Yes, I graduated. I earned my ring--it's on my finger now, the ring finger of my right hand. My wedding ring occupies my left. Which finger a person wears the green ring on varies--Charlie wears his on his left, a personal symbol of who and what he's married to. So does Greg, incidentally. I've never been clear on whether Greg is formally celibate, but he at least sized his ring with the expectation that he'd never marry. Anyway, it feels a bit strange to wear this, to have it and everything it means in common with Charlie and Greg and the others.
When the Brigid ceremony ended, I processed off the stage with the other masters (!) without clearly knowing where we were going. We ended up in a classroom just outside of the Chapel. Charlie closed the door and looked at the five of us newbies with a mischievous glint.
"Anybody wanna know what we do after that ceremony?" he said. We didn't quite shout "me! me!" like pre-schoolers, but that was the mood in the room.
"We're going to bless the sugar maple trees," he explained. "And the trees generally, all of them on campus. And it's gonna be cold, so if you want to go back to your dorms to get an extra layer, I'd get going. Meet us in the Formal Gardens."
"I've never seen new masters in the dorms Brigid night," said Raven, sounding a little uncertain. Wanting to keep to the proper ritual of it all, I suppose.
"That's why you've got to go now," Charlie explained. "While they're all eating." The students all have a small feast in the Chapel itself after the ceremony, rather than going back to the Great Hall to eat together. Now I know why.
"I was out walking most of the day," I said. "And I was fine. Has it gotten a lot colder while we've been in here?"
Charlie shook his head. Of course he'd been inside just as we had, but I accepted his authority on the subject, and it only took me a moment to figure out how he knew; it had been clouding up earlier. Cloudy skies trap heat at night. If the clouds had cleared so quickly, it could only have been a front moving through, and even in the Chapel, we would have heard the wind.
What it takes is not only noticing things, but finding them significant enough to think about, think through.
We all decided we were warm enough, and so we and the other masters all followed Charlie out. He seemed to be in charge, a role I don't normally see him play among the masters, but there he was. He carried a bag with him.
We went, not to the Formal Garden, which had been simply a convenient semi-private meeting place near the dorms, but to the avenue of sugar maples along the main entrance way.
Those trees were planted long ago as a stately avenue, two single-file rows of trees, but now they are simply the oldest members of a small grove that Charlie has allowed to grow from their seedlings. Some of them are getting pretty big. He opened his bag and handed out thermoses of something--syrup-sweetened herbal tea, I think, nothing alcoholic--and led us through a small ceremony in which we sang to the trees and drank toasts to them. We then went down the avenue and more briefly toasted every single one that is large enough for us to tap. Of course, the sugaring season, the first harvest of the year, is about to begin.
At the end of the avenue we raised yet another toast to the whole group. Then we set off on a circuit of the campus as Charlie took us to visit and greet one representative member of each woody species on campus.
It took a long time, and yes, we got cold. The whole affair would probably have been more festive if we'd had alcohol to drink, frankly, but at least the tea was hot, and as we got hungrier and hungrier, and eventually more and more tired, we all got giddy and goofy stone cold sober.
Each tree had its own verse of our song, plus a repeating chorus, and there were special words to say for the toasts, and all of it seemed very new and a little complicated to the five of us, but I can see how all of it could become as easy and natural-seeming as any holiday tradition.
And when we'd at last visited every representative tree on campus, we stood in the snow near the edge of the world and sang the whole song through, beginning to end, dancing a complicated circle dance that seemed designed to accommodate a few dancers who didn't know what they were doing.
Then, standing there under a thick, cloudy sky, panting a little in the cold air and wondering what would come next, I heard Charlie speak:
"Anyone else half-frozen here, or is it just me?"
We all admitted we were, indeed, frozen.
"Then let's get the hell inside."
For some reason that was really funny. Allen gaffawed. Karen giggled. The rest of us various tittered and smirked. And so, laughing, we stumbled back to the Mansion, went up the secret stair, and into the masters' dorm where Mia--who had not gone out to wassail the trees with us--had a feast prepared. We had hot chocolate, roasted nuts, pancakes with maple syrup and fruit preserves, eggnog, and, finally once we were warm again, peppermint-flavored ice cream with more syrup and nuts and fruit. The milk for all this came, I am told, from canned evaporated milk put up from our own sheep the year before. We were deliberately finishing up the last of our dairy, our egg, and our maple syrup to demonstrate our trust that in the coming new year, we'd get more.
June was there. She'd been invited up because family of masters have the same access masters do. Actually, Lo, Kit's husband, of course Cuppa Joe, and various sprouts were there, too, including my small relatives (my brother and sister-in-law were not, though they were invited--they had something else to do and had dropped the kids off with Lo for the sleep-over). It was a big party, and all of us stayed up very late, even the sprouts.
There was a room full of bunk beds. Allen explained that we could sleep there whenever we visited campus.
"This is your place, now. You can come and go as you like, and you can bring whomever you like, except students. You can tell anything to anybody you like, use your judgment. It's just as good as ours, now. You're us."
"We trust you," added Charlie.
The next morning, June and I moved our stuff upstairs and I stood in my room there in my student dorm for a long time, saying goodbye to it. We have an apartment picked out already and our paperwork is signed. Our move-in day is Thursday.
That afternoon, at lunch (back in the Dining Hall, with yet another generation of newly-arrived yearlings milling around with their buddies looking confused) Charlie invited me upstairs to his room to have a drink. The drink turned out to be plain water, of course.
I sat on the edge of his bed, which looks like and probably is a used exam table from a doctor's office or a physical therapy place, hard and narrow, and he sat in a swivel chair by his desk. We talked, though not of anything of obvious import. We were just hanging out.
After a while, he picked up his tin whistle from his desk and started fidgeting idly with it.
"I have mine here," I commented. "It's with my stuff in the other room."
"What can you play?" he asked.
I shrugged.
"I don't know. Anything, if I learn it, I suppose."
And so I fetched my tin whistle, and he taught me to play a duet version of "Uncle John's Band."
The same song Allen had strummed on his guitar for us on the secret beach when I was a yearling, so long ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here ends my story, though not this blog. I have an Afterward, of sorts, explaining what happened to lead me to start this blog in the first place and generally getting you up to date. I'm not sure how many posts it will take to cover the material, perhaps three or four, maybe more. It won't be episodic in structure--events played out over months, not weeks, and I was rarely on campus. In any case, stay tuned.
-D.
Showing posts with label Sabbat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sabbat. Show all posts
Monday, February 10, 2020
Monday, February 3, 2020
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.
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.
Monday, December 23, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 8: Post 1: Yule
Merry belated Yule!
Last year the weather was awful, to the point that we couldn't go up the mountain to watch the sunrise. This year, the weather made up for it (not that Charlie would appreciate such anthropocentrism) and our trip up the mountain was gorgeous--clear and cold under fading stars, and just enough cloud at the horizon to turn red and gorgeous. The was after, of course, we stayed up all night partying in the Great Hall.
And, as per tradition, when we got back after seeing the sun up, we found the Great Hall transformed by the Sprouts, who had appeared from seemingly out of nowhere (they'd been up in the master's dorm all night having a separate party with the masters), putting out gift bags for everyone for us to run around and find and all the fixings for a lovely breakfast. Then we sat around for most of the rest of the day eating, drinking hot cocoa, and playing with our new toys--yes, toys. Mostly stocking-stuffer type things--Rubix cubes, playing cards, novelty socks, candy, slide whistles, and so on. They weren't random, each of us got things we actually liked. Among other things, I got a new mini tape measure, because my old one I use for plant ID has started to lose its paint. June got a second-hand deck of Goddess cards.
Also, we sat around taking naps. I think most of us crashed out on the floor for at least a few hours. A few people went upstairs to bed. Greg zonked out sitting up on the sofa with a cheap Santa Clause hat pulled down over his eyes. I sat with him for a while, him sleeping, me sitting there staring into a mug of hot cocoa, wondering if I'd be asleep soon, too. I was sitting there when Greg woke up.
He gave a start, though I can't think why--there was no particular noise to wake him or anything like that--pulled the hat off his eyes, and looked around in a rather confused way for a few seconds, then realized where he was, I guess, and smiled.
"Um, good morning, Daniel," he said. "What time is it?"
"Around 11:30, I think?"
He nodded, still putting himself together.
"It feels later," he said.
"Greg? People don't nap this much after Litha, do they? I never really thought about it before." Litha, you may remember, is the summer solstice, another occasion we mark with an all-night party. Greg shrugged.
