" I was hurried and breathless because I didn't know exactly when they'd ring the bell, and there's never any guarantee of being able to ask questions like that after the bell rings.

Charlie looked confused for a few seconds and then smiled at me, clearly amused.

"Nothing weird, unless you make it weird yourself. Mind-games are for novices, remember? You'll interview the last week before Brigid--they'll be a schedule, we'll reach out to one of you and let you know.  Then there's a short ceremony earlier on Brigid day. None of it's secret."

"Oh."

"No, it's good you asked. You should have."

"Thanks."

"You're welcs. But Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"You have the votes of everybody on your committee, right?"

"Charlie, I don't know who everyone on my committee is. But...yes."

That earned me a smile.

"Don't take those votes for granted. That interview is not a formality."

"Way to make me anxious, Charlie."

"Hmph. I can't make you feel anything, Daniel. I expect you'll be fine, but you know what expectations are. Complacency teaches you nothing."

Great.

Anyway, the ceremony itself went very well, and since I haven't described it in any detail in a few years, I'd better do it now--meaning this whole post is somewhat inside-out. Ah, well.

Samhain (pronounced "Sah-wen") is a Day or the Dead, related to, but distinct from, both Halloween and Dia Del Muerte. There are many people who celebrate it, and the way we celebrate it on campus is probably a little different than what most people do--though honestly, I wouldn't know. We prepare for it by decorating campus with shocks of corn stalks, bales of straw, pumpkins, squash, and gourds, and, indoors, cut vines of bittersweet and grape, candles, and baskets of apples. And, in a new twist they added last year, pots of marigolds both indoors and out. Anyone who wants to is also welcome to make a poster to memorialize a dead person. Those go up on display in the Chapel several days before the event.

Usually, the 31st, the evening of which is Samhain Eve (these things begin the sunset before, like Jewish holidays) is our last day of classes, but this year it fell on a Saturday. Most of us treated it like a regular Saturday, while the janitorial team set up for the ceremony. Instead of dinner, we all dressed in our uniforms and moseyed on over to Chapel Hall across already frosty ground lit with constellations of candles, each floating in a small bowl of water.

We all found seats in the Chapel, which was lit by dozens and dozens of beeswax candles so that the whole room was dim and honey-colored and warm from the candles and the ceiling was lost in the gloom and might have been a million miles up. My stomach started to grumble; it knows what time dinner normally is and I'd skipped it.

A small bell rang from somewhere and rang again and again and the masters processed in, each carrying a lit candle. Charlie, the current Head of the masters' group, led the procession, though with his hood up I wouldn't have recognized him if I didn't know him as well as I do--the way he walks and the breadth of his shoulders are distinctive.

They climbed onto the stage, which was empty except for the tall candle-holders, deposited their candles, and then all of them except Charlie left the stage and sat in the audience with us. As Head, Charlie was master of ceremonies. He put his hood down and made a kind of semi-formal opening speech, and then he read the names. Some years they get someone other than the Head to do it, but Charlie read them himself, a long list of people who had died and were being honored. Most of the names belonged to people I never met, and while most were community members of one kind or another, but some were simply famous people we like to honor. I noticed Steve's grandfather had joined the list.

They put the list together every year, so if nobody writes a name down it just isn't on there--that's how the list does not get impossibly long with favorite cousins of former students and that sort of thing, but some people go on the list every year, and it is gradually getting longer. This year I noticed Charlie did not read the list of exist species. It appears to have been cut for space.

Then Charlie invited anyone who wanted to to eulogize community members who had died over the past year. There was only one, a former student I never met, and two people stood up at the same time. There was a bit of awkward negotiation with gestures before one sat down and the other said a few words.

Finally, we sang "Hats Off to Dead Folks," our goofy memorial song where anyone who wants to can contribute a verse. I'd expected Kit to lead it, she usually does, but Charlie never introduced her. Instead, he started off by singing a verse about his brother, which surprised me twice--once since he'd obviously, publicly, and apparently pointlessly snubbed Kit (she routinely does so to him, but he tends to act as though he's above whatever goes on between them) and another time because Mario has been dead a couple of years, now, and Charlie has not sung for him publicly before.

The song is goofy and light-hearted, but Eddie's voice still broke when he sang a verse for his dog. I sat a few rows behind him and saw hands reach up to him, almost literally supporting him as he sang. Steve sung a verse for his grandfather--and Sarah, Steve's wife, surprised us all by singing her own different verse for the same man. I suppose that's allowed--we allowed it, anyway--but I've never seen it done before. I didn't know any of the other people who got verses and I didn't sing one myself.

Then we all milled around for a while, leaving the ritual seemingly unfinished, until the bells rung and the masters suddenly absented themselves, some of thm leaving mid-sense, as they do. There is, after all, a sharpness, a suddenness to loss, however expected, that cannot be made goofy and must be acknowledged.

We all streamed out of the Chapel and out towards the fire pit where food and drink awaited us. And we old hands dropped towards the rear of the crowd, unobtrusively forcing the yearlings to the front so they wouldn't try to stop the abduction of one community member by a pack of masked miscreants--the sprouts and their friends, of course. Yearlings never know about the tradition until they see it done.

It was Alexis, Allen's youngest, who came to demand ransom for the prisoner--Ebony, as it turned out.

Predictably, everyone made a big show of weeping and wailing and pleading for her return, but Alexis, whom we were not supposed to recognize under her costume, held firm. Finally, Kit regretfully asked what the hostage-takers wanted. Normally some haggling follows over how much candy and so forth the kids will get, but I stood up and said NO in a loud voice.

"What?" said kit, momentarily startled.

"No," I repeated. "We can't give in to terrorists! Come on, I can't believe you people are even considering it! You know how this works--if we pay one ransom, none of us will be safe!"

A short pause, then, as the others came up to speed, a vociferous argument broke out, some of us in favor of paying, others joining my side of it. Alexis stood there, obviously unsure of what to do. Gradually, more and more people came over to my side until, with a nervous glance at each other at our temerity, we made a united front ant told the bandits they could do their worst--we wouldn't pay.

"NO!" cried another voice, this time June's.

We turned to look at her and found her standing, gun-shaped stick in hand, covering us all with a kind of unhinged nervousness.

"No," she said again. "We're paying, I don't care.I'll pay myself, if I have to. I'll, I'll, I'll shoot anyone who gets in my way."

"June," I cried, aghast, staring down the barrel of my wife's imaginary gun, "why?"

"Because, because--I'm in love with her!" She said this with enough melodrama for three day-time-TV stars, and someone sang "dun-dun-dun!" in approximation of suitable music.

Of course, June's elaboration blew our negotiating power to hell, and the sprouts ended up with more candy and other goodies than I think they've ever gotten before. Ebony was returned unharmed, and I was pleased to see they'd blindfolded her just like they would have any other abductee.  She doesn't like special treatment.

