Mastery Year 3: Part 2: Post 3: Ug

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

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

I'm pretty sure I have a sinus infection.

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

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

I must go back to sleep.

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

Classes have started.

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I forgot to ask him.

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 3: Getting Back to Charlie

So, I have an answer.

To the question of what more I have to do to become a master, I mean. The key ended up being what Ollie said, about whether I'd like to see someone like me hired--and the thing is, I wouldn't, not yet. I may have made the personal transformation necessary to be one of the Six, but I'm not in a position to take responsibility for helping to run the school, because I don't really know how the school runs. I don't really have a sense yet of how I could bring my unique skills and knowledge-base--I do know I have unique skills by now!--to the school in a way that might fit in with what everyone else is doing here.

But what I don't know, I can find out.

So, first I made a list of things I want to learn this year:

• What is the operational structure of the school? Who does what?
• What are the day-to-day operations of each "department"?
• What is the school's legal and financial status?
• What happens in an emergency?
• What is the history of the school?
• Who is actually in charge of making various "mysterious" events happen?
• What is the decision-making process? How is organizational policy set?
• What classes (as opposed to workshops, etc.) could I teach, other than Charlie's?
• What areas of mastery could I teach, and how would I teach them?
• What do people other than me find useful in a master?
• What areas of school function could I direct?

Then I made a list of tasks I want to complete over the year that should teach me the things I need to know:

• Interview each member of the Masters' Group and all of the regular allies about what they do.
• Interview Greg, and one or more of the original Six, if I can find any, about the school history. Supplement with interviews of the others.
• Interview each member of the Candidates' Group, especially those getting their rings this Brigid, about their process of gaining mastery and their relationships with their masters.
• Write up class descriptions and syllabi for one or more full classes I could teach and write up any necessary preparation plans--then execute the plans.
• Interview a selection of novices about what they like and don't like about their masters and what they see as the strengths and weaknesses of the school as a whole.
• Ask various community members of all categories what they see as needing to change or improve in the school, and what they see as important to remain the same.
• Document all of the above--write a report.

I did as Sharon whether any such reports already exist, though I suspect I'd get more out of writing one than by reading it, but she said there isn't. I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged that apparently nobody's ever sought mastery this way before.

Anyway, I turned in all of it to Charlie, through Sharon, and now I'm waiting to hear back. I'm sitting in the Great Hall, alone, watching the weak, winter sunlight shine off the decorations of the Yule tree and off the crusted, patchy snow outside. More snow is predicted for tonight, and the Great Hall smells of snow and, faintly, of the iron of the woodstove, which overheated earlier and is cooling now, ticking slowly as it goes. And I'm thinking why was all this so difficult? Why did it take me the better part of a month to do this, even after I spoke with Ollie and developed a good idea of what I needed to do?

I could say I was distracted and preoccupied by the holidays, but really there wasn't much for me to do to make the holidays happen. I've been less preoccupied, less busy, over the past month than I normally am by daily life.

The truth is that the reason I don't know all of this stuff already is that I've been fairly passive in my engagement with the community. I've done what I've been told, I've met expectations, and that's about it. A certain passivity is not only accepted but actually encouraged in the students, I've learned, because it keeps them from asking too many questions and makes maintaining the air of mystery (which has educational value) much easier. It's not like I've been doing anything wrong. But it's time to give up passivity now, to take responsibility for making this place work--to grow up, in other words.

And I don't entirely want to.

Mastery Year 2: Part 8: Post 2: Christmas and New Years

Merry Christmas and happy New Year.


Why don't we say merry New Year? Or, really, merry anything other than Christmas? I've always wondered. Anyway, I've been merrying along at June's parents' place, and while I'm glad we went, I'm even more glad to be back.

As I think I've said, we usually go to my parents' house for holidays and other visits because it's closer--this has been especially true since we've been on campus together, and it had been bothering June. In fact, I don't think we'd both visited her parents since before we were married, though they have visited us, and June spent a good long visit a home last February.

And it's not like I dislike her family. In fact, I rather like her parents. It's just that they're not my family. I don't know them very well, and when I'm at their house I have that uncomfortable feeling that comes with being the house-guest of near-strangers. As though one might do the wrong thing, be a burden somehow, and ruin it. That's not a great way to spend Christmas.