"I don't think as many people stay up," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose behind his glasses. "The summer dance is spread out across the campus, so it's harder to notice if someone drops out to sleep. And we don't really spend the next day together in the same way, so again who is doing what is less obvious."
"I'm sorry, Greg. I shouldn't be questioning you, you're asleep."
"No, no, it's OK. You can question me while I'm asleep." And he sat back on the couch again and closed his eyes. I thought he was indeed asleep again until he opened one eye quite suddenly and looked at me. "I don't promise to answer, though," he said. And then the eye closed and I think he was indeed asleep again soon.
I got up again and wandered around with my hot cocoa until I found June at the Yule tree looking intently at one of the glass bird ornaments.
"They really should put a warning on the hot pepper candies," she said, without looking up at me.
"Fire and sweetness," I said, "the themes of the holiday. The day itself is a warning."
"My mouth sympathizes with Icarus." Icarus flew too close to the sun, remember.
"Want me to kiss it better?" I offered.
"No, and you don't want to, either. Your mouth would end up hurting. You can find me some alcohol to cut the heat, though."
"I actually can," I said, and went off to beg a shot from a novice who had brought a flask. Later, June and I sat at a little table looking out together.
"What are we going to do next year?" I asked.
"Anything we want to," June hazarded.
"I mean about Yule. You remember celebrating it with me before I got back here? No, you don't, because we didn't. Because I always forgot, every single year I was away from this place. And I missed it so much. I missed Yule. It's just hard to do without the community."
"We could visit campus for Yule," she pointed out.
"That's not really my point. Anyway, if we don't come here for Yule, we'll be able to visit your family for Christmas. And if we do come here for Yule, how will we remember to prepare for it and set aside time for it if we're not on campus in the run-up to it? It's like...neither of us celebrated Yule before we came here, and I didn't celebrate it when I left. How do we take what we learned here and bring it with us? I want to stay involved with the community, I don't want to be dependent on it. I don't want to feel institutionalized." I have no idea where any of this was coming from. My feelings about getting my green ring, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, are complex.
"Coming here wasn't my first time celebrating Yule," June said, still looking outside through the big window.
"Oh?"
"It was the first time I'd done a big production of it, but there was this time--I was in grad school, the year before you got there, and I was just seriously overworked, exhausted all the time, and a bunch of self-doubt started coming up, and it was just bad. So I did a couple of therapy sessions, you know, with the psych students?" Our grad school also had a psychology department and lots of student therapists looking for practice. "Well, this one day, everything was just going wrong. My car broke down, but I had to get to campus because I was supposed to have a meeting with my study group from some class, so I biked it, but it was raining, one of those long, slow, cold rains, you know? and I get there soaked to the skin and freezing, except my study group isn't there because I'd written down the date wrong or something, and then I try to go to the store to pick up some things, except I discover I'd lost my wallet, so I went back to campus to look for my wallet, maybe it fell out of my bag when I was looking for my notes on the meeting, and I spent so long looking for my damn wallet that by the time I remembered I had therapy that day my session was half-over, which was just awful, because I really needed some therapy, and--"
And I had no idea where this long and grammatically inconsistent tale of woe was going or what it had to do with Yule, but June usually does have a point when she talks, so I waited and listened and tried to keep track of all the twists and turns of the plot.
"So I finally get into therapy, find my therapist still waiting for me, hasn't cancelled or anything, and I just fall into her arms blathering and sobbing about everything that's going wrong. And after listening to me go on for a while and letting me calm down, she said 'There's a reason why today is the worst day of the year.' And I say 'what's that?' and she said 'Because it's the shortest.' And so we talked about what that meant for a few minutes and she takes me through this little ritual thing and I start to feel a little better. She offered to give me and my bike a ride home. I accepted--I was still cold and wet--and on our way out I found the rain had turned to snow."
I said nothing. I understood her, but I couldn't think of anything that needed saying. I took her hand and thought about things. I wasn't worried as much anymore.
Last year the weather was awful, to the point that we couldn't go up the mountain to watch the sunrise. This year, the weather made up for it (not that Charlie would appreciate such anthropocentrism) and our trip up the mountain was gorgeous--clear and cold under fading stars, and just enough cloud at the horizon to turn red and gorgeous. The was after, of course, we stayed up all night partying in the Great Hall.
And, as per tradition, when we got back after seeing the sun up, we found the Great Hall transformed by the Sprouts, who had appeared from seemingly out of nowhere (they'd been up in the master's dorm all night having a separate party with the masters), putting out gift bags for everyone for us to run around and find and all the fixings for a lovely breakfast. Then we sat around for most of the rest of the day eating, drinking hot cocoa, and playing with our new toys--yes, toys. Mostly stocking-stuffer type things--Rubix cubes, playing cards, novelty socks, candy, slide whistles, and so on. They weren't random, each of us got things we actually liked. Among other things, I got a new mini tape measure, because my old one I use for plant ID has started to lose its paint. June got a second-hand deck of Goddess cards.
Also, we sat around taking naps. I think most of us crashed out on the floor for at least a few hours. A few people went upstairs to bed. Greg zonked out sitting up on the sofa with a cheap Santa Clause hat pulled down over his eyes. I sat with him for a while, him sleeping, me sitting there staring into a mug of hot cocoa, wondering if I'd be asleep soon, too. I was sitting there when Greg woke up.
He gave a start, though I can't think why--there was no particular noise to wake him or anything like that--pulled the hat off his eyes, and looked around in a rather confused way for a few seconds, then realized where he was, I guess, and smiled.
"Um, good morning, Daniel," he said. "What time is it?"
"Around 11:30, I think?"
He nodded, still putting himself together.
"It feels later," he said.
"Greg? People don't nap this much after Litha, do they? I never really thought about it before." Litha, you may remember, is the summer solstice, another occasion we mark with an all-night party. Greg shrugged.
"I don't think as many people stay up," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose behind his glasses. "The summer dance is spread out across the campus, so it's harder to notice if someone drops out to sleep. And we don't really spend the next day together in the same way, so again who is doing what is less obvious."
"I'm sorry, Greg. I shouldn't be questioning you, you're asleep."
"No, no, it's OK. You can question me while I'm asleep." And he sat back on the couch again and closed his eyes. I thought he was indeed asleep again until he opened one eye quite suddenly and looked at me. "I don't promise to answer, though," he said. And then the eye closed and I think he was indeed asleep again soon.
I got up again and wandered around with my hot cocoa until I found June at the Yule tree looking intently at one of the glass bird ornaments.
"They really should put a warning on the hot pepper candies," she said, without looking up at me.
"Fire and sweetness," I said, "the themes of the holiday. The day itself is a warning."
"My mouth sympathizes with Icarus." Icarus flew too close to the sun, remember.
"Want me to kiss it better?" I offered.
"No, and you don't want to, either. Your mouth would end up hurting. You can find me some alcohol to cut the heat, though."
"I actually can," I said, and went off to beg a shot from a novice who had brought a flask. Later, June and I sat at a little table looking out together.
"What are we going to do next year?" I asked.
"Anything we want to," June hazarded.
"I mean about Yule. You remember celebrating it with me before I got back here? No, you don't, because we didn't. Because I always forgot, every single year I was away from this place. And I missed it so much. I missed Yule. It's just hard to do without the community."
"We could visit campus for Yule," she pointed out.
"That's not really my point. Anyway, if we don't come here for Yule, we'll be able to visit your family for Christmas. And if we do come here for Yule, how will we remember to prepare for it and set aside time for it if we're not on campus in the run-up to it? It's like...neither of us celebrated Yule before we came here, and I didn't celebrate it when I left. How do we take what we learned here and bring it with us? I want to stay involved with the community, I don't want to be dependent on it. I don't want to feel institutionalized." I have no idea where any of this was coming from. My feelings about getting my green ring, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, are complex.
"Coming here wasn't my first time celebrating Yule," June said, still looking outside through the big window.
"Oh?"