"I'd always wondered what being abducted felt like," she said, quite merrily, once we'd gotten her freed from her restraints. She disappeared into a knot of well-wishers bearing warm drinks.

"Well," said Kit to me in mock anger, once the others were too far away, up near the fire, to pay attention. "I hope you're satisfied. Next year they'll expect twice as much."

"What?" I replied, all innocence. "If I'm going to be a master soon, I figured I'd better start acting it and try changing something.

Mastery Year 3: Part 6: Post 2: Falling

"Are you going to honor Elmo at Samhain?" I asked Eddie. We were taking a walk the other day, between things, roughly following the periphery of the campus. The sugar maples in the avenue along the main entrance are turning, and the trees blazed orange above our heads.

Elmo, you remember, was his dog.

"I don't know," he said, after a bit. "I guess so. I've never heard anyone memorialize an animal, except you with Sanchez."

"You remember!"

Sanchez was the kitten I had when I was a little boy.

"I have a good memory."

"Well, it can't possibly be wrong, even if it's rare, or someone would have said something about it."

"I suppose," Eddie acknowledged. "I guess I will. It just hurts to think about."

"I'm sorry?"

"No, I think about it even when you don't bring it up. It just...it wouldn't be so bad if he were just dead, it's that I can't stop thinking maybe it was my fault."

"Eddie, he would have been put down months earlier at the shelter, if it wasn't for you. You did everything you could."

"Maybe I should have been able to do better."

"You're going to make yourself crazy," I told him.

"I'm already crazy," he said.

We were quiet for a bit.

"I guess it's coming up, though," he said.

"What?"

"Samhain. Whatever I'm going to do, I'd better get ready to do it."

It's true. We're three weeks out, but already the campus is more than half decorated for the holiday, mostly harvest-themed stuff, pumpkins, weirdly-shaped squashes, and decorative gourds, dried shocks of corn stalks....And then there's the Halloween paraphernalia, the bats and witches and arch-backed cats, which have almost nothing to do with Samhain but which a lot of the students, mostly yearlings, enjoy as a kind of camp--it's all through our dorms, even if not elsewhere on campus. In a week or two, Charlie and his team will put up the grape and bittersweet vines in the Mansion, and people will start making the memorial alters.

But....

"I can't believe it's this close," I said.

"Do you have your votes yet?"

"No, not all of them. But I will."

"Who don't you have?"

"Charlie," I admitted.

"Charlie! But he's the main one you need! What's your hold-up?"

I should explain; mastery candidates technically only need the vote of their own master--Charlie, in my case--to finish. It's not like the novices who need the votes of all the masters. But the other requirement for earning the green ring is we have to pass a job interview with a committee made up of some of the masters, and none of us know who our committee will be. So we've all decided it's smart to get the approval of all of the masters, just in case.

"Well, I haven't asked him yet."

"Daniel!"

"I know, I know. I will. I just...can't."

We were quiet for a bit.

"Do you have your votes?" I asked.

"No. I haven't asked. I'm not ready. I think I'll be ready by Brigid, I have three months. If I'm not, well, what's another year?"

"There are times I'm afraid I'll never get out of here," I admitted. "I'll be stuck as a student here forever...institutionalized. And then sometimes I'm afraid I won't be able to stay."

"I know. Me, too."

We were quiet again for a bit. Late-season crickets sang in the grass. The air was cool, the sun getting ready to set. A car sped by on the main road nearby and startled both of us--it seemed like it was from another world.

"So, what's you're hold-up?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"I'm just not happy," he said. "I'm Ed, I'm supposed to be happy." The name, Ed, which in his case is not short for Edward or Edgar, or anything like that, means happy. "But I think I lost something when I lost my dog, and I don't think I'll get it back."

And just at that moment, I kid you not, one of those flame orange leaves fell and it settled in his hair.

Mastery Year 3: Part 6: Mabon

Mabon—the Autumnal Equinox—isn’t for a few more days, but I like to post before the holiday, rather than after, to build anticipation. -D.

Happy Mabon!

I don’t feel very celebratory at the moment, but of course that’s no reason not to wish everyone a happy holiday. And maybe it’s appropriate that Mabon feel like a mixed bag, since it is the equinox. No, nothing bad has happened, I’m just feeling glum.

It is Fall, now, though I have to admit it doesn’t yet look like it. The forest is still green, the air is still warm—even hot, some days, though not nearly as hot as a month or two ago. But under the green is a yellow cast, a hint of change, and the birds are heading south—some are staging to migrate, others have already left. As with spring, which is present from the first hint of growth, Fall is present from the first hint of preparation for the cold. I didn’t used to understand this. I see things more deeply now, I suppose.

The performance art element of our holiday celebration is back, it always has a competitive talent-show aspect to it, and last year, besides the food (there is always some sort of comparative tasting event, plus a fantastic buffet showcasing the campus farm’s produce), the show was all about athletics. This year it’s reverted to art again. I suppose art suits us better, though art can include athletics, and Karen and some of her students did perform several sequences of martial arts forms.

There was also a pie-baking contest—twenty-some pies competed, each one presented along with a small tub of extra filling, for people who wanted to take a little taste of all of them for comparison.

The pies raised an old question—how are things like this contest organized? I hadn’t known there would be a pie contest, there was no announcement, no call for contestants, so how did the actual contestants know to enter? There are always parts of this place I just don’t see, even as there are aspects I do see that hardly anyone else does. I’ve been noticing that for years, and in years past the realization made me feel, first, pleasantly mystified (as when someone does a magic trick I can't figure out) and later awkward, foolish, and excluded. But this year I felt none of those things. I simply asked Sadie, the cook, how the pie-making contest had been organized and how the competitors had known about it.

"They knew about it because they organized it," she explained. "A group of them came to me a week ago and asked if they could use the kitchen and our supplies to make a buncha pies for the feast today. I said yes, and wrote it into the schedules. The staff saw my notes, and half of them wanted in." She shrugged.

I stared at her.

"Is that how it always works?" I asked. "I'm not missing announcements, there just aren't any for these kinds of things, because they're organized by groups of participants from the beginning?"

"Not always, sometimes you are just oblivious," Sadie told me and grinned.

"I'd almost rather be oblivious--the other is so prosaic," I admitted.

"Some magics are," she told me. "And then there's pie. Pie is delicious even if you do know the recipe."

"I suppose." Actually, I agree with her about the pie, I was just lost in thought. I was looking around the event tent at all the people milling around and eating and talking, and I was thinking about how they all knew things I didn't, and how I'd vainly thought I could crack the code if I asked the right person, but now it seemed there was no code to crack. The people who seemed more involved that I got that way, not because they were tapped and I wasn't, and not because they answered some call that I didn't hear, but simply because they took the initiative and I hadn't. I felt left out all over again, and left out by my own fault.

"I think you're closer to solving your problem than you think you are," Sadie told me.

