Afterword: Post 9: Finis Part B

So, yes, a disgruntled student of Allen’s triggered the closure of the school; her parents filed a lawsuit and as we had no liability insurance, in order to settle out of court we had to sell the school itself to pay our bill. Each of our several other options, including fighting the suit in court, would have required we compromise our community in some important way. We decided it was better for the school to die intact than live on as less than itself. Whether it actually did die at all is the subject of this last post, but at the time we saw no hope, no way forward but an ending.

I want to emphasize that while I have mentioned that the student was mentally ill, her illness was not the cause of her vindictiveness—mentally ill people are not inherently dangerous to anyone, and lots of healthy people are vicious. Indeed, we don’t know whether it was she or her parents who decided to come after us. The reason I mentioned her mental status at all is that had she had any other kind of crisis, legal blame would not have landed on Allen—there might have been no way for blame to find purchase at all.

Allen felt horrible, for while he was not in any way responsible for what happened, he had made a mistake. There was a kernel of truth to the lawsuit. But we all felt horrible. I can’t overemphasize how awful it all was, every step that we took felt just plain wrong. And there were a lot of steps to take.

Again, I don’t want to be detailed, or even entirely accurate in my description, because we engaged in some subterfuge that I don’t want to come to light.

The first priority was to appear to capitulate fully in order to satisfy our attackers and distract from the fact that we weren’t capitulating fully. The Six were the board members of the school as a legal entity and its sole shareholders, so we could not appear to remain involved after the sale, nor could we arrange to sell the school to an ally whose connection to us could be traced. We (staff and students together) therefore created the illusion that we were and had always been a quirky private liberal arts college, and we presented that illusion to several potential buyers.

We also quietly made a deal with a different quirky liberal arts college to accept our students and transfers and find ways to properly credit their real educational experiences, including the courses on magic and so forth. We would continue working with the students in secret, and the other school would find ways to credit that secret work.

Thus, we planned to honor our obligations to existing students, although we could not take on new students because we would all shortly have to find other ways of making a living.

We were sued in August. We sold the school in October, and according to plan Allen, Kit, and Greg all walked away unemployed and penniless. I stayed on, since I had not been legally added to the board, pretending to be an adjunct science professor and writing coach. The other allies stayed on as well, and more allies stepped in to cover Allen’s psychology classes and Kit’s classes on dance and movement. Joy and Karen lost their positions on the board, but they both owned their own businesses—as you may recall their classes were open to outsiders—and so they both kept going as though they were simply contractors who had lost a client.

Over the following year, most of us allies gradually left the school’s employment, replaced by real liberal arts professors who had no idea what the school had really been. Most of the students, particularly those close to graduating, transferred to the other liberal arts college, the one we had a secret deal with, to finish their studies. New students came in with no thought of magic. The place very rapidly became the ordinary liberal arts school we had pretended it was.

But we had not sold the campus to the same buyer. The campus was our home. It contained Charlie’s ashes and some of those of Shrimp and Jim, who helped found the school and whom I never met but have heard a lot about. And remember, ashes from the campus lie under my skin; as Charlie predicted, I can’t ever permanently leave.

So we sold the campus to a newly-formed non-profit created by Sarah Grimm whose stated twin purposes of sustainable agriculture and education would be furthered by continuing the farm and by renting the campus facilities to various other groups, including the college that bought our school and Karen and Joy’s businesses—and the summer camp, which my wife continues to run. How did Sarah get the money? Some of it was hers, some of it raised from our community, but the entire down payment came from Charlie; he had bequeathed her his life savings with the understanding that she would do just what she did, if it ever needed to be done.

We expected our retention of the campus and our deal to stay involved with our students to function merely as lifeboats for a sinking ship. We expected to more or less all go our separate ways. Kit spent a year as a full-time member of her husband’s band, the Blue Pixies, then got herself re-certified as both a dance movement therapist and a yoga instructor. She then taught yoga at the YMCA and volunteered her services as a therapist at nursing homes and in a women’s prison. Allen expanded his private therapy practice to full time and eventually founded an after-school program for troubled youth. Greg, long since retired from teaching, went to live with his sister, his social security check supplemented by a small pension collected from the school community at large, as per our promise to take care of the Six. The Joes moved in with their son. Raven G. went to work for Sarah supervising the care of the non-farm parts of the grounds. Rick went to work for the US Forest Service (where he stayed until shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump, when he went to work for a state agency instead) but continued to consult on the management of the campus forest. Karen and Joy continued teaching their classes and did quite well for themselves. Sadie put her energy into her restaurant, becoming Sarah’s primary buyer.