Also, June's family is Quaker, and they don't exactly celebrate Christmas. The idea is every day is supposed to be holy, so how can there be special holy days? It's not that the family ignores the day, but it's low-key, reflecting the virtue of simplicity, I gather, and not religious. Her parents put a small, hand-made tree-like object on the kitchen table Christmas Eve, and in the morning we had a large and unusually delicious breakfast and opened "stockings."

The "stockings" were actually large paper bags, each with a name on it, into which we'd all been dropping small, fun gifts (candy, jars of specialty pickles, wind-up toys, brain teasers, weird socks) over the previous days. The tradition is that each person gets something for everyone else and nobody looks in the bags until Christmas morning. I think it started out with the adults making up stockings for the kids, and then became more general when June and her brother grew up.

Anyway, Christmas night, June's aunt came over for dinner and we ate by candle-light, but it wasn't an unusual dinner otherwise.

It was nice, Christmas with my in-laws, but it was kind of minimal.

I missed real Christmas. I missed going to church and singing Christmas carols by candle light, I missed the hustle and bustle and glare of the holiday, and I missed both the giving and the receiving of real (and sometimes expensive) Christmas presents. Yes, the giving, too. I'll get presents from my parents and my brother's family, of course, and give them, too, everything's already bought and wrapped and waiting in my room, but it's not the same thing.

And as much as I missed my family of origin, I missed my friends on campus, too.

I wanted to know what Andy got for Christmas and to listen to his touching, almost childlike, theological soliloquies. I wanted to hear Ollie preach, which I still haven't done. I wanted to go tracking with Rick or run into Charlie unexpectedly, him no doubt barefoot and sarcastic in the snow. I wanted to sit in the Great Hall alone or nearly so and watch the afternoon sunlight glint off the silver embroidery on the ivory ribbons on the tree, and off the gold embroidery on the tangerine-colored ribbons, and the glass balls, orange, red, and yellow, like fruit, and the fantastic flock of blown-glass birds perched on the branches among strings of beads and popped corn and the little white LED lights, unlit, now quiescent, but reflective still. I wanted to go home.

I think June is a bit miffed at me for not liking being at her family home as much as she does. She takes it as a rejection of herself and her family, and it isn't that at all. She knows it's irrational, but she can't help it. And neither can I.

Tonight is New Years Eve, and a bit more traditional. We'll stay up and toast in the New Year with Champagne, maybe after watching a movie. Not a big deal, but similar to what my parents usually do. They'll be a party on campus tonight, and I wish I could attend, but the ache is a little easier, the day less emotional.

June found me a few minutes ago, looking morose, I suppose.

"Missing campus?" she asked me.

I made a non-committal, morose noise.

"You don't like coming out here to the real world, do you?" she asked.

I turned to look at her.

"Mine is the real world," I said. "It's this one that isn't."

"I know," she told me. "And that's a difference between us."

Mastery Year 2: Part 6: Post 3: Time Moving

It's beginning to look a lot like Samhain...

Yes, I mean that with the melody. I'd draw little musical notes around it if I knew a way to do that in Blogger.

Anyway.

The trees are turning now, not quite peak, but close, and the fields are full of goldenrod and aster. The apples are coming in heavy from the orchards and the pumpkins are ripening--we've had pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread in the Dining Hall already (no pumpkin spice lattes, though, for that one must go off-campus). The corn has been harvested, and so the dried stalks have appeared as standing bundles in all the doorways of all the buildings on campus. Yesterday, Charlie's team hung the Great Hall with cut bittersweet vine.

And all the classes have entered their final stretch as the entire campus community starts looking towards winter and then graduation. Except me, oddly enough.

It's not that I'm not thinking about it at all, it's that it's not my focus. June has got a job.

She actually started about a month ago--she's the Outdoor Education Director for a private school nearby, a position that allows her to telecommute two to three days a week, minimizing driving, and gives her summers off so she can work for our school. She has benefits and everything (which means I now have health insurance again).

"I feel so grown-up!" she told me, giggling.

But this means we can't leave campus during the break, or at least we can't spend a lot of time off-campus. I can't go 'home,' because campus IS home, because my wife lives here and she has a job nearby. An actual, professional, grown-up job. And it changes how we both think about time and space.

I'm 28, now, and I'm certainly an adult within this community. I have been for a long time. I'm married, most of my friends are married, and I spend most of my time now teaching classes and workshops and things, or working with Steve. Plus my part-time job at the nursery.