"Huh? What?"

"Your problem. You want to know how this place works, right?" Of course, I had asked her that very question when I interviewed her over the summer. The fact that I've been interviewing people, actively researching how to school works is common knowledge.

"Yes," I said, cautiously.

"So there's a missing piece--these pies, the other contests, things that happen and you can't figure out how, right? So there's a question you're not asking. You already have the answer, you just have to ask the right question."

"Um," I tried to think. "You're gonna have to give me a hint."

"Alright. You know how the pies got made, but have you wondered why there was space on the table for them?"

And all at once I saw why that was, indeed, a puzzle, and in seeing that I solved the puzzle.

"Why was there room? Why is there ever room for all of these ostensibly unscheduled events? How does it all get coordinated?" Because I know in other organizations, too, there are small groups of people having ideas, but those ideas don't become projects central to the functioning of the whole without some kind of process. In any other school, the pie contest would have had to be proposed to and approved by the event director, who would then insist that a general call for submissions go out...here, there was no director and no approval. Things just happen, bubbling up as they will. And it all fits into a coherent pattern. The school works.

"The school works because each of you" I meant the masters "can see a different aspect of the whole, just like I can see some aspects and, I don't know, Eddie, can see other aspects. And you ask each other questions."

"Bingo," said Sadie. "That's what Friday night dinners are for. We get together and share what we know and think and want, and we keep each other on the same page that way. More or less. If there's a conflict, we can deal with it."

"I still feel really dumb," I admitted. "I could have been making all kinds of stuff happen around here, but I just assumed I needed an invitation or something."

"What would you have made happen?"

"I don't know."

"Well, there you go. You have other skills, and you have been using them."

"Speaking of which, don't you have to go to the Mansion, now?" I'd noticed, out of the corner of my eye, as Allen slipped away. Kit and Greg and both Joes had already vanished. Charlie was gathering his things. I knew the masters did something secret in the Mansion on Mabon and that students weren't even supposed to know that the secret existed, let alone what it was. I tipped my hand to Sadie on impulse, just to prove--to her? to myself?--that I wasn't the idiot I felt like. Her eyes widened.

"You're right. I'd better get a move on," she said. But if she farewelled me and got up, other eyes might notice and follow her. I knew that.

"I'm going to get myself some pie," I told her. "You can wander away while I go--eyes will follow me because I'll move first."

"You've been hanging out with Allen," she accused. I shrugged.

"You want some pie?" I said, standing up.

"No, thank you."

I nodded in acknowledgement and walked over to the tables, tripping over a chair as I went, though I didn't fall over or anything dramatic like that. A few people glanced at me. Sadie was gone by the time I turned around, pie in hand.

I wandered around with my pie (which was very good) and ended up settling near Hawk and Eddie. I'd mentioned Eddie earlier because he'd been involved with the Beltane celebrations for several years, without my ever finding out how he'd gotten involved. He must simply have volunteered. His being thus on my mind was part of the reason I moved towards him. The other reason was that Hawk had her hawk with her. She has to bring the animal out among people periodically, or she won't stay completely tame.

I approached and the others acknowledged me, but they were deep in their own conversation and the hawk seemed nervous about my being too close, so I sat some feet away and ate my pie.

"I wish Elmo was here," Eddie was saying. "I was never able to do this with him. He was never as far along as I thought he was." Elmo was the dog Eddie was training, until the animal made a serious attempt to kill him and Joy had to intervene with a gun. Eddie held out his hands and looked at the more accessible of his many scars.

"Do you think you would do anything differently?" asked Hawk, "If you had to do it over again?"

But Eddie just shrugged.

"I would probably get less involved emotionally," he said, after a bit. "But I doubt that would lead to a better outcome. It's just what I would do."

"You've lost a certain innocence," Hawk said.

"Yes. I shouldn't have. It's not like I didn't know some dogs are dangerous."

"But it hadn't happened to you."

"No."

"Before I came out," said Hawk, "there were people I thought loved me unconditionally. Had my back, you know? And they didn't. Now I wonder who else doesn't. Who else will leave me if they find out I'm not the person they thought I was."

"Aren't you?" I suppose Eddie was wondering if Hawk had still more closets to climb out of.

"How they hell should I know? I don't know what other people think. It's having no control that bothers me."

"Thinking I should have control bothers me," said Eddie. I knew Elmo was impossible. I thought I could train him anyway. Isn't that how the story goes?"

And they both shook their heads sadly.

"I don't think either of us are as good at loving as we used to be," said Hawk. "Sometimes I'm trying to teach my bird here to trust and I feel like a total hypocrite. She's sitting here calmly and I bate at every little thing. I have armor, not feathers, anymore." To bate, for a falconer, means to panic and bolt. When a hawk on a short leash does it, the bird ends up hanging upside-down from the leash and flapping helplessly. Panic accomplishes nothing, not even escape. Hawk has explained all this to me.

"Do you suppose we'll ever get better again?" asked Eddie. "Or is this....hardening permanent?"

"I don't know," replied Hawk. "I think if we can forget to protect ourselves, it's possible."

"Tall order," said Eddie.

"I don't know," suggested Hawk, "you were supposed to tame an impossible animal for work in therapy. Ever think you're the animal?"

Mastery Year 3: Fifth Interlude

Hi, all, Daniel of 2019, here.

Sorry my posting schedule has gone all to hell. The reasons are complex and I'm not going to get into them right now.

I'm also, frankly, struggling with the organization of the whole piece. I mean, I know what happened, but telling a story is never as simple as just saying what happened. In this case, the problem is that my final few months as a student were a weird combination of not much happening and too much happening to write about.

I, personally, continued talking to people, teaching workshops and courses, and generally learning about how the school worked. I achieved no sudden, dramatic breakthroughs. I didn't need any. I was just cleaning up loose ends in my education, and the result was a gradual but thorough deepening in my understanding and confidence, a kind of shift from perceiving the school as something that held me to seeing it as something I could hold. Important to me personally, but it doesn't make a good story.

Steve showed more and more evidence of having internalized being outside as a source of peace and strength, and he developed a better sense of what would come next in his process--work that he would do directly under Greg's supervision, not mine. He gradually graduated from me, which is an important thing for a student to do, but it doesn't make a good story, either.

Ebony was doing a lot of difficult emotional work--the cultural clash she had run into in Absence had been particularly intense and had beaten her up pretty badly, and so she was working on ways to be herself out in the "real world" without letting it get her down. Unfortunately, I spoke with her very rarely that year, and so had only a general and intermittent idea of her progress.

Eddie, having suffered the quite deliberately painful test of being set up to lose one of his dogs, was putting himself back together with the help of the masters, and was starting to see his way to working again, sadder but wiser, as they say. Maybe that would make a good story, but I can't tell it well, because Eddie preferred not to talk to me about his work for those months. He seemed to use me as an opportunity for an emotional break, and he spent our time together mostly telling me about which women he hoped to go to bed with next and why. Eddie never kissed and told, but he had no qualms whatever about discussing anticipation.