And I became a full-time landscaper, supplementing my income in the off-season as a free-lance writer and writing tutor and by sometimes doing classes or workshops for area high schools and the community college. And I had a baby. And I wrote this blog.

The blog was an idea that came up very soon after we sold the school, the idea being to “seed” some of the values of the school into the wider world. We hoped that someone would take our example and create another community such as our was—if that has happened, we have not heard of it. But we had another goal, too.

Our community was never unique. I’m not the only one who has had the experience of meeting people who seem to be masters in our sense of the term but appear not to have gone through our program—they are out there. And there are places, or corners of places, where magical little communities very like ours grow. They aren’t obvious. In fact, they’re generally hidden, much as ours was, in plain sight—a school or a business or a private club or a neighborhood, wherever two or more gather amazing things can happen and yet the third who has also gathered might notice none of it. It’s very strange, yet somehow comforting.

So the other mission for this blog was to give encouragement to such places, and to all those who seek them.

The reality is that if our school is seen as a larger phenomenon, a reality beyond a single institution, then it never closed. It still very much exists. If you want to figure out the specific reality of my stories, who we really are, what really happened, you can give up now—I’ve hidden us so deeply you’ll never find us. But if you want to join us as a student, you’ll find we are all around you. All you must do is recognize our existence and want to join and we will take you in at once.

That paragraph was to be be the end of the blog. I thought of it years ago, almost word for word, though I have not written it down before today. I figured that the tragedy of Charlie’s death and the school’s closing might impel some readers to take me up on my invitation, to take seriously and offer care to the secret magical places and people around them, and then maybe my losses, our losses, would mean something.

But while I’ve been writing, a curious thing has happened, to me specifically and to us generally (something I found last week would require enough words to explain that I had to split the last post into two parts).

I have found myself transformed once again, no longer merely a science major who likes to write but a chronicler, a person concerned with and knowledgeable about the uses of narrative to communicate, to frame, and to transform. It has become my special skill and magic, and while I once felt myself inadequate as a leader of our community, I now have a place here. It has grown around me. And around me, around us, has grown a new version of “us.”

It happened gradually, as our meetings shifted from nostalgic get-to-gethers (sometimes precipitated by people wanting to know how the blog was coming, or by me wanting to consult the memories of others on points I wasn’t sure of) to catch up to semi-organized discussions of our various projects and how they fit into some kind of whole. We became, once again, the Six. I’ve given you hints of this process as it happened, told you of our decision—or was it a discovery?--to begin moving forward, to build something new.

Initially what we built did not resemble a school. Sadie had her restaurant, and when she decided to move it into a slightly larger space with a better location, we pooled our resources to help her buy a building with a restaurant and two other retail spaces on the first floor, a large finished basement, and two second-story apartments. The basement became the new home of Aaron’s library, which he had been running as a lending club through the mail from his home since the school closed. I took charge of one of the retail spaces with several business partners, also from the community, and sold science books and supplies and art supplies. Kit took charge of the other retail space and built a metaphysical book store. We rented the library after closing hours to 12-step groups and other community functions, and turned one of the apartments into an Air B&B. The other we gave to Greg, rent free, when his sister had to give up her house and move to an assisted living facility. We taught classes to the public. We took on small numbers of students secretly, bringing them on as novices at Brigid, just as we used to.

By that time the school that had once been ours had failed, its resources folded into other programs of its owner—enrollment had dropped precipitously after we left. We started talking about what might be done with the campus.

The election of Donald Trump was a turning point for us. The “real world” no longer felt safe for us or our values, and we realized we needed to create a refuge for ourselves, not to hide from the world, which is what we had done before, but as a base from which to act. We needed our own land again.

It took a few years to organize, but...we’re back. This Brigid, as I prepared to finish the blog, we inducted our first new group of resident novices. Some are new, but some have been secret students of ours for a few years now. We even have two candidates living with us.

We’re not the same school that we were. We couldn’t be—we don’t know how far the antipathy of that student’s family extends, for one thing. For another, we recognize now how vulnerable we were and have taken steps to make ourselves less so. The Six is no longer the institutional leadership on paper, nor are we one entity, we we used to be. Instead, we are a group of legally separate organizations, one of which is the school, which rents the campus facilities from Sarah’s non-profit. Never again can an outside attack threaten the entire structure—the school could close again, but it could be immediately replaced by a new legal entity with new people acting as its public face and behind that face the rest of us doing the same work.