But relative to the outer world I am, in a way, still a boy. I mean, I'm a student. I'm mostly broke all the time because I'm a student. I've never had a "real job," meaning one I intended to keep for a long time, and I still don't know exactly what my real job will consist of when I get one. It feels much odder than I expected to have my wife come home to me at night complaining or pleased by all the things professionals can be irritated or pleased by at their work, making thousands, not hundreds, of dollars per month, with health insurance and a retirement plan. A retirement plan?

It's not that I'm jealous, and it's certainly not that I'm uncomfortable with my wife making more than me. It'd that it feels weird being married to a real grown-up.

I talked to Allen about it the other day. He'd just come from class, I met up with him as he was coming across the Central Field toward the Dining Hall, and so he was uncharacteristically dressed in uniform. Our feet crunched a little in the few leaves that hand already fallen and blown out into the field, and a maple leaf had lodged itself in his hair. I couldn't tell if he wanted it to be there or just didn't know about it.

I explained to him, quickly, about feeling like a boy and not wanting to. He smiled.

"I'll let you in on a secret," he said. "We all feel that way. 'Like a kid' is how adulthood feels, most of the time. Or like a young adult when you're not. The mind never catches up to its real age. I have a twenty-year-old son. Twenty! Some days, I'm surprised I'm not twenty. He could give me a grandson now, if he wanted to." He grinned at the idea, amused, I think, at the strangeness of the whole thing.

"I remember you once said 'feelings aren't facts.'"

"I did," he agreed, "Though I was hypothermic at the time. I'd say, rather, that feelings are poor indicators of reality. Good thing, too, or you and I would be stuck being boys forever and we'd miss all the fun of being men. Also, you know, things like this wouldn't work," and he snapped his fingers and one of his ferrets emerged from my uniform hood (where I certainly hadn't known it was), climbed around to my shoulder, and jumped to its master, who kissed it fondly.

"Does he have a name?" I asked.

"Templeton. And the female is Charlotte. You barely reacted. I'm going to have to up the anti, the ferret trick is getting to be old hat."

"I bet you have an old hat," I guessed, and he obligingly produced one.

"I'm getting too predictable."

"If I could predict you, Allen, I wouldn't have to ask you questions. I'd know the answers."

"Well, that's some comfort. Though you have your own answers, too, you know."

"I know. Speaking of which, did you know you have a leaf in your hair? It's quite fetching."

His face fell in surprise and he patted his head cautiously and found and removed the leaf.

"I'd forgotten all about that," he exclaimed, embarrassed, and laughed his merry, boyish laugh.

Mastery Year 2: Part 5: Post 5: Thinking

Aaand summer is back.

It's not really, of course. The harvest is coming in fast, now, the swallows are staging to migrate, the goldenrod is coming into bloom....Fall is well underway. I mean it's hot and humid and I wish it wasn't. I'd like a good summer storm to cool things off, and I heard some rumblings in the distance today and even saw one cloud-to-ground strike far off, but none of the storms came our way.

I was supposed to teach a workshop today but had to cancel because the people who were interested had an extended field trip in another class and weren't going to be able to make it. So, I ended up spending the afternoon lying on my bed, watching the hummingbirds at the bean vines out on my deck, wishing it were cooler, wishing for cooling rain, and thinking about things.

And I was thinking about 9/11. The 9/11, I mean, the attacks. They're getting to be a long time ago, now. I mean, I could have a conversation with someone who wasn't born yet when that happened* and sometimes I do--my brother's kids, for example.

I remember that day. I remember before and I remember after. And someday there won't be anybody who remembers before--the amount of time before that event is finite, we've had all of it there is. There are days that change a person intentionally. I mean, when I first came to this place, I had no idea what it would mean for my life, what I was getting into, but I did it on purpose. And in a way I did know. I knew that here was a place that would be magical in some way, important, worth putting my energy into and caring about. I knew it was a place I wanted to belong and thought that perhaps I could. I was changing something and I was excited about it.

But when I woke up on September 11th, 2001, I didn't know that day would be different.



* Remember, this is set ten years in the past.

Mastery Year 2: Part 4: Post 5: The Zen of Achoo!

Aaaand, now I'm sick.

I didn't expect to be sick, I certainly didn't plan to be sick, but now, here I am. Sneezing seems to be my main occupation at the moment. It's just a cold, no big deal, but I don't really seem able to focus on anything.

So, I'm sitting here doing nothing except watching the world go by from my balcony. And sneezing. Don't forget the sneezing.