Raven G. and I spoke often and developed a friendship we'd never had before, mostly organized around trying to figure out what certain things Charlie said or did meant. He was her teacher, too, and we studied him like a shared religious text--not, you understand, that he was an object of veneration. He was a finger pointing at the moon.

See what I mean? How do I put all this in a meaningful story in blog format? I've been hoping something occurs to me, it usually does, but this time it hasn't.

In other news, we of the present-tense are getting ready to celebrate Mabon in a week and a half and also coordinating our participation in the Climate Strike on the 20th. Maybe I'll see you there.

Mastery Year 3: Part 3: Post 1: Beltane

Happy belated Beltane, everyone! The holiday was a few days ago and I am, rather unexpectedly, off to the Island.

Let me tell you about the holiday, first.

This year the first of May came very cold—there was actually a frost the previous night, and in the morning a cold, wet, fitful wind blew. If the clouds had loosed anything it would have been snow. But they held their peace, and the wind blew the sky clear by lunch, leaving an incredibly blue sky and a cheerful, warming sun.

We held the Maypole Dance in the afternoon, followed by most of the other festivities, and pushed ndinner back late into the evening to leave enough time. As Charlie acknowledges reluctantly, modern technology has some advantages, and somewhat accurate weather prediction is one of them.

I didn’t dance but sang and banged away on a tambourine and watched the pattern of the dancers and their ribbons, thinking about how by the next May Day I’ll be actually barred from joining them. I’ll have my green ring, technically a faculty member, and no more able to do this sexual metaphor of a dance with a student than to literally have sex with one. I’ll dance with the masters, I suppose. If they dance. This year, once again, whatever dance they did was private.

As to our other festivities, Kit’s tide seems to be rising again now, though she was actually not very involved. May Day here is largely a project of Sarah and Kit, except their ideas of how to celebrate it are more or less mutually exclusive. Kit favors sexy, bawdy, very adult celebrations that Sarah finds frankly offensive. Sarah favors an event focused on child-friendly activities organized around farming and nature. Kit likes those, but finds them somewhat euphamistic. And so the tension between the two generates a gradual oscillation in the event as first one and then the other gains ascendancy from year to year.

This year saw a return of the concert of slightly bawdy love songs, but Kit wasn’t in evidence except as an audience member. Instead, Eddie was everywhere—and Eddie, too, organized the blessing of the animals and the petting zoo, and a kind of amateur talent show for dogs and their trainers. Eddie in his person embodies both poles of the day, Eddie the incurable flirt, lover and fan of all women, and the devotee of dogs.

Eddie sang most of the songs, either alone or in duet, backed up with a gradually shifting band of students and masters, but the one song that sticks in my mind was the one for which he yielded the stage utterly—to Hawk.

As you may recall, Hawk is a transwoman still mid-transition. If she’s on hormones, they have not yet done much to transform her look. She still dresses like a man when she leaves campus without one of us for company—she says she feels safer that way. But on campus she’s been relaxing into her new identity, developing her style, and generally exploring herself. And it turns out she can sing.

Her voice, of course, is quite deep, and she has not yet learned to adjust it for speaking—I don’t know whether she plans to. But Kit has been coaching her in the use of her falsetto, and she’s at the point now where, as she puts it, she “sounds like herself.”

Hawk sang “Fever,” and she did it with a voluptuousness of soul that brought the house down.

Afterwards, while we were milling around, waiting for the people who had danced to finish setting up the Dining Hall, Charlie approached me.

“You didn’t dance,” he stated.

“No.”

“You didn’t try, did you?”

“No,” I admitted. “I danced more years than not. I figure it’s other people’s turn.”

He looked at me a moment, seeing, probably, my regret and my sadness.

“It’s first-come, first served, not rationed,” he pointed out. I said nothing. “Daniel, when you want something, try to get it. The worst that can happen is you won’t get it.”

I know a Teaching when I hear one, a principle I am supposed to remember.

“In that case,” I asked, “can I come with you to the Island?” I half expected him to say no. I knew he knew I wanted to go, and I knew him perfectly capable of encouraging me to ask for something I couldn’t have, just as an exercise. And I knew I couldn’t expect his attention and company forever. As with the dance, other people deserved their turn.

“Yes, you can,” he told me. “But why?”

“Why?” I echoed. Should I feel hurt?

“No, not why do you want to come, that’s obvious—why is coming to the Island this year part of your education? Make up something plausible.”

“Um, so that I can bring Steve? He needs an intensive exploration of a beautiful place unconnected with his daily life. It’s a sort of test for him.”

“Tell Steve to pack his bags. Talk to Sharon about arranging rides and campsites.”

“Uh, Charlie?”

“Hmm?”

“How ethical is it to draw Steve into this?”

“It’s fine. Because you’re right—he needs to go to the Island.” I must have given him a funny look, because he continued, “Daniel, make the thing you want the solution to other problems.”

And that, too, I realized, was a Teaching.

Mastery Year 3: Part 1: Post 5: Progress and Lack of.

Sean Kelly, Steve's son, is almost a year old, now. He can't walk, yet, unless he holds on to something, but he's been highly mobile on four legs for a while. He can't talk, either, but knows some sign language and can make himself understood by signing, pointing, and grunting. He's always been a quiet baby, anyway. He is a happy, observant, engaging child, with a somewhat unfortunate habit of breaking things to see how they work.

He'll get something apart, look up at a nearby adult, and squeal with delight in his own accomplishment, and it is impossible to be angry with him.

Sarah Kelly is living on campus most of the time, now, though her meds aren't really stable, yet. Some weeks she seems frankly "crazy," other weeks she seems just tired or depressed. For a while she was entirely normal except she was shaking all the time. She can't work--she can't even be much of a mother to Sean, yet--but she hopes to be able to in the future, and is doing what she calls "pre-working," doing research on what law and policy applies to mental health, building relationships with people involved in the "Mad Pride" movement, which I'd never heard of before, but clearly she intends to become a leader of it.

Steve had never heard of Mad Pride, either, but now he is becoming well-informed--just another axis of injustice for him to feel angry and overwhelmed about.

He and I have a rule--no talking about politics or law when we're outside exploring. No talking, in fact, about anything other than what we're observing around us. I'm training him to notice. I'm training him to pay attention. I'm teaching him enough natural history that what he observes becomes meaningful to him. And he's mentioned that now he looks forward to our walks together as a kind of break. Sometimes some problem that was bothering him before we went out resolves itself when we come back--it just doesn't seem so intractable anymore. He's said sometimes he'll be working off campus and something will start to feel like too much, so he'll go outside for a bit.

He's making progress. I feel like I'm able to help.