"It was the first time I'd done a big production of it, but there was this time--I was in grad school, the year before you got there, and I was just seriously overworked, exhausted all the time, and a bunch of self-doubt started coming up, and it was just bad. So I did a couple of therapy sessions, you know, with the psych students?" Our grad school also had a psychology department and lots of student therapists looking for practice. "Well, this one day, everything was just going wrong. My car broke down, but I had to get to campus because I was supposed to have a meeting with my study group from some class, so I biked it, but it was raining, one of those long, slow, cold rains, you know? and I get there soaked to the skin and freezing, except my study group isn't there because I'd written down the date wrong or something, and then I try to go to the store to pick up some things, except I discover I'd lost my wallet, so I went back to campus to look for my wallet, maybe it fell out of my bag when I was looking for my notes on the meeting, and I spent so long looking for my damn wallet that by the time I remembered I had therapy that day my session was half-over, which was just awful, because I really needed some therapy, and--"
And I had no idea where this long and grammatically inconsistent tale of woe was going or what it had to do with Yule, but June usually does have a point when she talks, so I waited and listened and tried to keep track of all the twists and turns of the plot.
"So I finally get into therapy, find my therapist still waiting for me, hasn't cancelled or anything, and I just fall into her arms blathering and sobbing about everything that's going wrong. And after listening to me go on for a while and letting me calm down, she said 'There's a reason why today is the worst day of the year.' And I say 'what's that?' and she said 'Because it's the shortest.' And so we talked about what that meant for a few minutes and she takes me through this little ritual thing and I start to feel a little better. She offered to give me and my bike a ride home. I accepted--I was still cold and wet--and on our way out I found the rain had turned to snow."
I said nothing. I understood her, but I couldn't think of anything that needed saying. I took her hand and thought about things. I wasn't worried as much anymore.
Monday, November 4, 2019
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.
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.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Oops
So, the week before last, I posted the wrong post.
The issue is that I often work offline in a Word document, then cut-and-paste into Blogger and delete the document. But since I'm in the habit of deleting after I finish, if for some reason I don't finish, I often don't delete. Two weeks ago I accidentally typed the beginning of the Mabon post into an abandoned draft of the Lammas post. Later, when I went back to finish, I found what looked like a finished post already, and I was in a hurry, so I went ahead and posted it without reading it through.
I skipped posting entirely last week because I kept hoping to come up with some way to avoid posting this apology, but I never did think of anything. So here I am.
Sorry.
Here is the missing Mabon post.
-D.
The issue is that I often work offline in a Word document, then cut-and-paste into Blogger and delete the document. But since I'm in the habit of deleting after I finish, if for some reason I don't finish, I often don't delete. Two weeks ago I accidentally typed the beginning of the Mabon post into an abandoned draft of the Lammas post. Later, when I went back to finish, I found what looked like a finished post already, and I was in a hurry, so I went ahead and posted it without reading it through.
I skipped posting entirely last week because I kept hoping to come up with some way to avoid posting this apology, but I never did think of anything. So here I am.
Sorry.
Here is the missing Mabon post.
-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.
Every year (except one) that I've been here, the question at Mabon has always been whether to do the Gratitude Circle or the Thankyou Doll build, these being two of the many optional activities of the day that happen to occur at the same time, at least most years. The reason, I've always guessed, is that Kit co-leads the Gratitude Circle and Charlie co-leads the Thankyou Doll build, and Charlie and Kit have a mutual allergy. Something has to be scheduled in conflict, since there are too many events to have them all sequentially, and since Charlie wouldn't attend Kit's event anyway, and Kit wouldn't attend Charlie's scheduling them opposite each other is at least less frustrating for them than if either had to give up attending something they really wanted.
And frankly, I think Kit probably likes the idea of forcing students to pick between her and Charlie.
This year, I chose the Thankyou Doll build. Partly I wanted to hand out with Charlie, and partly it's that I really don't know a lot of the novices anymore, and it seemed like it might be weird to stand in the Gratitude Circle with a bunch of near strangers. Of course, you could argue that's exactly why I should have gone....Maybe it's something Allen said to me a while back, I'm amphibious--I'm mid-way, emotionally and mentally, between being a student and being a master, and while I no longer feel comfortable treating the novices like peers, I don't really know how else to treat them, yet. I feel like a fraud when I act too much like a master, and I don't know what the intermediate thing really is. So I don't talk to a lot of them at all, outside of class. I don't want to stand in the Gratitude Circle with them.
The Thankyou Doll--it's been a while since I explained this. The Doll is made out of produce from our campus farm, and sometimes a few wild plants make an appearance, too. Once assembled, the Doll is taken to the center of the farm and woken up in a simple ceremony; everyone stands around saying wake up! wake up! and such, and then the youngest person present leans down to listen and hear the Doll whisper that it is awake. When it does, the young person says so. I've always wondered what, if anything, these young people hear, but I've never asked any of them.
Then the Doll is taken on a tour of the farm, and all the places where its parts grew are pointed out to it. The Doll later attends the Paleolithic Dinner that night, and everyone in attendance gives the Doll a small something from their own plate. The Doll, and its plate of offerings, sits in state in the Great Hall for some weeks until Charlie and whoever else wants to return it to the center of the farm and bury it with proper ceremony.
It's a fun activity, and a good choice for children, so most of the sprouts usually attend.
This year was no different. We had my nephews and niece and all the sprouts younger than them, including Sean--he's still too young to wander around by himself, but Steve Bees wanted to hang out with Charlie, too.
Sarah brought a huge box full of ingredients and a box of toothpicks and spread everything out on an old sheet on the ground. We built the Doll out of potatoes and turnips and carrots and other items and sat it on a silver tray, all of us working together, sharing ideas, and solving design problems--like what to do when the Doll kept falling over, or how to make facial features that wouldn't fall off or look creepy.
And when we woke the Doll, Sean did the honors. He listened for a long time, and then when his dad asked him "Can you hear the Doll say it's awake?" he nodded. He's at the age where he can talk, but not in front of strangers.
After the tour, when everyone was dispersing, Charlie took me aside and casually asked me what sort of event I might like to run on Mabon.
Of course, Charlie never actually says anything casual. He always has a reason for speaking, because if he doesn't have a good reason, he'd rather listen to birds or wind, or possibly someone reciting poetry. I knew what he was up to--either spurring me to take another step towards thinking like a master, or checking to see whether I had taken the step on my own already. Most of the masters, and some allies, either lead or co-lead something on this day, after all. But not all of them do.
"None," I replied, without hesitation. I'd thought about it already.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Because Mabon isn't missing anything. I could take over an existing event if someone had to, and I'd put my own stamp on it whether I meant to or not, but I don't need to start anything new because nothing new needs to be started. It's complete."
And Charlie grunted and appreciative acknowledgment. He didn't need to say anything else. Neither did I. I learned that by watching him.
Every year (except one) that I've been here, the question at Mabon has always been whether to do the Gratitude Circle or the Thankyou Doll build, these being two of the many optional activities of the day that happen to occur at the same time, at least most years. The reason, I've always guessed, is that Kit co-leads the Gratitude Circle and Charlie co-leads the Thankyou Doll build, and Charlie and Kit have a mutual allergy. Something has to be scheduled in conflict, since there are too many events to have them all sequentially, and since Charlie wouldn't attend Kit's event anyway, and Kit wouldn't attend Charlie's scheduling them opposite each other is at least less frustrating for them than if either had to give up attending something they really wanted.
And frankly, I think Kit probably likes the idea of forcing students to pick between her and Charlie.
This year, I chose the Thankyou Doll build. Partly I wanted to hand out with Charlie, and partly it's that I really don't know a lot of the novices anymore, and it seemed like it might be weird to stand in the Gratitude Circle with a bunch of near strangers. Of course, you could argue that's exactly why I should have gone....Maybe it's something Allen said to me a while back, I'm amphibious--I'm mid-way, emotionally and mentally, between being a student and being a master, and while I no longer feel comfortable treating the novices like peers, I don't really know how else to treat them, yet. I feel like a fraud when I act too much like a master, and I don't know what the intermediate thing really is. So I don't talk to a lot of them at all, outside of class. I don't want to stand in the Gratitude Circle with them.
The Thankyou Doll--it's been a while since I explained this. The Doll is made out of produce from our campus farm, and sometimes a few wild plants make an appearance, too. Once assembled, the Doll is taken to the center of the farm and woken up in a simple ceremony; everyone stands around saying wake up! wake up! and such, and then the youngest person present leans down to listen and hear the Doll whisper that it is awake. When it does, the young person says so. I've always wondered what, if anything, these young people hear, but I've never asked any of them.
Then the Doll is taken on a tour of the farm, and all the places where its parts grew are pointed out to it. The Doll later attends the Paleolithic Dinner that night, and everyone in attendance gives the Doll a small something from their own plate. The Doll, and its plate of offerings, sits in state in the Great Hall for some weeks until Charlie and whoever else wants to return it to the center of the farm and bury it with proper ceremony.