Eventually, I will have a lot of work to catch up on, but right now? It's not so bad.

Earlier, it was hot as all get-out. It's been hot, way too hot, for days, weeks. But now...an hour or so ago, the sky grew dark, the air grew soupy, and the clouds just let loose, wind, rain, lightning, the whole bit, the works. It's just easing off now, and there's some clearing in the west.

If I lean way out and crane my head, I can see the sunset from here.

Mastery Year 2: Part 3: Post 6: Meditation

You ever read the Winnie the Pooh stories? I mean the real ones, by A.A. Milne. I was raised on the Disney version, but Charlie has a thing about Disney, and growled on the subject until I caved and read the original.

Anyway, there is a story that begins with Piglet sitting at home alone while floodwaters rise around him. It’s not really flooding here, but it is raining hard, and has been for hours, and I’m all alone here in the Mansion, and I’m feeling very small and isolated.

Not literally alone—Sharon and the others are working in the Office and Aaron and the others are working in the Library, but everyone else is elsewhere. Everyone else has something to do.

The students and masters are all in class, except for Greg, who has no classes, being retired, but he has a doctor’s appointment. June is in the office making phone calls relative to the children’s camp, which is starting in less than a month, now, so there is a lot to do, and she says she’s not to be bothered. I was supposed to be off-campus, working for the landscaping company today, which is why I’m not scheduled for anything, but my boss there called and canceled work because of the rain, and now I have nothing to do and I’m all by myself.

I could take a walk in the rain. I do, sometimes. I could take a nap. In fact, I might. But for the moment I’m just sitting here in the Great Hall, watching the Mansion be empty and dark and listening to the sound of the rain coming in through a few open windows. Natural history of wet weather. Zen and the art of rainy days. Meditation. Daydreaming.

The air in here smells wet, but it is not the scent of wet weather in winter. That is of wool and snow and sometimes of the wood stove, which has a distinctive scent when it gets too hot. And someone is usually making coffee or hot chocolate in a pan set on the stove surface, and you can smell that. Then there’s the honey scent of beeswax candles, more often than not, and always the mingled scents of various kinds of incense and sage—though nag champa tends to predominate. Now, the snow-scent is gone, and the wool-scent is going as people wear fewer layers and some switch over to summer-weight cotton. Instead, a green, muddy, live scent comes in through the windows. I can smell floor-wax and soap, old wood and old potpourri, and a hint of mildew. It’s starting to smell like summer. The incense and beeswax remain, the constants of this place.

Greg returns from his appointment, coming in through the Meditation Hall and nodding gravely but companionably to me before heading up the stairs. I wonder why he didn’t come in through the Secret Stair? Maybe he wanted to see who was in the Great Hall, so he could nod, just so, to someone. I think Greg is more companionable than he lets on.

It’s almost lunchtime. I think I’ll go into the office and see if June is ready to take a break. If she isn’t, I’ll go bother Aaron for a while. There’ll be vegetable soup and crusty sourdough bread in the Dining Hall in half an hour, and if I get cold on the way over I can wrap my hands around a big mug of sweet coffee. I’ve had enough of meditating, for now.

Mastery Year 2: Part 3: Post 4: Time

They're ba-ack!

The yearlings, I mean. They spent two weeks on the Island, as they do every year, bonding and learning about the place. I suppose it's our equivalent of the freshman orientation trips a lot of colleges do, except we wait a couple of months to give them time to get properly...indoctrinated...first.

That doesn't sound right. Seriously, every time I try to talk about our process of creating a campus culture I end up making it sound like some nefarious cult. It isn't like that. It's just that people come here because they want to live in a certain type of community and be a certain type of person, and that doesn't happen by accident.

Anyway.

The masters were gone, too, all except Greg, who took the opportunity to sleep a lot, and the campus seemed strange without them. They each teach on the Island for a day or three, and spend the rest of their time there on vacation.

I did not go, though I've helped Charlie teach his segment in years past. I wasn't prohibited from going, like I was last year, and in fact I had intended to go, but then the list of workshops I was supposed to teach on campus simply got too long and I ended up not even asking. Plus, Steve is supposed to be my student and clearly couldn't be left to his own devices (since he isn't very motivated at present), and June is going to be working hard to get ready for the children's camp all next month, so I wanted to spend time with her now, while she still has time to spend with me.

Is this what being a master is going to be like? Or do I get more control of my schedule again later, somehow?