Which is a nice change, since I  feel pretty helpless, otherwise. Eddie is still off-campus and will be for a few more weeks--we offered to make him a place to stay on the first floor of the Mansion, so he could avoid the stairs, but he declined. The yearling who was hospitalized last week has formally withdrawn from school. For Allen to have to find a bed in a psychiatric hospital for someone twice in one year--I haven't talked to him about it, yet, but it must be hard.

It snowed again last night, but then shifted over to sleet and ice before freezing again. The world is an odd, hard, spider-web gray, and winter is starting to seem very long.

Master Year 3: Part 1: Post 4: Another Rough Week

Note; the events described here happened on a Tuesday, not a Monday.-D.

For the second time in as many weeks, crisis has erupted on campus, though at least this time nobody is dead (last week, in case you missed it, Eddie’s dog became vicious and had to be shot).

I was walking upstairs to shower after my early-morning walk when Greg poked his head out of the Meditation Hall, saw me, and said “get Allen.” His voice was calm, quiet, and full of such urgency that I ran to to office to ask Sharon if Allen had arrived yet. She said he had not, so I ran outside and up the fire escape so I could get a good view of campus—there are two driveways, and I didn’t know which one he would use, and if I picked the wrong one and he went by me, he’d be much harder to find.

Never mind that Sharon would know when he arrived—Sharon knows things by means the rest of us do not have at our disposal.

There he was, a movement in yellow coming in the front gate, just visible through the trees. I ran down again and met him.

“Greg needs you!” I said.

Allen stopped his bike.

“Oh? Why?”

“I haven’t a clue. But it’s urgent and it’s in the Meditation Hall.”

“OK,” he said, and sped away.

I walked slowly back to the Mansion, back in through the office, and I was going to continue on up the stairs but I stopped at the now-closed door to the Meditation Hall, desperately curious. Obviously, whatever had happened was none of my business. I continued upstairs.

At breakfast, Allen seemed to be missing. Afterwards, Greg had an announcement. Greg’s announcements are seldom good news, perhaps because he delivers bad news well, calmly and with grave authority. This one was bad news.

“Ryan has a health problem which has necessitated his leaving campus this morning. Most likely, he will withdraw from our program. He will be welcome to visit, however, and when he is stabilized enough to receive well-wishers he will let us know.” A low hum of shock and curiosity swelled, and Greg held up his hand. “I am not at liberty to give details about his condition,” he said. “It will be easier on all of us, including Ryan, if you all refrain from speculation and gossip. Sometimes we just don’t know, and wish we did.”

I know Ryan slightly, though we haven’t talked, much. He’s a yearling in his mid-thirties, interested in a mix of Buddhism and New Age spirituality, and he has this odd serenity to him—I had forgotten that he also went through phases of seeming irritable or fidgetty every few days. I had not forgotten, though, the events of the early morning, and I had a fair idea of what sort of health crisis Raven had—what kind could require running to fetch a psychologist? What I didn’t know was why.

I lingered, on my way out, near Greg, who was also lingering, talking to Ollie near the door of the Dining Hall. I wouldn’t look at him, because I had not made up my mind whether I wanted to talk to him. Arguably, I should not, and yet I lingered.

“Ask or do not ask,” Greg said at last from behind me. “Attempting to do both at once is seldom effective.” He spoke with some humor, but when I turned to face him I saw that he looked tired, even old. Ollie had gone.

“I don’t want to invade his privacy,” I said.

“But you have special knowledge,” he replied. “You know more than you’re supposed to, and now there’s no one I can talk about it with.”

“That’s true.”

“And, curiously, I’m in the same situation. I am allowed to share information with the other masters, but I am unaccustomed to talking with any except Charlie and Allen, and both are indesposed.”

“I noticed that Allen has left.”

“Actually, Allen is still on campus, as is Ryan, at least in a technical, as opposed to a social sense. We’re still trying to find a bed.”

“In a mental hospital,” I said, in a low voice.

“Yes.”

I waited. Greg had never confided in me before, and I wasn’t sure he was really about to do it now, though he clearly wanted to, but the longer I’ve been here the more even the masters have seemed to appreciate my witness. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s that I have become a naturalist of my own species, and there is something about a gaze that is both interested and dispassionate that comforts. I don’t know. But one by one they are gradually coming to treat me as more of a peer.

I waited.

Greg walked out of the Dining Hall, and a turn of his head indicated I should follow. The morning had dawned gray and thick—it snowed last night—but a rising wind had swept away the clouds and the day had gone bright and sunny, though very cold. Greg paused in his walking, closed his eyes, and appeared to inhale the sunshine before walking on again.

“Ryan’s ill health is not exactly my fault, though it’s hard not to see it that way,” he said at last.

“Oh?”

“Ryan is suffering from a form of psychosis triggered by meditation.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“If meditation makes people crazy,” I ventured, “then why aren’t all of us psychotic here?”

“Because it’s not common. I’ve seen it before, but only in advanced students. Minor psychological disturbance, such as emotional deadening and a dulling of the senses, is a normal part of intensive meditative practice, and it’s usually temporary. The student can either pull back or, with guidance, push on and come out the other side. Alchemy candidates sometimes develop what looks like full-blown psychosis, but that, too, is part of the process. I know how to guide students through it. But Ryan lacks the background to make use of this state—and I lack the background to get him out of it.”

“How is he different?” I asked. “What went wrong?”

“Some people are vulnerable,” Greg acknowledged. “Meditation alters brain function—that is its point. Not all brains can be safely altered. Ryan elevated his risk by spending far longer in meditation than I suggested. I knew he sometimes attended the afternoon make-up session, but I didn’t know he also meditated on his own. This past week, he began spending as much as three hours a day in meditation. Today he broke. This morning I noticed something ‘off’ about him, so I asked him to stay after. I very quickly realized he has become completely irrational. He has begun the process of ego-death without prior preparation. It’s making him delusional.”

Ego-death sounded bad, though I didn’t know what it meant. I wanted to ask why Greg hadn’t warned us, why I’d never heard of any risk associated with meditation at all, but I wasn’t sure of my role, whether it was OK to ask that sort of question of a master reluctantly seeking catharthis.

“What will happen to him now?” I asked, instead.

“He will likely receive anti-psychotic drugs in a hospital setting until he stabilizes,” Greg said. “After that? I’m not sure. There’s very little clinical research on meditation psychosis, and it’s not something meditation teachers usually talk about with each other. Perhaps we should. He will likely not be the same again.”

We had reached the other side of the Central Field, near the turn-off to Chapel Hall, as if we were headed to class, except that building is closed until after Ostar, and classes are still being held in the Mansion.

I thought about how Charlie pushed Rick to survive outside in the snow, how Allen allowed Ebony to experiment with cannabis so she could see….This with meditation is a somewhat different issue, since Greg wasn’t doing anything outside of the normal guidelines of his profession, but I’d thought before of how some of the masters confront the possibility of a student getting hurt in their care. The idea had seemed very abstract to me then, but now Greg’s gone and done it—he’s lost a student.