It's a fun activity, and a good choice for children, so most of the sprouts usually attend.
This year was no different. We had my nephews and niece and all the sprouts younger than them, including Sean--he's still too young to wander around by himself, but Steve Bees wanted to hang out with Charlie, too.
Sarah brought a huge box full of ingredients and a box of toothpicks and spread everything out on an old sheet on the ground. We built the Doll out of potatoes and turnips and carrots and other items and sat it on a silver tray, all of us working together, sharing ideas, and solving design problems--like what to do when the Doll kept falling over, or how to make facial features that wouldn't fall off or look creepy.
And when we woke the Doll, Sean did the honors. He listened for a long time, and then when his dad asked him "Can you hear the Doll say it's awake?" he nodded. He's at the age where he can talk, but not in front of strangers.
After the tour, when everyone was dispersing, Charlie took me aside and casually asked me what sort of event I might like to run on Mabon.
Of course, Charlie never actually says anything casual. He always has a reason for speaking, because if he doesn't have a good reason, he'd rather listen to birds or wind, or possibly someone reciting poetry. I knew what he was up to--either spurring me to take another step towards thinking like a master, or checking to see whether I had taken the step on my own already. Most of the masters, and some allies, either lead or co-lead something on this day, after all. But not all of them do.
"None," I replied, without hesitation. I'd thought about it already.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Because Mabon isn't missing anything. I could take over an existing event if someone had to, and I'd put my own stamp on it whether I meant to or not, but I don't need to start anything new because nothing new needs to be started. It's complete."
And Charlie grunted and appreciative acknowledgment. He didn't need to say anything else. Neither did I. I learned that by watching him.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
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.
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?"
Monday, July 29, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 5: Lammas
Note: Lammas is August 1st, but I'm writing this as though it had already occurred.
Happy Lammas! Or Lughnasadh, a name reported to mean "mourning for Lugh."
Lugh is a god, as I've explained before, but one nobody on campus seems to pay much attention to, let alone mourn. It's always seemed strange to me. I've had some thoughts about that this year.
But let me tell you about the actual day. It's been hot lately, but today the weather was lovely--cool and dry with thin, fleecy clouds under a blue sky. As in years past, we had a feast in a large event tent on the Central Field, everything the farm produces on offer in a fantastic variety of dishes, plus an organized tasting of different varieties of apples and a separate tasting of different breads. I assume the results of the tastings will have something to do with what campus is eating going forward, but nobody said anything about any plans.
In years past, we've had talent shows, often structured as contests. This year it was all about athletics--a martial arts demonstration, a yoga demonstration, short foot-races, tug-of-war, and other events, including juggling. I was watching all of it when I felt a little puff of resentment because I can run and I can do a form of yoga, but I wasn't included--but of course I didn't volunteer, either. I don't know how to volunteer, who to talk to, and in fact I've never known, though I've been part of this community for a decade. And I never realized before today that I didn't know.
I've been so...pleased with myself for the things I've noticed about the school that all other students--or at least most other students--overlook. The secret stair and the door the masters use, Charlie's habit of lurking in trees to watch life go by, Allen's ability to vanish, and, perhaps most relevant at the moment, the fact that the majority of all people who have ever won a green ring all converge on campus at Lammas each year to do something together in the Mansion. But then there are all these other things I don't notice that evidently other people do.
Anyway, about Lugh.
I've heard various people (people more informed about pagan symbolism than I) explain that we mourn Lugh in August because he is a sun god and the power of the sun has gone into the grain and is about to be cut. Not, again, that Lugh actually has any devotees on campus, nor do we grow much of our grain here, but neopaganism (and maybe traditional paganism, too, I don't know) has a curiously fluid nature, with stories and symbols and reality all merging into and out of each other, such that any god or goddess can be an aspect of, or a reference to, the God or the Goddess, making it somewhat beside the point whether anyone specifically worships Lugh or not.
I've been confused about all this before. I've been confused about what many of these holidays are actually about. I'm not confused this year, and, looking back, I realize it's been a while since I was confused. I've realized, one, that I don't need to understand the symbols and concepts and so forth, that I know what Lammas is about, though I can't quite explain it, and that meaning is present, quite simply, when I enjoy the holiday. Two, the symbols and so on no longer confuse me because I know, after a fashion, what they mean. I can feel them from the inside and, occasionally, come up with my own way of explaining it.
It's simple; at Lammas, the harvest begins, and the harvest is a kind of shift from the potential to the actual, from what might become to what actually is. And as good as what is may be, that's sad. Something is gained, but something is lost.
That I will soon cease being a student here, cease preparing to be a master someday and simply be a master--I'm excited as all anything, but it's sad, too,
Happy Lammas! Or Lughnasadh, a name reported to mean "mourning for Lugh."
Lugh is a god, as I've explained before, but one nobody on campus seems to pay much attention to, let alone mourn. It's always seemed strange to me. I've had some thoughts about that this year.
But let me tell you about the actual day. It's been hot lately, but today the weather was lovely--cool and dry with thin, fleecy clouds under a blue sky. As in years past, we had a feast in a large event tent on the Central Field, everything the farm produces on offer in a fantastic variety of dishes, plus an organized tasting of different varieties of apples and a separate tasting of different breads. I assume the results of the tastings will have something to do with what campus is eating going forward, but nobody said anything about any plans.
In years past, we've had talent shows, often structured as contests. This year it was all about athletics--a martial arts demonstration, a yoga demonstration, short foot-races, tug-of-war, and other events, including juggling. I was watching all of it when I felt a little puff of resentment because I can run and I can do a form of yoga, but I wasn't included--but of course I didn't volunteer, either. I don't know how to volunteer, who to talk to, and in fact I've never known, though I've been part of this community for a decade. And I never realized before today that I didn't know.
I've been so...pleased with myself for the things I've noticed about the school that all other students--or at least most other students--overlook. The secret stair and the door the masters use, Charlie's habit of lurking in trees to watch life go by, Allen's ability to vanish, and, perhaps most relevant at the moment, the fact that the majority of all people who have ever won a green ring all converge on campus at Lammas each year to do something together in the Mansion. But then there are all these other things I don't notice that evidently other people do.
Anyway, about Lugh.
I've heard various people (people more informed about pagan symbolism than I) explain that we mourn Lugh in August because he is a sun god and the power of the sun has gone into the grain and is about to be cut. Not, again, that Lugh actually has any devotees on campus, nor do we grow much of our grain here, but neopaganism (and maybe traditional paganism, too, I don't know) has a curiously fluid nature, with stories and symbols and reality all merging into and out of each other, such that any god or goddess can be an aspect of, or a reference to, the God or the Goddess, making it somewhat beside the point whether anyone specifically worships Lugh or not.
I've been confused about all this before. I've been confused about what many of these holidays are actually about. I'm not confused this year, and, looking back, I realize it's been a while since I was confused. I've realized, one, that I don't need to understand the symbols and concepts and so forth, that I know what Lammas is about, though I can't quite explain it, and that meaning is present, quite simply, when I enjoy the holiday. Two, the symbols and so on no longer confuse me because I know, after a fashion, what they mean. I can feel them from the inside and, occasionally, come up with my own way of explaining it.
It's simple; at Lammas, the harvest begins, and the harvest is a kind of shift from the potential to the actual, from what might become to what actually is. And as good as what is may be, that's sad. Something is gained, but something is lost.
That I will soon cease being a student here, cease preparing to be a master someday and simply be a master--I'm excited as all anything, but it's sad, too,
Monday, June 17, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 4: Litha
As I write this, Litha is still a few days away, but the post is written as though it were a day or two in the past.-D.
"Why don't we do drugs here," asked Ash, one of the yearlings.
"I don't want to," answered Allen. "I can't speak for your half of 'we.'"
And Ash made a pff! sound because Allen had deliberately misinterpreted her, as he does.
We were all sitting in the Dining Hall, which was rather over-stuffed and noisy because it's Litha, and almost everybody has their family and friends visiting, so there were five or six hundred people on campus. AND it was raining--hard--so rather than picnicking outside, a lot of us were camped out in the Dining Hall. The event tent, the one we use for Mabon, was set up, too, and there had the pigs roasting there and some of the rest of the food, so some of the people were in the tent, and others were variously scattered all over campus, I'm not sure where.
The Sprouts had accreted to the Dining Hall, and were running around the margins of the room playing some kind of game that involved shrieking and shooting imaginary guns at imaginary enemies and sometimes each other, but then Charlie stood up on a chair and shouted "ATTENTION!!!"