Mastery Year 2: Part 2: Post 4: Returning

Steve is back. Sort of. And he has Sean. But Sarah isn't here, and he won't say where she is. He won't say much of anything, which is why I said he's only sort of here. He's barely talking to any of us--though he seems to be spending a lot of time with Greg and Allen, so maybe he's talking to them.

I might wonder why he's back, except that he has classes to teach. Spring classes started up after Ostar, and Steve now has two out of the four that Greg used to teach every spring. Last year, three different allies took Greg's classes, and reportedly were somewhat uninspired, but Steve actually cares about and has expertise in his two--American History of Religion and American History of Dissent. A single ally is teaching the other two. In the almost two weeks Steve was out, Greg subbed for him. I can't help feeling sad that they're not really Greg's classes anymore, like the newer students are missing out, and I suppose they are, but he has earned his retirement. And Steve is, reportedly, very good. Another example of impermanence, I suppose.

But between teaching, caring for the baby--Steve often does both at once, delivering lectures while carrying his sleeping child strapped to his chest--and continuing to work part-time with his law firm, I don't think he's doing anything in the way of learning to deal with the anger that sent him back here. And if I'm supposed to act as his master, I suppose I'm supposed to do something about it, intervene, somehow, or at least make sure he knows what he's doing. But I don't know what to do or say....

I'll have to talk to Charlie about it.

In the meantime, I'm still teaching workshops, although attendance has dropped way down, since regular classes have started up, and I subbed for Charlie when he had his spring cold--that was planned, so I'd been kind of shadowing him, learning to teach those classes, so I'd be ready to step into them. I'm still doing that, in case he gets sick again. There's really not much he does that I can't do, now, other than, of course, being Charlie.

That's the thing about the masters--they teach classes and lead activities and make this college run, but really their primary jobs are simply to be themselves. I keep reminding myself that no matter how much Charlie trains me, he can't teach me how to be Charlie. I've got to be Daniel. And there is a version of me that is a master--and it is that version of mine I have to find. Except I really don't know what that might look like. I've obviously never seen it.

Spring continues, despite the dusting of snow we got yesterday morning. Among the trees the signs are still subtle--the red maples are flowering, but that's about it--and the native grasses are still brown as ever. Much of the greenery is exotic and is therefor off-campus. But Sarah Grimm's team is plowing the fields, the frogs and toads are breeding with gusto, the birds are arguing musically in the trees, and some of the spring wildflowers are up.

It's hard not to feel the warmth as some kind of victory.

Mastery Year 1: Part 7: Post 2: Leaves without Leaving

I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be doing this winter.

On the one hand, there's an argument to be made for staying on campus all the way through. June has to stay, because she's a yearling, and because she's graduating at Brigid, and I don't want to leave without her, and I still have my poetry writing assignment. But, on the other hand, I'm sure I could arrange something for poetry the same way as I arranged to go home for a while when I had the sleeping outside assignment. Most of the other candidates have left campus, and staying costs a hundred dollars a week in room and board that I'd like to not have to pay. June is busy finishing up some final assignments and actually has very little time for me. My family misses me.

I'm trying not to think about what Charlie would want me to do. He isn't in charge of my life, and I've got to learn how to think and act like a grown-up with respect to my studies here. What do I want to do? What would be good to do?

Ollie has left campus to go rejoin Willa, Andy is living above his bicycle shop and only comes in a day or so a week to visit, Eddie and Ebony are both here, but busily working at something, so I hardly ever see them, and both will leave campus right before Thanksgiving and stay gone until Yule. Rick is here, and staying through, but he's spending most of his time living outside--he eats our food, he's not hunting and gathering, but we don't see him. I feel very much left behind.

The Dining Hall and Chapel Hall are both closed down for the season. The Mansion is a bustle of activity at breakfast and certain other times, but mostly it's quiet. It's not yet cold enough yet to have the wood stove on all the time, so people aren't clustering in the Great Hall the way they will later in the winter, and there are great blocks of time when just nobody is about.

In one of these blocks, this afternoon, I found myself with nothing to do and no one to do it with, so I wandered outside and up to the barns and sheds, on the working end of campus where hardly anyone who does not have business there ever goes. Joy's oldest horse, the grey one with spots, looked up from his hay and regarded me as I passed.

I ended up out near the cider house and the slaughter house and the smoke house, buildings enclosed in a tight, tall fence to keep the coyotes and bears from investigating too closely. The have the various compost piles in there, too, to take advantage of the fence, and nearby I found a massive pile of autumn leaves.