I had no idea what to say, so I just hugged him.

Eddie is doing well, by the way, at least in a physical sense, and expected to recover completely from his various injuries. He is still rather bandanged up, and since he can’t walk on a broken foot and can’t use crutches with a sprained wrist and a chewed-up arm, he’s in a wheel-chair for a few weeks. The Mansion isn’t remotely wheel-chair accessible, so he’s living with Charlie’s sister for a while. The thought is that if anyone can keep him from folding in on himself out of guilt for his dog, she can.

He calls a few of us every day, and I am one of the ones he calls.

Mastery Year 3: Part 1: Post 3: Another Mastery

Today was not a good day.

I suppose you could quibble with that assessment—there’s that old Zen story involving a man and his horse and the repeating line “how do you know?” The point being that apparently good events can lead directly to apparently bad events, and vice versa. Non-attachment, non-judgment, and all that stuff, which is all well and good, except there’s also a story about a Zen master who cried when his son died—when his students said “but aren’t all things illusion?” the master replied “yes, but this is a very convincing illusion.”

Anyway.

I had plans to interview Joy today. I was supposed to meet her down by the barn after breakfast, since she had a few hours free for barn chores, and the plan was I could help her work as we talked. She got held up by something, though, and when I got to the barn she was nowhere in evidence. So I wandered around for a while. I had a vague desire to go look at the sheep in their pen, or maybe find a barn cat willing to let me pet them. I’ve always found the sheep relaxing, somehow. But then I heard a noise.

It was an odd sound, a kind of animal roar combined with a high, surprised yelp, then an eruption of barking, coming from inside the barn. I ran towards the noise, and found….

Remember they’d used straw bales to build a kind of divided pen in there for Eddie’s dog, the supposedly untrainable animal Eddie was supposed to, non-the-less, train as a therapy dog to earn his mastery. He’d been making a lot of progress, of late, but the dog was still touchy, and spent all his unsupervised time in the pen, away from people and other animals who might get hurt if his fear-aggression got triggered somehow. And I guess he’d gotten triggered, because what I saw when I came in was Eddie, clinging to one of the angled beams that support the rafters of the hay loft, his body curled up, as high off the ground as possible, holding himself away from the dog, who was barking and lunging beneath him. I couldn’t see clearly, having just come in from the brighter light outside, but there seemed to be something dreadfully wrong with Eddie’s right arm.

I stood there for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only a few seconds, not knowing what to do, not sure if either man nor beast knew I was there, and then Eddie half turned his head in my direction and shouted “No! Wait!” and then something exploded right behind me and to the left. The dog yelped and stumbled, recovered, turned, and leaped towards Joy, who of course stood right behind me. She strode forward, shot him again, and this time he fell, his head blasted open.

In movies and such, when this sort of thing happens, people shout “NOOOOOOOO!!!” and tear their hair and look towards Heaven. Eddie did nothing of the kind. Speechless, he dropped from his perch, landed awkwardly on a straw bale, tripped backwards, and stumbled towards the dog, favoring his arm, which I could see now was all bloody and torn. He hovered over the animal, his hands waving helplessly, as though he were trying to think how he might put the ruined body back together.

“Don’t touch,” Joy warned, “I’m not sure he’s not carrying something.”

Eddie obeyed, but looked up at Joy helplessly, unable, I suppose, to make sense of so many emotions.

“But he was doing so well,” he said, and my heart just about broke for him.

“He was going to kill you,” Joy told him. “Get Charlie,” she told me, over her shoulder.

Charlie is a certified wilderness first responder, as well as a fair herbalist. Unlike Joy, who’s a vet, he’s trained to treat humans. I ran off and found him without difficulty, but moving back and fourth across campus on foot takes a while, and by the time we got back, Joy had cleaned the wound and stopped the worst of the bleeding, veterinary degree notwithstanding.

Charlie examined Eddie from head to foot, found a probable sprained wrist and broken tailbone, from the fall, as well as the multiple bite wounds and numerous splinters. He re-washed the wound, directed Eddie to knock back a shot of cayenne water, to stop the capillary bleeding, bound up the wound tightly to keep the more serious bleeds from starting up again, and then set about pulling out the larger splinters while Eddie cried. Charlie, typically, neither encouraged nor discouraged the tears, he just let them happen and worked with quick, professional efficiency.

“I’m not going to bother wrapping any of the rest of this,” he said, speaking for the first time since we arrived, “I’ll let them do that at the emergency room. You mind if I carry you? You’re in no shape to walk.”

“That dog—I’m supposed to train him for my Mastery,” said Eddie, wiping his eyes. As if his primary concern were academics.

“There are two kinds of mastery,” Charlie told him. “The one based on success and the one defined by failure. The first kind you can achieve anywhere. The second kind you do better to get here, where you’re not alone.”

“You set me up for this. You did this on purpose,” accused Eddie, wiping his eyes again and passively allowing Charlie to scoop him up. Seeing him in the bigger man’s arms, I for the first time saw Eddie appear girlish. Maybe it’s only that he looked childlike, limp with mixed-up emotion, vulnerable in a way men are not supposed to be, but sometimes are anyway.

“You are seriously overestimating our ability as fortune-tellers,” said Charlie, and walked out of the barn, carrying the little man.

I collected Charlie’s various med-kit items, which he’d left scattered on the barn floor, knowing I’d return them to his office. Joy put away her rifle and came back to stare at the dead dog with me.

“He looks so little,” I said. I’d never thought of him that way when he was alive.”

“None of us have ever seen him relaxed before,” said Joy. “Poor boy was terrified every minute he was here.”

I was about to say something to the effect of its for for best that he’s dead, when Joy suddenly spun and kicked savagely at a straw bale.

“I hate killing animals,” she raged. “I Goddamn hate it.”

“But--” I started to ask. I mean, she slaughters chickens and sheep and so forth as a regular part of her job. But she held up her hand.

“Not now, Daniel,” she said. “Not now.”

Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Brigid

So it begins.

That sounds suitably dramatic, doesn't it? But something kind of dramatic is beginning, my last year here as a student. And this time there's so asterisk attached to that awareness, no possibility of coming back as a different kind of student, there's just no more student to be for me. Allen would say true masters are always students, and I'm sure he's right, but the question is student of what?

Schools are very odd communities in that if you do everything right, they make you leave.

But I knew that going in. I didn't expect this year not to come. Now I want to stay, and the only way to do that is to become one of the Six--which I probably won't get to do, but failing that, I'll at least be an ally. How did I get here, me, that awkward 19-year-old with no plans?

Anyway.