The room went silent. We all looked at him.
"Attention, Sprouts!" he said, "You're not going to melt, you're not going to get hypothermia today, Go PLAY OUTSIDE!"
All the Sprouts filed out, most of them glancing rather sheepishly at Charlie as they went, and when they were gone everybody burst into applause.
"Except he did that for the Sprouts, not for us," I said, quietly, to Allen. He nodded.
"I expect he'll join them, shortly," he guessed.
"Should we?"
"And blow his cover?" Allen shook his head.
The conversation about drugs continued, somewhat without us, as various people discussed various mind-blowing experiences they'd had on various substances. Something like this comes up every year, and the conversation usually evolves into extreme positions, with one camp insisting that human consciousness evolved in partnership with entheogenic plants (that many of these "plants" are actually mushrooms is only one of the things that has come to irritate me about such assertions), and the other camp equally certain that the "vibrations" of mind-altering chemicals are too intense and that attachment to their use indicates "the left-handed path."
It's no good pointing out that they're both clinging to dogma that has no actual basis in anything, they'll just think you're being un-spiritual, if they hear you at all.
Allen winced, slightly. Discordant noise bothers him, and the conversations of two hundred people were bouncing off the walls.
Charlie approached us, gradually, talking briefly to several others on his crowded way and looking rather like a popular politician as a result, and he arrived just as Ash was describing an especially intense trip she'd had involving, I think, MDMA (also called Ecstasy). She saw him and cut herself off mid-sentence, apologizing and biting her lip.
"You don't need to stop on my account," Charlie commented. "It's not that my virgin ears can't handle it."
"But I thought you--" said Ash, and stopped. That Charlie is a recovering alcoholic is widely but not universally known, and so it is never discussed.
"You don't like talk about substances," finished another yearling, inexplicably called Beta.
"Why should I care what you talk about?" growled Charlie. "You want to be stupid, go ahead."
"Why do you think all drug use is stupid?" asked Ash. She seemed genuinely curious, and Charlie sat down to talk to her.
"You're putting words in my mouth," he said. "I don't think all drug use is stupid. You want to join some shamanic tradition, fine. There's a place for everything. And there's possible uses in therapy, and maybe some people can handle recreational use, I don't know. But most drug users are using drugs because they're being stupid, some way or other, including the psuedo-religious crap people around here get into."
"Psuedo-religious?"
"Yeah. You do it to see God, right?"
"Yes."
"Drugs, sex, dancing," interjected the second yearling, "all the things the Christians don't want us doing because they don't want us to cut out the middle-man and see God ourselves."
"Those things make you feel like you're seeing God," Charlie clarified, "but what good are your feelings? When the feeling goes away, has your life changed?"
In the background, somebody cheered and Allen winced again. In another corner of the room, a drum circle started up. The rain on the roof of the Dining Hall intensified. I wondered how we'd ever set the Man alight at sunset, but around here, something always seems to work out.
"Why don't we do drugs here," asked Ash, one of the yearlings.
"I don't want to," answered Allen. "I can't speak for your half of 'we.'"
And Ash made a pff! sound because Allen had deliberately misinterpreted her, as he does.
We were all sitting in the Dining Hall, which was rather over-stuffed and noisy because it's Litha, and almost everybody has their family and friends visiting, so there were five or six hundred people on campus. AND it was raining--hard--so rather than picnicking outside, a lot of us were camped out in the Dining Hall. The event tent, the one we use for Mabon, was set up, too, and there had the pigs roasting there and some of the rest of the food, so some of the people were in the tent, and others were variously scattered all over campus, I'm not sure where.
The Sprouts had accreted to the Dining Hall, and were running around the margins of the room playing some kind of game that involved shrieking and shooting imaginary guns at imaginary enemies and sometimes each other, but then Charlie stood up on a chair and shouted "ATTENTION!!!"
The room went silent. We all looked at him.
"Attention, Sprouts!" he said, "You're not going to melt, you're not going to get hypothermia today, Go PLAY OUTSIDE!"
All the Sprouts filed out, most of them glancing rather sheepishly at Charlie as they went, and when they were gone everybody burst into applause.
"Except he did that for the Sprouts, not for us," I said, quietly, to Allen. He nodded.
"I expect he'll join them, shortly," he guessed.
"Should we?"
"And blow his cover?" Allen shook his head.
The conversation about drugs continued, somewhat without us, as various people discussed various mind-blowing experiences they'd had on various substances. Something like this comes up every year, and the conversation usually evolves into extreme positions, with one camp insisting that human consciousness evolved in partnership with entheogenic plants (that many of these "plants" are actually mushrooms is only one of the things that has come to irritate me about such assertions), and the other camp equally certain that the "vibrations" of mind-altering chemicals are too intense and that attachment to their use indicates "the left-handed path."
It's no good pointing out that they're both clinging to dogma that has no actual basis in anything, they'll just think you're being un-spiritual, if they hear you at all.
Allen winced, slightly. Discordant noise bothers him, and the conversations of two hundred people were bouncing off the walls.
Charlie approached us, gradually, talking briefly to several others on his crowded way and looking rather like a popular politician as a result, and he arrived just as Ash was describing an especially intense trip she'd had involving, I think, MDMA (also called Ecstasy). She saw him and cut herself off mid-sentence, apologizing and biting her lip.
"You don't need to stop on my account," Charlie commented. "It's not that my virgin ears can't handle it."
"But I thought you--" said Ash, and stopped. That Charlie is a recovering alcoholic is widely but not universally known, and so it is never discussed.
"You don't like talk about substances," finished another yearling, inexplicably called Beta.
"Why should I care what you talk about?" growled Charlie. "You want to be stupid, go ahead."
"Why do you think all drug use is stupid?" asked Ash. She seemed genuinely curious, and Charlie sat down to talk to her.
"You're putting words in my mouth," he said. "I don't think all drug use is stupid. You want to join some shamanic tradition, fine. There's a place for everything. And there's possible uses in therapy, and maybe some people can handle recreational use, I don't know. But most drug users are using drugs because they're being stupid, some way or other, including the psuedo-religious crap people around here get into."
"Psuedo-religious?"
"Yeah. You do it to see God, right?"
"Yes."
"Drugs, sex, dancing," interjected the second yearling, "all the things the Christians don't want us doing because they don't want us to cut out the middle-man and see God ourselves."
"Those things make you feel like you're seeing God," Charlie clarified, "but what good are your feelings? When the feeling goes away, has your life changed?"
In the background, somebody cheered and Allen winced again. In another corner of the room, a drum circle started up. The rain on the roof of the Dining Hall intensified. I wondered how we'd ever set the Man alight at sunset, but around here, something always seems to work out.
Monday, May 6, 2019
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.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Post 1: Ostar
Note: I'm posting this a day before actual Ostar, but it's written as though it were after. Since the holiday fell on the 20th that year, a Friday, so I suppose I'm pretending that it's the 23rd, now.-D.
Happy Ostar!
This year, for the first time that I know of, we had an Ostar activity involving artificially colored eggs hidden by humans. It was Steve's doing, though I helped.
The issue is that little Sean lives here now, and while he's too young to really care one way or the other, his parents wanted a kid-friendly holiday activity and the rest of us decided to make it happen. It's not like their little family gets much in the way of light-hearted normality.
We invited all the sprouts--Ostar fell on a Friday, so the older ones had to take off school to come, but most of them did, including my nephews and niece (my brother and sister-in-law are really getting quite enlightened about this sort of thing). In fact, the only ones who didn't come were Alexis and Billie (Sarah Grimm's youngest), since they're both twelve and say they're getting too old for this sort of thing. And then, Ostar morning, while Charlie's egg-hunt (a search for the nests of actual breeding animals) went on as normal, the sprouts and their associated adults (including me) did our own thing.
It didn't seem right to me to just hide and then seek pastel-dyed chicken eggs, not on campus, and not in this company--there needed to be some kind of improvisation on the theme, some way of bringing more natural history into it. In fact, I'd initially approached Charlie about including the kids in the adult hunt, but he just growled that I must want the privacy of the birds invaded by dozens of squealing children. Which seemed a little unfair and most of them are either his relatives or mine, and I like to think we teach our families how to act, but perhaps he had a point.
"Anyway," he added, "I thought the whole point was to do something Sean can enjoy?"