We leave the campus leaves where they fall, for the most part, but our neighbors don't want to do the same, so Charlie has a deal with them where we collect their leaves and bring them on campus for mulch. Teams from the farming and landscaping crews go down the road with the horse cart and bring the loads up here, load after load...it takes a long time. I think they're about done, now, most of the leaves are down, the crescendo of autumn color fallen now to a whisper, and in any case no new loads were coming in today. The crews must have been busy doing something else. There was a big mountain of leaves sitting there, by itself, just outside of the fence, left to wait until it could dry out enough to be crushed into compostable mulch.

I looked at that mountain for a bit and then I crawled into the pile, wrapped myself up in my cloaks and hoods and cowls for warmth, and fell asleep amid the fragrant leaves. I woke up, hours later, alerted by the first dimming of daylight and cooling of evening to the fact that it was almost dinner-time. And I was wholly and completely happy.

Which, I think, answers my question. 

Mastery Year 1: Part 6: Mind in Poetry, Poetry in Mind

Well, here we are. It's October, the air is crisp and cold, the trees are well on their way to peak foliage, and it's only a month before the end of the academic year. I always find this time a little surreal, thinking about how the year is about to be over, and how far we've come since Brigid--and how far I've come since that first Brigid--and which ones of my friends are about to graduate, even though the actual end of the year, actual graduation, isn't until February. It's this sudden, weird rush of perspective.

Of course, the person who's graduation is most on my mind is June, and she's not going anywhere.

The Mansion is decorated for Fall, now--that started some weeks before Mabon, of course, and will continue into Samhain, with items being gradually added and occasionally subtracted. Dried seedheads in attractive arrangements are slowly proliferating as the world outside makes them available, for example. But at the moment the Hall looks really good, filled, this year, with pots of red and yellow chrysanthemums, and the Thankyou Doll sitting in state in a kind of altar on the mantle piece, and the weather outside still warm enough for all the windows to be open during the day.

Charlie and the landscaping crew are busy putting the campus "to bed" for the year, and it's weird not to be working with them. Sometimes I really miss being on the crew--I can help out when I have time, of course, but they don't really need an extra person, and I rarely have time anyway. I get my hands in the dirt at my off-campus job and when I do trail work up in the woods. It's other students' turn to be on the campus crew, now.

What I have been doing is teaching my workshops and seminars and going over my grad school notes with Charlie. Both are almost done, since Charlie and I are just going over the last of my grad school classes and my thesis now. It's strange to think that this last--the thesis process--is something Charlie never completed. Academically speaking, I now outrank my teacher. I wonder if that ever makes him wistful? Not finishing? Of course, he doesn't need a master's degree because he is a master six ways from Thursday, but he wouldn't be the first person to be irrationally regretful.

And I continue to write a poem every day from my special spot in the woods, and to edit my poems with Charlie. I've given up on the idea that it's impossible to edit poetry, just as I've given up on the idea that one can't write poetry on command, that one has to wait for the muse to descend. I write when it's time to write and I edit and I improve.

And yet I've noticed that the thing Charlie suggested as an alternative to editing--he said that if poetry can't be edited because it expresses the writer's soul then we'd have to improve my writing by improving my soul--seems to be happening also. I don't mean that I'm getting enlightened, or anything like that, I mean that I'm starting to be able to see the problems that Charlie flags. The way I read my own poetry is changing. And I've noticed that when I arrive at my "spot," I automatically slip in to my "writing mood." I'm more observant, and I'm observing my observations, rather than daydreaming or worrying about things. It's as though my mind is in a poem even before there is a poem in my mind.

Just the other day, he suggested that I start writing poems in and about other places, too.

"Why?" I asked. "Wouldn't poems about other places ruin the thematic unity of the eventual book?"

Notice I didn't say aren't I supposed to be writing about my spot, or some other appeal to rules and authority. I said "thematic unity," something I never used to even notice, let alone care about. Anyway, he flashed me a smile, a brief indication of approval.

"Good question," he said. "I do want you to continue to write about your spot. Unless you'd rather do something else, all the poems you publish in the book will be about that spot. But you can write about other things, and you should, and when you do, I hope you'll share them with me."

So, that's what I'm doing.

Perhaps the objective is to have my mind in a poem all the time?