The day wasn't just about me. New students coming in, senior students graduating, some new green rings earned...it's pretty much the same ceremony every time, and what makes for comforting, ritualistic continuity makes pretty boring description, over and over again. The only thing that really changes year to year is individual experience of the event--fitting for Groundhog Day, I suppose. The big difference for me between now and my first Brigid on campus is that what was then new, exciting, and fresh is now familiar, traditional, and full of accumulated meaning.

But let me describe it again, as I haven't done so in years.

June and I had nothing specific to do earlier in the day, so we just wandered around, greeting students returning to campus. There were thirteen new yearlings (about half as many as last year--because we don't accept student loans, the recession* seems to have impacted enrollment) arriving and wandering around campus with their guides for the day, and we spoke to some of them.

We did not see any of the candidates about to receive their rings. I do not think they were kidnapped for any Ordeal--surely that trick can only work once, and anyway I really hope mastery candidates don't go through an ordeal, once was enough. But they must be doing something. I could ask, but I think I'll leave that mystery until I go through it.

It had snowed a few days earlier, inches of wet, white fluff, much of which melted and then froze, leaving irregular patches of white ice on the fields and black ice crusted in the dirt and gravel of the campus driveways. The air was cold and damp, and thick, snow-filled clouds kept the day dark and nearly monochrome. When the day grew darker yet, and the clouds glowed a dull pink for a while in the west. That's when we knew it was time to go in and take our seats.

The Chapel was about 40 degrees, F. when we got in, which is about the best a single wood stove in such a big room, plus heat migrating upwards from the Ordeal rooms in the basement, can do when the temperature outside is around 20. The metal folding chairs were too cold to touch bare-handed. June and I were well-prepared, though, in long-johns and two layers of school uniforms and our big, brown, wool cloaks, and we weren't uncomfortable. We actually put our hoods down, so we wouldn't get too warm. The room, lit warmly and faintly by candled in holders along the walls and in stands at the ends of each row of chairs, smelled of beeswax, wet wool, and snow, as it always does on Brigid.

We sat with Steve and Sarah and the baby on one side and Eddie on the other. A new yearling had the end seat, quite on purpose, though the yearling didn't know it. We all chatted quietly, waiting, until the repeated Ding! of a small bell we could not see silenced us.

We turned in our seats to watch the masters process in, the Six, the non-teaching masters, and a few allies who wear the ring whose role I've never been clear on. They walked in slow, measured steps, their hoods pulled up, each carrying an unlit candle. This year, Charlie led them. They take that duty in turns, two years per stint.

As the bell continued to ring, Ding! Ding! Ding! Their column divided in two, passing around the audience in our chairs, to either side of us. Abruptly, the bell stopped and they stopped, one at the end of each row, and turned to face us. The student in each end-seat lit the candle of the master facing them, and the procession, and the bell, continued until they had mounted the stage, set their sixteen candles in stands on the stage, and then sat there, on the stage, in their own folding chairs, their hoods now lowered.

Charlie stood at the lecturn, said some opening words, and introduced the new yearlings--he had them stand up, say their names, where they were from, and which of four animals or plants they most identified with. That seemed like an ice-breaker exercise, but actually someone out of sight was writing down their responses and using the plants or animals the new students picked to assign them to dorms. That introduction, that hidden ritual, made them part of us, and ensured an overlap, even if of only a few minutes, between the incoming newbies and the outgoing graduates.

Then Charlie said the ritual words to summon the first of the graduating students to come out and kneel, then stand and remove the black cloak that symbolizes the novitiate--the rest of us wear brown. Each graduate spoke a few words at the lectern, then exited the stage, receiving a diploma on the way. When they all had crossed the stage, they processed away out of the room in a group.

Then Jasmine, Nel, Rick, Ollie, and Oak each received their green ring from their master. Charlie went first, giving Rick is ring, with the ritualized words, always the same, used for the first candidate to receive a ring each year--the others are allowed to improvise. But Rick, being Rick, improvised anyway, and hugged Charlie, but to the latter's obvious surprise. Neither of them are known at affectionate types, and a ripple of appreciative "ohh"s spread through the audience, those of us who know them both and know Rick's story.

Then Allen and Karen gave rings to their students, then Kit went--she had two, Nel and Oak. She usually has more than anyone else because Kit, more than anyone else, embodies why most of came here--she's a gorgeous, red-headed witch-woman, Lady of dance and music and magic.

Then Charlie said a few more words, and the masters, old and newly-made, all processed out to the ringing of the bells and we got up and milled about at the back of the room, talking to the yearlings and eating nuts and raisins and dilly-beans and whatever else from long buffet tables. The graduates--but not the new masters--joined us, and then we all went back to our dorms (the janitorial group stays behind to extinguish the candles and clean up), where we saved the new students from incipient hypothermia (most hadn't known to wear long underwear) and then fed them chocolate and alcohol and snow cream and maple snow candy.

The snow had started to fall during the ceremony, and fell thick and comforting and silent around as as we walked back, so we had an easy time setting out pans to collect the stuff and make candy.




*Remember, this was 2009

Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Post 5: Instructions from June

No, I haven't found out what's bothering June.

She seems to be over it, at least for now. She's relaxed and friendly around me again, so that's good, but I'm fairly sure that whatever it is will erupt again unless it's dealt with--it's lot like I don't know there was an underlying issue driving that argument.

I asked Allen about it, when I happened to see him, but he just said "couples counseling costs extra," so I suppose he didn't want to be bothered. I talked to Ollie about it, and he had some interesting things to say, but nothing that ultimately proved helpful. I even said something to Eddie, who said "do I look like a man who knows anything about marriage?"

"What does how you look have to do with it?" I asked.

"I am way too cute to be monogamous," he replied. And then he went on for some length about how much progress Elmo, his dog, has made. This is the supposedly untrainable Elmo, and apparently he's doing very well, now. He has basic obedience down solid, knows a few tricks, and as his confidence grows his fear-aggression has backed off dramatically.

"I even have an idea for what kind of therapy task he can do," Eddie said, excitedly. "Elmo has a lot of energy. He needs to run every day, and he's not shy about asking to go. I'm thinking he can be a jogging partner for someone with depression, you know, the kind where you just want to stay in bed all day? Now I just need to find the right person to match him with."

All that's very good and all, but it doesn't help me with my wife. I kind of feel like I'm walking on egg-shells, not that I'm worried she's going to attack me, I'm just thinking about what random thing might trigger whatever it is next.

Finally, I talked to my therapist. Remember that I have a therapist? It's part of the program here, all candidates need to do at least one year of individual therapy, and while I had my doubts at first--I was pretty sure I don't need therapy--I've come to like it. I get to talk about whatever I want for fifty minutes a week, without worrying about whether I'm being boring or sounding stupid or something, and sometimes our talks help me sort things out. My therapist is a man about ten years older than I am who graduated from the school but didn't come back for his ring. So he knows all about the school, and we get along.

But he didn't help me much with this thing with June, except to ask, quite perceptively, whether I was concerned about my issue or hers. Keep the focus on yourself, as they said in the few Al-Anon meetings I went to as a novice.