It’s just in time. COVID19 has given us very good reason to retreat to a place that can, after all function independently. We grow our own food, and since the restaurant and our stores are shut for the duration, we none of us need to leave. We have invited our friends, allies, and families to join us—the student body is still quite small, so we have plenty of space and food—and some have taken us up on our offer. For over a month, now, no one have come in or gone out, we’re like the mysterious workers in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and so far none of us are sick.

But who “we” are has changed, too. Of the Six who I knew as a student, only Allen and Kit remain. Greg has completed his retirement. Karen and Joy have been gradually drifting away from us for years, getting involved with unrelated projects, and when we decided to re-open the school they elected not to come with us. And of course Charlie is gone.

I am the new Craft Master, though my primary craft is writing. Allen retains his old position, but Kit is the new Spirit Master, replacing Greg (yearlings no longer do zazen; they do yoga), and leaving a vacancy that Ebony has filled. Ebony is the new Art Master, teaching mostly visual art and poetry. Breathwalker is the new Athletics Master (as well as our new grouchy old mystic). He spent many years as a long-distance hiker, before permanent injuries took him off the trail, and walking is the primary athletic form he teachers. It’s harder than it sounds. Our new Healing Master is a physical therapist named Brian who earned his Green Ring in the years when we didn’t have a campus.

Two months in, our new residential community seems to be doing well, still feeling its way into existence, but we seem to be finding our way. Yesterday’s on-campus Easter service was well-attended and lovely.

June and I and Carly (who is, by the way, named after Charlie, as are several other sprouts with similar names all born since his death) have given up our old apartment and moved into the suit of rooms formerly occupied by Charlie and Greg. June and I share one room, Carly has the other, and there’s the shared living room, too. It’s less space of our own than we used to have, but room and board is free and we have the entire campus as our home.

Greg, who was less sentimental than I, chose a different room from which to enjoy his retirement. He was 93 and though still perfectly clear mentally, he was getting frail physically and spent much of his time dozing or getting to know our newly-acquired barn cats.

Did you catch the past-tense?

This morning Greg Monroe did not wake up. When he didn’t come to breakfast, Kit went to check on him and found his body cold and stiff in bed. He must have died quietly very early in the night. Brian is dealing with the details of properly caring for the body and for the legal details of a death. We have another funeral to plan, and while we’re not sure how, yet, Greg’s ashes, too, will enrich our soil. And yet Kit found the body not quite as cold as it might have been, for his remains lay guarded and warmed by all our barn cats. We have no idea how they got inside.

I was among the first Kit told, and I returned to the Mansion in time to see Greg’s body, though not in time to see the cats. I did not involve myself in the initial discussion of whom to call and what to do, but instead retreated to my room. I wasn’t scheduled to teach until the afternoon—now, of course, classes are canceled for the week—and I blog post to write.

I sat there in my room, which used to be Charlie’s room, thinking about Greg and about my history here with this school since I have known him and everything that’s happened, everything I’ve learned and done, and thinking too about what I wanted to write in this, my last post. Because that’s what this is. It’s the end. The end always comes, sooner or later, and while beginnings are not guaranteed, they tend to come, too. This story may someday become a novel, and if that’s going to happen I’ll post about it here—so please stay tuned. Or you can go back and read the story again from the beginning. It’s all here. It’s not going any place.

So my thoughts went and my ideas moved, and I got out my laptop to write this post. But before I began to write I got up and I stepped outside and I played my tin whistle on my balcony.

Mastery Year 3: Part 6: Mabon

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

Happy Mabon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stared at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh? What?"

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

"Yes," I said, cautiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What would you have made happen?"

"I don't know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, thank you."

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

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

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

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

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

But Eddie just shrugged.

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

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

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

"But it hadn't happened to you."

"No."

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

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

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

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

And they both shook their heads sadly.

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

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

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

"Tall order," said Eddie.

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re tough.”

“They are.”

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

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

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

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

“That’s great! So?”

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

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

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

“Oh?”

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

Mastery Year 1: Part 5: Lammas

Happy (belated) Lammas. Or Lughnasadh. "Lammas" is short for loaf-mas, suggesting a Christian version of the holiday that I've never otherwise heard of, and "Lughnasadh" means "mourning for Lugh," Lugh being a Celtic deity associated with agriculture. There is a story in which he and another figure compete for the same woman, killing each other and then reviving in turn. The story is an allegory for the alternation of summer and winter, or something like that. I forget if I've ever explained that before.