So, what we did was to make mock-ups, using wood and paint, of the eggs of six different locally breeding birds (most of which are not breeding yet), a dozen eggs of each. "We," in this case, means me, Steve, Alexis, Billie, Aidan, and J.T., who is the grandson of John Crain, the new treasurer I don't think I've talked about yet. We did it last Sunday, made a little egg-assembly-line, while John himself, who is a fair artist, painted wooden cut-outs of each bird species standing near a nest of eggs and labeled with its name in large lettering. He also made another set of bird cut-outs without eggs.
Then, Ostar morning, we hid all the eggs in the garden and lawn in front of the Mansion and set up both sets of cut-outs--the ones without eggs pictured we attached next to buckets and the ones with eggs we set up in a line out of sight of the first group.
The idea was that the children should not only find the eggs but also put each found egg in the bucket for the right species. They could consult the other set of cut-outs for reference, but had to remember which egg went with which bird at least long enough to run from the reference to the buckets.
So, first they ran around finding the eggs (Sean had a good deal of coaching from his mother, and he held her hand because he has only just started walking and is not steady on his feet) with baskets in hand, and then, in a second stage, they sorted their finds into buckets (Sean didn't really do that part) and then they all got candy and then we all went to lunch.
The weather was warm and somewhat gray, the first Ostar I've had here when there was no snow, nor hint of snow, nor remnants of snow, but actual, springlike, warmth.
Lunch was a giant feast organized mostly around eggs and also the last of last year's potatoes, for the vegans. And afterwards we had actual, springlike, drizzling rain all afternoon, and we all gathered in the Great Hall for the slide show of the pictures from Charlie's egg-hunt and the awarding of the prizes (this time a pair of three-dimensional wooden puzzles that, when fully assembled, formed giant eggs--and when partially disassembled revealed that the chicks in question were velociraptors).
And I felt really torn. On the one hand, I had a lot of fun, planning and executing the children's hunt, and sitting watching the slide show with my niece, Ruthie, in my lap was pure, heart-bursting, sweetness. On the other hand....
After the slide show, I stayed behind with some of the novices to help Charlie clean up, and he approached me.
"So, how did it go?" he asked. I shrugged.
"It went well," I told him. "The kids had a lot of fun, and the egg-sorting thing worked. I'm really pleased by how it all went. But.... I wish I could have helped with the main egg-hunt. I guess I miss it."
Charlie looked at me for a few seconds.
"If it helps," he said, "remember that whenever you do something you learned from me, I'm with you."
Happy Ostar!
This year, for the first time that I know of, we had an Ostar activity involving artificially colored eggs hidden by humans. It was Steve's doing, though I helped.
The issue is that little Sean lives here now, and while he's too young to really care one way or the other, his parents wanted a kid-friendly holiday activity and the rest of us decided to make it happen. It's not like their little family gets much in the way of light-hearted normality.
We invited all the sprouts--Ostar fell on a Friday, so the older ones had to take off school to come, but most of them did, including my nephews and niece (my brother and sister-in-law are really getting quite enlightened about this sort of thing). In fact, the only ones who didn't come were Alexis and Billie (Sarah Grimm's youngest), since they're both twelve and say they're getting too old for this sort of thing. And then, Ostar morning, while Charlie's egg-hunt (a search for the nests of actual breeding animals) went on as normal, the sprouts and their associated adults (including me) did our own thing.
It didn't seem right to me to just hide and then seek pastel-dyed chicken eggs, not on campus, and not in this company--there needed to be some kind of improvisation on the theme, some way of bringing more natural history into it. In fact, I'd initially approached Charlie about including the kids in the adult hunt, but he just growled that I must want the privacy of the birds invaded by dozens of squealing children. Which seemed a little unfair and most of them are either his relatives or mine, and I like to think we teach our families how to act, but perhaps he had a point.
"Anyway," he added, "I thought the whole point was to do something Sean can enjoy?"
So, what we did was to make mock-ups, using wood and paint, of the eggs of six different locally breeding birds (most of which are not breeding yet), a dozen eggs of each. "We," in this case, means me, Steve, Alexis, Billie, Aidan, and J.T., who is the grandson of John Crain, the new treasurer I don't think I've talked about yet. We did it last Sunday, made a little egg-assembly-line, while John himself, who is a fair artist, painted wooden cut-outs of each bird species standing near a nest of eggs and labeled with its name in large lettering. He also made another set of bird cut-outs without eggs.
Then, Ostar morning, we hid all the eggs in the garden and lawn in front of the Mansion and set up both sets of cut-outs--the ones without eggs pictured we attached next to buckets and the ones with eggs we set up in a line out of sight of the first group.
The idea was that the children should not only find the eggs but also put each found egg in the bucket for the right species. They could consult the other set of cut-outs for reference, but had to remember which egg went with which bird at least long enough to run from the reference to the buckets.
So, first they ran around finding the eggs (Sean had a good deal of coaching from his mother, and he held her hand because he has only just started walking and is not steady on his feet) with baskets in hand, and then, in a second stage, they sorted their finds into buckets (Sean didn't really do that part) and then they all got candy and then we all went to lunch.
The weather was warm and somewhat gray, the first Ostar I've had here when there was no snow, nor hint of snow, nor remnants of snow, but actual, springlike, warmth.
Lunch was a giant feast organized mostly around eggs and also the last of last year's potatoes, for the vegans. And afterwards we had actual, springlike, drizzling rain all afternoon, and we all gathered in the Great Hall for the slide show of the pictures from Charlie's egg-hunt and the awarding of the prizes (this time a pair of three-dimensional wooden puzzles that, when fully assembled, formed giant eggs--and when partially disassembled revealed that the chicks in question were velociraptors).
And I felt really torn. On the one hand, I had a lot of fun, planning and executing the children's hunt, and sitting watching the slide show with my niece, Ruthie, in my lap was pure, heart-bursting, sweetness. On the other hand....
After the slide show, I stayed behind with some of the novices to help Charlie clean up, and he approached me.
"So, how did it go?" he asked. I shrugged.
"It went well," I told him. "The kids had a lot of fun, and the egg-sorting thing worked. I'm really pleased by how it all went. But.... I wish I could have helped with the main egg-hunt. I guess I miss it."
Charlie looked at me for a few seconds.
"If it helps," he said, "remember that whenever you do something you learned from me, I'm with you."
Monday, February 4, 2019
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
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
Monday, December 24, 2018
Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 1: Yule
You know, sooner or later, there had to be bad weather on Yule morning.
I'd thought I'd experienced bad weather on Yule before. There was one year when the dawn was completely hidden by cloud, and the new day loomed rather than broke, and there were two years it rained. But on one of those nights the rain turned to snow and then stopped just before we went out, so we didn't actually get rained on, and when the sun came up, the world was white. The other time, we did get drizzled upon, but just as the sun came up--brilliantly, through a break in the cloud--the rain turned rather dramatically to snow.
In point of fact, the "bad" weather those years only served to make the dawn more dramatic and lovely.
This year, though?
This year the weather well and truly sucked.
It began with rain around midnight, first intermittent, then harder and harder, but I wasn't worried, because I unthinkingly assumed the storm would break before dawn. It didn't. Instead, it intensified, the wind rising till we could poke our heads out of the Meditation Hall door and hear broken branches falling in the Formal Garden and along the evergreen row behind the building.
Inside, the party continued. Every year, we hold an all-night party, and students who have otherwise left campus for the season, graduates, allies, and even some family (like the Sprouts) all come in and fill the Mansion with music and merriment. The Sprouts and the masters don't usually join us until the morning, they have their own party on the fourth floor, but some of the masters come down for an hour or so. This year, the party was no different. One advantage of having Kit here is that a lot of people play instruments or sing--she loves to teach music and does it well--so our parties tend to involve giant jam sessions. And the room is lovely and filled with food and drink and wonderful people and it feels like the center of the world.
But then around four in the morning, Greg came down to find Kit and whispered urgently in her ear. She whispered back, and then they both went upstairs. A few minutes later, Allen came down and rather casually spoke to several of the senior novices. Then, one by one, they all slipped upstairs. Most of us didn't notice. I did. And June noticed me noticing.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I don't know that anything's the matter," I said. "But Allen just magicked up the students who were going to organize the walk up the mountain, and I don't know why."
"You don't?"
"Should I?"
"Do you want to walk up the mountain in this?" she asked.
Uh, no, I didn't. She had a point. My embarrassment must have showed on my face, because she laughed at me.
"Did you think a weather-witch was going to fix conditions for us?"
And the thing is, I'm sure there are weather-witches on campus, and I'm not certain their magic isn't effective. But I can imagine Charlie responding to such a proposal, and I don't think he'd like it. He'd say that the real magic occurs when we adjust ourselves to the world, not the other way around.