Mastery Year 1: Part 4: Post 4: For the Sake of a Good Time

I don't know why June still has classes this semester, given that she's now working full time as the director of a large summer camp. I've asked her, and she points out that she is in school, so taking classes is important, and I can see that, but still, it does look like a whole lot of work.

She's continuing her policy of taking all of Allen's classes. This summer, that means The Psychology of Magic and The Art of Listening and Love, the second of which was one of Greg's classes when I took it, but now that Greg's retired, he's given it to Allen. She's even taking Tricks of the Trade, Allen's technical course on stage magic, which means she now has access to his how and wherefore and has been sworn to secrecy. I can ask "what did you do in school today, dear?" and she can't tell me.

Meanwhile, campus has been taken over by children. I have not counted, but I think there are more of them than us--let's see, three age groupings, roughly twenty campers in each, so, no, probably not more, but there are a lot of them, and while we hardly ever speak with them, their presence changes how we live on a daily basis. They take up physical space, they take up auditory space (the shrieking!), and we can't wear our uniforms anymore, lest the oddness of our appearance trigger questions. Not that we really want to wear uniforms right now, because it's too hot.

Except, of course, when night comes and a few of us gather, cowls raised, to recite poetry in the grape arbor among those few children daring enough to sneak out and spend an evening with the Elven King.

I mean our Dead Poet's Society, of course. I've talked about it here before, though not in a while. It's pretty much like what you see in the movie. Charlie leads it. It's not against the rules, but it is secret unless you get invited. In the summer, we encourage the campers to sneak out and join us. It's not against the rules, but they don't know that.

June has not gotten an invitation--she's not friends with Charlie, and I didn't think it sounded like her kind of thing, anyway--but we let her in on the secret because she's the camp director. She had to know about the imaginary rule and why it's there. One kid already has gotten "caught," and was duly assigned to shadow Charlie for a day as "punishment" (it's no punishment at all, of course), so she had to figure out how to tell the kid's parents about the infraction without blowing the cover of the whole game or getting the kid in real trouble at home. I didn't envy her that task.

In fact, this coming Wednesday--the day when Dead Poet's Society meets--will be July 4th, so the campers will stay up late and walk down to the lake to watch fireworks, and none of them will be available to sneak out for poetry. I'll have to choose whether to watch the explosions myself, or attend to poetry. It's a decision that is no decision. Everyone who knows me knows what I will do.

Just as I know without asking that Charlie will not cancel poetry among vines and fireflies for the sake of mere colored gunpowder.

Mastery Year 1: Part 3: Post 3: Mother's Day

June is still not back from the Island. I wonder what she's doing? How she is? Is she cold?

I'm wondering especially if she's cold because it just snowed. Here, I mean. I don't know what the weather is like where she is. The thing is, it hasn't been that cold this week--lately it's actually been unseasonably hot--but we had one chilly day, and while it was nowhere near freezing at ground level, it did snow for about five minutes. It was bizarre.

I can't help wondering if the same freakish chill wind was blowing, but harder, where June is. After all, the Island is a few hundred miles north of here. I wish she were safe and warm with me.

Ok, I admit, June can take care of herself. She is safe. I just wish she were here with me.

Anyway.

My workshops are doing well. At least three people have attended each of them, and I've gotten a lot of really useful feedback, not all of it critical...I don't mean that I'm bad at teaching, I'm really not, but Charlie threw me a curveball by demanding that I design workshops to teach material that most of the students here really have no interest in. I suppose it might be possible to make it engaging anyway, but that would take a great teacher and that I am not.

Anyway, Charlie, I'm sure, didn't mean for me to do this so well that everybody loved what I'm doing. He meant for me to learn. He meant for me to try teaching the grad school material, so that I retain it better, and to expand my range as an educator. I suppose I'll be able to take what I've learned from this exercise and use it to create workshops and talks that do appeal more to the students here.

I do wish I had more free time this week, because campus is gorgeous. It's almost empty of people, kind of like winter--the Dining Hall is even shut down, which I hadn't known happens, we've just been getting our meals from the kitchen and eating in our dorms. The place has a restful, introspective feel. But everything's green. Green and red and white and yellow with flowers, and some of the farm fields are sprouting up in rows of lettuce and radishes and peas and whatever else, and there are singing birds all over the place...and this time I know what a lot of them are. I learned my birds in grad school, remember, and I remember most of them. I do what Charlie taught me with plants, greeting each one, in my head, by name, when I encounter it.