It's curious that we have a holiday called "Mourning for Lugh," even though nobody on campus mentioned Lugh at any other time, except occasionally at storytelling events, and nobody mentions him much even on Lughnasadh. I mean, it's not like anybody on campus that I know of is actually a devotee of that particular god, so why do we have a holiday mourning him? And why don't we spend it in mourning?

There was one year when all the songs they played were about loss, and I've heard last year, when I wasn't here, also had loss as a major theme. I think loss gets into it both because we can start to see the end of summer approaching, which is kind of sad, especially if you really like summer, and out of the recognition that it's a harvest festival, and in order to harvest something, even a plant, you need to kill it (or, in some cases, wait for it to die). But it's not, overall, a day of mourning for us, no.

And this year the weather was horribly, almost frighteningly hot, and has been for a week, so nobody in their right mind would feel sad at all about the prospect of summer ending.

I have heard that one of Lugh's names is Lugh of the Skillful Hand, and that he won acceptance from the other gods and goddesses because while each of his skills was something one or another of the other deities could already do, he didn't offer anything wholly new, none of them could do everything that he could. So that may explain the theme for the day--people showing off what they do well.

The feast, of course, shows off Sarah's skill as a farmer and Sadie's skill as a chef and baker. That happens every year, and it's fantastic. Some years there are tasting contests for various fruits and vegetables, usually so we can have a voice in what will be planted next year. This year instead there was a tasting for varieties of honey, all bought from different regional farmers, plus honeys from our own hives gathered at different times of the year. Wholly impractical--we would stick with our honey even if some farmer in the next county had something we all liked better--but delicious. There were also tastings for different zucchini breast recipes and different kinds of jelly, and those will have an impact on what we get in the dining hall over the nest year.

And there were not one but two performances. The first, in the big tent on the Central Field as we ate, was a combination magic and juggling show. Ten different acts, mostly students, each had five or ten minutes to wow and entertain the crowd. One of the acts, a pair of talented yearlings, enlisted Greg, apparently as a volunteer, but he ended up quite clearly being involved in a planned slight-of-hand sequence that none of us had known he could do. That was awesome. June is a magic student as well, but she didn't perform. Ebony did. I had seen Ebony do magic before, of course, but this was the first time I saw her do a full performance. She had one of the longest acts, full of professional prattle and schtick, based largely on a series of "mistakes," by which she set up the audience (those few who didn't know any better) to feel bad for the poor little blind girl, before objects reappeared in improbable places, apparently out-of-control accidents resulted in the impossible occurring, and people who appeared eager to help her in a condescending way suddenly found trained ferrets or homing pigeons inside their clothing or under their hats.

"One of these days," I whispered to June, "she'll run out of people who underestimate her and she'll need a new shtick."

"What makes you think you're not still underestimating her?" June whispered back. And interesting comment, as I don't think they know each other well, but they do magic together in class, so I suppose knows Ebony has something else up her sleeve.

Anyway, the final magician on stage was Allen, blooming out of another act's magic to thunderous applause.

Specifically, six students had taken turns pulling progressively more improbable things out of a black top hat resting on a wooden stool in the middle of the stage. Then the seventh reached in and could not find anything. The group acted as though the magic hat were "broken," clustering around it and trying various things to "fix" it and eliciting weird noises, bad odors, or unpleasant objects (a realistic-looking plastic scorpion, an apparently literal hot potato) instead, until one of them pulled out what appeared to be a lit cherry bomb!

All of them ran around the stage with this thing for a few seconds, before they dropped it in the middle of the stage near the stool and cowered. The thing burst, producing a large billow of smoke instead of the dangerous explosion of a real cherry bomb, and when the smoke cleared, there was Allen, sitting on the stool and wearing the top-hat.

I've thought about how he could have done that--there was no tap door, no possibility of a wire to be lowered on, nothing nearby to hide behind...I think he simply walked on stage while we were all distracted by watching the cherry bomb. It's like the gorilla experiment, in which you don't even see someone in a gorilla suit because you're busy counting the number of times people throw a ball.

Anyway, the others left the stage to him, and he performed for about ten minutes and he was wonderful. Of course.

Then, because it was so hot, we all left the tent and had a water-gun fight until we were all soaked. Then we went back into the tent, where the buffet had been re-set with a feast of dessert, and for once, Charlie performed. He read a series of poems, mostly his and all excellent, before yielding the stage to a poetry slam, where several students performed spoken word pieces and we indicated by the loudness of our clapping which we thought best.