In the end, we didn't go up the mountain. It was too dangerous. Instead, we waited until twilight was well underway, and then walked out to the Edge of the World and stood there for a few minutes in the blowing 35-degree rain, turning our backs to the wind, our rain ponchos blowing up and flapping, letting rain in to soak our cloaks, until someone shouted "SUN'S UP! WELCOME YULE!" into the wind.
I imagine they relied on a clock to find the right moment. Dawn was not discernible at all.
We all turned and trudged back inside, and found there the entire master's group waiting for us in the Great Hall, all as sopping wet as we were. And they launched into "Here Comes the Sun," their traditional Yule morning carol, which definitely sounded ironic under the circumstances. We all laughed and clapped, and then Joy ordered us all upstairs and into warm showers, cautioning us not to come down until we were dry and comfortable.
When we came back down, there were the Sprouts and various other guests, and a hot breakfast with plenty of hot chocolate, and gift bags for everybody and presents to open, and we spent the rest of the day playing with our presents like children.
All the while, the temperature outside was dropping and, almost unnoticed, and ice storm was busy glazing the ground and the roads and the trees, and everything else. That was alright with me at the time, as I was at the center of the world, but our guests were trapped with us, and I'm sure many families traveling for Christmas had their plans interrupted.
Towards the late afternoon, the storm finally blew off and the sky cleared. Greg, invigorated by his mid-holiday nap (this year under the Yule tree, wrapped up in a blanket like a present) drew my attention to the sunset--the trees to the west of the back driveway were glowing with magic, unconsuming fire, the light of the setting sun shining in the rime ice on every twig in their high, massed crowns.
"That's gorgeous," I said, completely redundantly, but sometimes one has to.
"I've thought the weather gorgeous all day," he said, in his dry, somewhat formal voice. "The magic that gives us gorgeous weather consists in knowing the weather to be gorgeous."
He and Charlie are suite-mates, I recalled.
I'd thought I'd experienced bad weather on Yule before. There was one year when the dawn was completely hidden by cloud, and the new day loomed rather than broke, and there were two years it rained. But on one of those nights the rain turned to snow and then stopped just before we went out, so we didn't actually get rained on, and when the sun came up, the world was white. The other time, we did get drizzled upon, but just as the sun came up--brilliantly, through a break in the cloud--the rain turned rather dramatically to snow.
In point of fact, the "bad" weather those years only served to make the dawn more dramatic and lovely.
This year, though?
This year the weather well and truly sucked.
It began with rain around midnight, first intermittent, then harder and harder, but I wasn't worried, because I unthinkingly assumed the storm would break before dawn. It didn't. Instead, it intensified, the wind rising till we could poke our heads out of the Meditation Hall door and hear broken branches falling in the Formal Garden and along the evergreen row behind the building.
Inside, the party continued. Every year, we hold an all-night party, and students who have otherwise left campus for the season, graduates, allies, and even some family (like the Sprouts) all come in and fill the Mansion with music and merriment. The Sprouts and the masters don't usually join us until the morning, they have their own party on the fourth floor, but some of the masters come down for an hour or so. This year, the party was no different. One advantage of having Kit here is that a lot of people play instruments or sing--she loves to teach music and does it well--so our parties tend to involve giant jam sessions. And the room is lovely and filled with food and drink and wonderful people and it feels like the center of the world.
But then around four in the morning, Greg came down to find Kit and whispered urgently in her ear. She whispered back, and then they both went upstairs. A few minutes later, Allen came down and rather casually spoke to several of the senior novices. Then, one by one, they all slipped upstairs. Most of us didn't notice. I did. And June noticed me noticing.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I don't know that anything's the matter," I said. "But Allen just magicked up the students who were going to organize the walk up the mountain, and I don't know why."
"You don't?"
"Should I?"
"Do you want to walk up the mountain in this?" she asked.
Uh, no, I didn't. She had a point. My embarrassment must have showed on my face, because she laughed at me.
"Did you think a weather-witch was going to fix conditions for us?"
And the thing is, I'm sure there are weather-witches on campus, and I'm not certain their magic isn't effective. But I can imagine Charlie responding to such a proposal, and I don't think he'd like it. He'd say that the real magic occurs when we adjust ourselves to the world, not the other way around.
In the end, we didn't go up the mountain. It was too dangerous. Instead, we waited until twilight was well underway, and then walked out to the Edge of the World and stood there for a few minutes in the blowing 35-degree rain, turning our backs to the wind, our rain ponchos blowing up and flapping, letting rain in to soak our cloaks, until someone shouted "SUN'S UP! WELCOME YULE!" into the wind.
I imagine they relied on a clock to find the right moment. Dawn was not discernible at all.
We all turned and trudged back inside, and found there the entire master's group waiting for us in the Great Hall, all as sopping wet as we were. And they launched into "Here Comes the Sun," their traditional Yule morning carol, which definitely sounded ironic under the circumstances. We all laughed and clapped, and then Joy ordered us all upstairs and into warm showers, cautioning us not to come down until we were dry and comfortable.
When we came back down, there were the Sprouts and various other guests, and a hot breakfast with plenty of hot chocolate, and gift bags for everybody and presents to open, and we spent the rest of the day playing with our presents like children.
All the while, the temperature outside was dropping and, almost unnoticed, and ice storm was busy glazing the ground and the roads and the trees, and everything else. That was alright with me at the time, as I was at the center of the world, but our guests were trapped with us, and I'm sure many families traveling for Christmas had their plans interrupted.
Towards the late afternoon, the storm finally blew off and the sky cleared. Greg, invigorated by his mid-holiday nap (this year under the Yule tree, wrapped up in a blanket like a present) drew my attention to the sunset--the trees to the west of the back driveway were glowing with magic, unconsuming fire, the light of the setting sun shining in the rime ice on every twig in their high, massed crowns.
"That's gorgeous," I said, completely redundantly, but sometimes one has to.
"I've thought the weather gorgeous all day," he said, in his dry, somewhat formal voice. "The magic that gives us gorgeous weather consists in knowing the weather to be gorgeous."
He and Charlie are suite-mates, I recalled.
Monday, November 5, 2018
Mastery Year 2: Part 7: Samhain
Nothing is certain but death and taxes, they say, and even death, it seems, is variable.
This year, they've added marigolds to the Samhain decorations.
Marigolds are those orange and yellow flowers that do well in late fall--they're also a big part of Dia del Muerte, which yearlings often think we celebrate around here, but we don't.
The issue is that Dia del Muerte is the Mexican Day of the Dead, not the neopagan one, and the difference matters for questions of cultural ownership. Like most things, this didn't make sense to me at first, but Steve Bees has explained it several times and I might be beginning to understand. It's not that we can't do anything that wasn't done by our own ancestors, it's that we can't take anything that wasn't given to us--and Dia del Muerte hasn't been given to us. We wouldn't know how to do it right.
It hasn't been given to us because nobody of Mexican cultural heritage has come here to give it. No one? I don't know if that's literally true, that NO ONE from that culture has ever been a student here. It seems hard to believe. I mean, the United States has a sizable Mexican-American population. But it's true that very few of them come here. It's odd, and it's another thing I didn't used to think about--if we're as welcoming and open-minded as we like to think we are around here, why are we so consistently white?
In any case, no, we don't celebrate Dia del Muerte. We celebrate our own Day of the Dead. And yet this year we had marigolds.
Marigolds in little pots on the tables of the Dining Hall, marigolds decorating the displays and alters of the Great Hall, and finally marigold petals sprinkled over the little wooden bowls lining the walkways of campus on Samhain Night, each bowl filled with water and a little floating candle, and the whole campus lit up like stars.
Another year over, a few more lives done. Hats off to dead folks, as we sing every year in the candle-lit Chapel, smelling of bees' wax and autumn leaves.
At the end of a ceremony, as I've said, the masters leave, abruptly, if necessary in the middle of a sentence, and while they all attend the reception out by the bonfire with us, they do not appear as masters again until Brigid. At least not officially. I caught Charlie in that gap, after they came down off the stage but before they vanished, and asked him whether next year was likely to be my last as a candidate and whether I needed to do anything over the winter about it.
"Cutting it a little tight, aren't you Daniel?" he asked me, with a half-smile.
"I'm not used to having this question," I admitted.
"We'll talk later," he told me. "I'll find you." And then the bells rang and he left.
But before they rang, Allen found me. He was evidently looking for me, and on finding me he grasped my shoulder and fixed me with a knowing look. Then he smiled and turned away, off to find somebody else at the last moment, perhaps.