So I went to bed last night, puzzling about all of this, and then June came in. She turned on the lights, undressed and then put on her pajamas (an unfortunate side effect of winter--it's too cold to sleep naked, now), went back out to the bathroom to fill a cup with drinking water in case we got thirsty at night, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She wrapped her fuzzy feet around by bare toes.

"Word out on the street is," she said, "you've been asking everyone and their brother's lover's cousin why I'm mad and what to do about it."

"Yes, I suppose so." Dang, foiled by the rumor mill. I wonder who talked?

"So how come you didn't talk to me?"

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 4: A Matter of Personal Style

So, Hawk is a woman.

I forget if I've mentioned Hawk before. If I did, I would have called him a man, because that's what we all thought she was, but now he....I'm getting tangled up in pronouns. I know I'm supposed to use female pronouns, both now and to refer to the past, in order to reflect who she really is, but we haven't been seeing who she really is, and what we have been seeing--and the effort of seeing what we're seeing and trying to persuade our eyes to see something else, now that we know better, deserves description, too. As a writer, as a chronicler, perhaps, I feel torn. Whose reality do I portray?

I've never seen this sort of transformation before. I've only known Eddie and Security Joe as men, and I knew Security Joe for months before learning that he'd ever presented himself any other way. I'm not sure what to make of it, what I'm supposed to think and feel, what it's ok to say and to not say. I don't know Hawk very well.

She doesn't actually look any different, not in any obvious way. If she's taking hormones, they haven't had any effect, yet, and most of the time I see her in uniform, and the uniforms are the same regardless of gender. And yet there is a subtle shift. She's more relaxed. She smiles more, I think.

I saw her the other day, flying a kite on the Flat Field, standing out there in the wind, body braced against the tugging on the line--the kite was very big. I walked over and said hello. For once she wasn't in uniform, though I was. She was wearing a white turtleneck sweater over white women's slacks, and she looked, I swear this is true, like an Eddie Bauer ad. She's thin, with an oval face and ash-blonde hair cut in a sort of androgynous...pixie, I think the word is. Somehow, dressed that way, flying the kite, she looked taller, bigger than she normally does. I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Is Chloe having an off-day?" I asked. Chloe is the name of Hawk's hawk. Hawk is a falconer and is training a young goshawk who lives in the barn--as does Hawk, much of the time, the human/animal bond being important to maintain. Hawk who trains the hawk also lives in Hawk Dorm. Birds everywhere.

"Chloe's fine," she told me, "but fed-up at the moment, and the wind is a bit strong today."

Fed-up, I knew, meant sated and therefore unwilling to perform for food rewards.

"That took courage, your announcement, the other day," I said.

She had stood up in the Dining Hall and said "I'm not sure how else to put this, so, newsflash, I'm a woman. And if you want to know how that works, Google is your friend, because I don't want to talk about it." And sat back down.

"Thanks," she told me.

"Anybody give you any problems?"

"No, everybody's been really welcoming. Of course, I haven't been off-campus dressed as a woman, yet. Kit's taking me on Saturday. We're going shopping. I'll probably end up looking like a glam witch, with her influence, but it's a start."

"How long have you known," I asked. "Forever, or...?"

"I told you I didn't want to talk about it."

"Sorry."

The wind became unstable, choppy, and she fought for a few seconds to keep her kite aloft.

"I suppose I'll have to have sex with Eddie, now," she said, a faint resignation in her voice.

"What? Why?"

"All women on campus do, don't they?"

"I don't think all of them do, just most. You can tell him no, you know."

"Oh, I know, I'm just thinking it might be one of those things, you know, like wearing make-up or high heels, that just comes with the territory."

"Aren't you gay, though?"

"Hey, yeah, I am. I'm not used to saying that....I'm gay. A lesbian. Yup, that's me. But I suppose I'll at least consider it, if he asks. I mean, if I'm going to try out men, I could do worse, you know?"

"I think sex is supposed to be more than 'could be worse,'" I said, feeling a bit defensive of masculinity in general. "But I've had similar thoughts about Rick. But I'm married and anyway he won't ask."

Did I really say that? Yes, yes I did, because Hawk laughed.

"Speaking of which," I added, quietly, "here comes Eddie."

I knew because I'd heard his dog start howling a few minutes earlier, meaning he'd just left the barn. Then I'd heard a squirrel scold in the Formal Garden, which could have meant an animal, but that squirrel doesn't like Eddie since he often has a dog with him and sometimes idly throws rocks and sticks. Finally, I'd heard a splash in the fountain in the garden in front of the Mansion--a habit I knew Eddie has whenever he walks by it. But Hawk had noticed none of those things, and seemed rather startled by my announcement, especially when I turned out to be right.

"Eddie, what's wrong?" exclaimed Hawk, because he, too, was out of uniform, and his bare arms were purple with fresh bruises. He had straw clinging to his clothing and hair.

"Bit of a disagreement with my dog," he said, dismissively. "I came looking for you, Hawk. I thought Chloe might have been frightened by the noise. She might need you."

"Oh, Jesus. Thank you. I'll go check on her." And she began reeling in her kite.

"I'd thought you might have come to flirt with the new girl," I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hawk crack up with embarrassed laughter, as intended.

"Not yet," Eddie explained, in mock-indignant protest. "I figured I'd give her at least a few days to get used to things."

Hawk, still laughing and shaking her head, had her kite collected.

"You just wain until we run into Rick," she told me.

"Why Rick?" asked Eddie, as we turned back towards the barns.

"Long story," I told him.

"Eddie, how did you learn to dress?" Hawk asked.

"You'd have to asked my parents."

"No, I mean, how'd you learn to dress like a guy?"

"I looked at other men and copied what looked good on them. Also, I watched a lot of old movies. I think it's easier for guys, though. Our clothes are simpler. And, frankly it's easier with hormones. For me, anyway. There were people who refused to see me as anything but a chick no matter how well I dressed."

"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," Hawk admitted. "I don't want to dress like a...caricature of a woman. I want to be able to wear jeans and a sweatshirt if I want to, but I also want to look--and feel--feminine. I wish I had an older sister to help me out with all this. I feel like I have this whole new adolescence to get through all by yourself."

"You're not by yourself," Eddie assured her. "And not like the opinion of a dude should make a whole lot of difference, but you look good today." When Hawk giggled again and looked away, he added "I'm not hitting on you! I'm not actually like that."

I dropped back a pace and watched them talk. Again, I noticed Hawk's height. She didn't look any bigger than she is, I realized--she's a tall woman, but not oddly so. She's shorter than I am. I think I must have been seeing her as smaller than she really is before, and now I can see her more clearly. Or perhaps I was seeing something else and only interpreting it as smallness. She could draw the eye without taking up space.

I guess it was her womanhood I was seeing. I could see her the whole time, I just didn't know it.