But by the time the slam was over, the masters were all gone, as were Chuck and Joe and Malachi, all of whom were visiting for the day. All vanished just like every year. As usual, nobody seemed to notice. The rest of us milled around and ate desert and chatted, and after a while a few people went to the Mansion and brought back their instruments and we danced until we drifted off to bed (the dining hall staff did put away the food, and the janitor team put away the tent and everything else the next day).

I almost asked one of the musicians if he'd seen the masters, but of course they would be upstairs on the fourth floor where we can't go, with their unannounced guests, doing whatever it is we can't know about.

I'm getting really tired of designed ignorance. I don't find it fun anymore.

Mastery Year 1: Interlude 1

Hi, all, it’s Daniel-of-2017 here.

I’m kind of surprised that it’s time to do another interlude already. I shouldn’t be—time marches on at a familiar rate, after all, but I’ve been busy of late and distracted. I’ve explained how we’ve started taking on new students again and that our intention is to re-form as a school at some point. We have half a dozen committed students now, and about as many more hangers on who passed the entrance test but don’t seem to be serious about studying, but we aren’t accredited and don’t have a campus. Actually being a college again is a long-range goal—but we’ve taken another step in that direction.

I should emphasize that done of what I say about our current activities will be exactly as it seems. I still have a responsibility to protect the secrecy of the community, not to mention the privacy of the people whose stories I tell. I don’t want anybody to actually be able to identify us through this blog. 

So what I say is true in some ways and not in others.

So, we have, as I said, taken a step. Years ago, back before we closed the campus, Sadie opened a restaurant in town. When the school closed, she kept going, and it’s become fairly successful. Last year, right around the time of the election, the owner of her building decided to sell. We were pretty confident the new owner would want her as a tenant, so we weren’t concerned. But after Trump’s election, when we realized we needed a community home base again as soon as possible, we pooled our money and bought the building.

The building contains, beside the restaurant, a small retail space on either side, a large basement, and two small apartments on the second floor—Greg has had one of them for a few years now, though we don’t let him pay the rent himself. It’s only a fraction of the retirement benefit he’s earned. Anyway, over the past few months, we’ve reassembled the school library in the basement, renovated both retail spaces and built connecting doors between them and the restaurant. When the current tenant of the apartment moves out, we’ll convert it into classroom space.

Those two retail spaces—one is becoming a metaphysical supply shop, the other a naturalist’s supply shop. Kit is running the former, I am running the latter.

I don’t know anything about business. Neither does Kit. So Nora is taking care of advertising, budgeting, and that end of things for both of us (she’s had a successful business for the past couple of years making and selling scented candles, incense, and scented massage oils). Kit and I mostly decide what to sell and we each pull our shifts as store clerks. We’re hoping to open next month, and to start leading public classes based out of each store.

So, the long and the short of it is I’m very busy.

What we’re trying to do is create community space. None of this is called “a school,” and these classes are mostly aimed at people who haven’t passed the entrance test. We’re doing it in the spirit of public education—but we also expect that at least some of the people who come for classes will pass the entrance test at some point. And we’re creating an umbrella organization for all our various projects so that we can share resources and staff—the two shops, library, the restaurant, the farm back on the old campus (which Sarah owns and which supplies the restaurant), the summer camp (which June runs, among her other projects), Allen’s afterschool program, and several other things—it will all be under the same ownership. Malachi is helping us get non-profit status for it. So, we’re creating a legal and financial entity that will, roughly speaking, encompass the activities of the entire community. We’ll be real, in a certain practical sense, again.

As to my story. I confess I’m feeling a little disorganized. Until relatively recently, I expected to end my story before I got into my candidacy, so I didn’t develop much of a plan for how I was going to cover this period. I’ve been kind of winging it.

And yet, I don’t think I’ve been getting it wrong in any particular way. Early on, I had a lot of corrections to make in these interludes because I was concerned I was giving the wrong impression about certain things. That’s not an issue very often anymore.

Although there are little pieces that I don’t know how to get into the narrative because they were little—but cumulative. Every so often, I’d have a moment of looking down and being startled by my uniform, brown rather than white, as though I were somehow wearing someone else’s body. Sometimes I felt very much at home, as though I had never left. Other times, I was so keenly aware that I was no longer a novice that I felt like I didn’t belong at all. No one treated me badly, but to the senior novices I was an outsider they didn’t really know how to talk to. The yearlings kept mistaking me for a master for weeks. And there were moments of absolute joy to be back among so many of my friends, moments of intense gratitude that June was with me, that she cared so much about me as to make my world hers.

All those moments were little and uneventful, yet collectively they formed the dominant emotional tone of that, my first winter and spring back at school.