Then we all streamed out, on our way to the bonfire, and I dropped back a little, stepped off to the side, and vanished. I can't quite go invisible as well as Allen can, but I'm working on it. If I'm outdoors, especially in poor light, I can generally place myself where others do not look, and I decided I wanted to watch the sprouts in their annual abduction--they take an adult, usually one of the masters, though anybody but a yearling will do, and hold the unfortunate for ransom, paid in candy and expanded privileges. Here trick-or-treat is rather more like trick-and-treat. They took me once, but it was kind of hard to figure out what was going on as the victim of the procedure.
So I stepped off to the side, and with my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see bodies, large and small, moving along, outlined by flickers of light from the distant bonfire and the occasional flare of a flashlight. As the crowd pouring from Chapel Hall stretched out, I saw the smallest bodies move in and cluster. I expected to see somebody go down in the middle of the cluster. I didn't.
Instead I heard a whisper, though I could not make out the words and decided to move nearer. I learned later that the whispering voice said "Mr. Greg, don't talk, we've caught you."
After the rest of the crowd had walked on by, the children spread out something on the ground and asked Greg to sit down on it.
"You bandits are seldom so considerate. To what do I owe this unaccustomed courtesy?" Greg asked, almost whispering himself.
"It's 'cause you're old, now," said a very young sprout. "We don't want to break you by accident."
"Little ghoul, I've been old since before you were born," he said, sounding both stern and amused.
"Yeah, but now you're older," said one of the others. "Please, no more talking. We've kidnapped you."
And they tied his hands and feet, laid him down, and did something else to him that I couldn't see. When one of them ran off to negotiate, I worked my way around back to the fire.
"Oh, Daniel, I thought they'd taken you," said Kit, quietly. "You haven't escaped, have you?"
Escaping would be bad form.
"They didn't take me, I spied on them," I explained.
"Ah. What did you see?"
"I won't tell, spy on them yourself next time," I said.
And then the sprout appeared, costumed as some sort of animal, and announced they'd taken Greg, so we all did our part begging and pleading for his return and then finally negotiated and agreed to pay the ransom. When they carried Greg out I saw they had not only carried him in an old hammock, because they had bound his feet, they'd also wrapped him in an old blanket and tied him in there. They had drawn all sorts of things on that blanket with a red marker, making their victim look ridiculous, as they normally do, and added a few leaves for decoration. We had to un-tie him.
"Why the blanket?" asked Charlie.
"They didn't want me to get cold," said Greg. "Didn't June complain of being cold last year?"
"Well aren't you getting special treatment?"
"It's because they think I'm old."
"You are old."
"They are intelligent children."
So we had fun eating and drinking around the fire for the rest of the evening, a big group of us, nearly two hundred strong, counting everybody on campus and several visitors and allies who had come in for the occasion.
Towards the end, Allen found me again.
"Did you appreciate my goodbye?" He asked. I had. Very much.
"I thought that's what you might be doing," I said.
"Given that we're talking now," he said, "what of me did you say goodbye to? Are you sure you're ready to be only my friend and not also my student?"
And, you know, he's right.
This year, they've added marigolds to the Samhain decorations.
Marigolds are those orange and yellow flowers that do well in late fall--they're also a big part of Dia del Muerte, which yearlings often think we celebrate around here, but we don't.
The issue is that Dia del Muerte is the Mexican Day of the Dead, not the neopagan one, and the difference matters for questions of cultural ownership. Like most things, this didn't make sense to me at first, but Steve Bees has explained it several times and I might be beginning to understand. It's not that we can't do anything that wasn't done by our own ancestors, it's that we can't take anything that wasn't given to us--and Dia del Muerte hasn't been given to us. We wouldn't know how to do it right.
It hasn't been given to us because nobody of Mexican cultural heritage has come here to give it. No one? I don't know if that's literally true, that NO ONE from that culture has ever been a student here. It seems hard to believe. I mean, the United States has a sizable Mexican-American population. But it's true that very few of them come here. It's odd, and it's another thing I didn't used to think about--if we're as welcoming and open-minded as we like to think we are around here, why are we so consistently white?
In any case, no, we don't celebrate Dia del Muerte. We celebrate our own Day of the Dead. And yet this year we had marigolds.
Marigolds in little pots on the tables of the Dining Hall, marigolds decorating the displays and alters of the Great Hall, and finally marigold petals sprinkled over the little wooden bowls lining the walkways of campus on Samhain Night, each bowl filled with water and a little floating candle, and the whole campus lit up like stars.
Another year over, a few more lives done. Hats off to dead folks, as we sing every year in the candle-lit Chapel, smelling of bees' wax and autumn leaves.
At the end of a ceremony, as I've said, the masters leave, abruptly, if necessary in the middle of a sentence, and while they all attend the reception out by the bonfire with us, they do not appear as masters again until Brigid. At least not officially. I caught Charlie in that gap, after they came down off the stage but before they vanished, and asked him whether next year was likely to be my last as a candidate and whether I needed to do anything over the winter about it.
"Cutting it a little tight, aren't you Daniel?" he asked me, with a half-smile.
"I'm not used to having this question," I admitted.
"We'll talk later," he told me. "I'll find you." And then the bells rang and he left.
But before they rang, Allen found me. He was evidently looking for me, and on finding me he grasped my shoulder and fixed me with a knowing look. Then he smiled and turned away, off to find somebody else at the last moment, perhaps.
Then we all streamed out, on our way to the bonfire, and I dropped back a little, stepped off to the side, and vanished. I can't quite go invisible as well as Allen can, but I'm working on it. If I'm outdoors, especially in poor light, I can generally place myself where others do not look, and I decided I wanted to watch the sprouts in their annual abduction--they take an adult, usually one of the masters, though anybody but a yearling will do, and hold the unfortunate for ransom, paid in candy and expanded privileges. Here trick-or-treat is rather more like trick-and-treat. They took me once, but it was kind of hard to figure out what was going on as the victim of the procedure.
So I stepped off to the side, and with my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see bodies, large and small, moving along, outlined by flickers of light from the distant bonfire and the occasional flare of a flashlight. As the crowd pouring from Chapel Hall stretched out, I saw the smallest bodies move in and cluster. I expected to see somebody go down in the middle of the cluster. I didn't.
Instead I heard a whisper, though I could not make out the words and decided to move nearer. I learned later that the whispering voice said "Mr. Greg, don't talk, we've caught you."
After the rest of the crowd had walked on by, the children spread out something on the ground and asked Greg to sit down on it.
"You bandits are seldom so considerate. To what do I owe this unaccustomed courtesy?" Greg asked, almost whispering himself.
"It's 'cause you're old, now," said a very young sprout. "We don't want to break you by accident."
"Little ghoul, I've been old since before you were born," he said, sounding both stern and amused.
"Yeah, but now you're older," said one of the others. "Please, no more talking. We've kidnapped you."
And they tied his hands and feet, laid him down, and did something else to him that I couldn't see. When one of them ran off to negotiate, I worked my way around back to the fire.
"Oh, Daniel, I thought they'd taken you," said Kit, quietly. "You haven't escaped, have you?"
Escaping would be bad form.
"They didn't take me, I spied on them," I explained.
"Ah. What did you see?"
"I won't tell, spy on them yourself next time," I said.
And then the sprout appeared, costumed as some sort of animal, and announced they'd taken Greg, so we all did our part begging and pleading for his return and then finally negotiated and agreed to pay the ransom. When they carried Greg out I saw they had not only carried him in an old hammock, because they had bound his feet, they'd also wrapped him in an old blanket and tied him in there. They had drawn all sorts of things on that blanket with a red marker, making their victim look ridiculous, as they normally do, and added a few leaves for decoration. We had to un-tie him.
"Why the blanket?" asked Charlie.
"They didn't want me to get cold," said Greg. "Didn't June complain of being cold last year?"
"Well aren't you getting special treatment?"
"It's because they think I'm old."
"You are old."
"They are intelligent children."
So we had fun eating and drinking around the fire for the rest of the evening, a big group of us, nearly two hundred strong, counting everybody on campus and several visitors and allies who had come in for the occasion.
Towards the end, Allen found me again.
"Did you appreciate my goodbye?" He asked. I had. Very much.
"I thought that's what you might be doing," I said.
"Given that we're talking now," he said, "what of me did you say goodbye to? Are you sure you're ready to be only my friend and not also my student?"
And, you know, he's right.
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