I can sit in the middle of their Central Field, or in the Front Garden, or the Formal Garden, or my spot in the forest, and listen in on birds arguing with each other. I know where the nests are, where the property lines are between territories...not exactly of course, and not completely, that would be a full-time job, but I know there's usually a mockingbird singing on the top of that tree, and when he's not there I notice and I wonder what he's doing.

I went home briefly, this weekend, for Mother's Day--another advantage of not going to the Island, I didn't get to visit Mom for Mother's Day once when I was a novice. We had a good time. But today I noticed a pine seedling, the tips of its first whorl of needles still stuck in its seed, just sprouting up along the path in the Formal Garden. It can't stay there, sooner or later it will get stepped on and crushed, and of course if all pine seedlings that sprout grew up, we'd be jam-packed with pines. But something about this one appealed to me, not that it seemed different in any way, just in its particularity, and I thought about how any tree, anywhere, no matter how large or how old it is, was once a seedling. And I thought--this baby, too, has a mother.

Year 4: Part 8: Post 3: The Ordeal

 This post depicts events that happened only one day after those in the previous post, in the final week of January, 2004.-D.

They told us, yesterday, to get our rooms packed up to move out, because there would be some sort of final retreat for graduates this week and we wouldn't have time. Our rooms, of course, have to be vacant--and freshly cleaned by the janitorial team--by the time the new students come in on Brigid. I remember this from years past, how the graduating students would pack up a few days early and then go somewhere. I've never been clear on whether they all went to the same somewhere, together, or if there were a series of different events that took them in smaller groups. I never saw them going, I only noticed that they were gone.

That request was the last familiar thing that happened this week.

I packed up my stuff last night, leaving my clothes and such accessible so I could live out of my bags for however long I have to before we go somewhere. This morning, I went for a long walk before breakfast in the snow (there's over eight inches on the ground now, so I got to practice with my snow shoes and my pack at last). There are a lot of people on campus again now. I still haven't seen any of the masters, except Greg and Sharon, and of course, Allen last night, and only Greg is eating with us, but well over half the student body is back, and the Great Hall is getting crowded at breakfast. This morning we had oatmeal and dried fruit and golden pineapple-weed jelly on little round biscuits and the whole room smelled of people and food and wet wool and snow.

At the end of the meal, Greg made an announcement, asking graduating students to please stay back. At last, I thought, it's starting, whatever it is.

We stayed in the Great Hall while the others all went on their way, and when they were gone, Greg spoke--but all he said was that today we would all have our final interviews, and to check the schedule in the kitchen--and to stay in and around the Mansion all day because the schedule might change, in which case someone would have to come find us.

The interviews, he said, were not quite a formality--we would have to defend our readiness to graduate before a committee--but no student had ever failed the interview, so we shouldn't worry about it. He also said to bring whatever we wanted to wear at graduation to the interview for approval and also for cleaning. As you may recall, graduating students appear at the ceremony wearing their cloaks, but the cloaks come off, and underneath is an outfit symbolizing the student's net phase of life. Although, since I've seen every kind of getup, including no clothing at all, I don't know why these outfits have to be approved. I can't imagine anything not being approved.

And that was all. Greg dismissed us.

I was confused. Supposedly, some sort of something was supposed to happen, that's what we've been hearing for weeks, and why we all had to be back on campus early, but we seemed to be running out of time for it to happen. Graduation is only three days away.

But I was also excited for graduation, and a little afraid, and I was really too preoccupied by the prospect of having to defend my readiness to graduate to think much about anything else. I think we all were feeling the same way. We didn't talk much to each other that morning.

I checked the schedule and saw my interview was at 10 AM in Chuck's office on the first floor of Chapel Hall. As you may remember, Chuck is our maintenance supervisor. I checked my watch--almost nine. I went up to my room to get my stuff together.

I'd put a lot of thought into what I was going to wear and what I was going to say at graduation, but I hadn't really finalized anything. I had thought, at first, of dressing like a hiker, because that's what I expected to be most immediately. But while I expect that hiking the Appalachian Trail might be transformative, I don't expect it to take very long. I don't expect "hiker" to be my new identity in any ongoing way. I had also thought about wearing the uniform of a mastery student, since I do intend to become one, but that is at least three years in the future and it seems presumptuous to wear it now. I briefly considered being naked, but that's not really my style and I do not like being cold.

I settled on dressing like a graduate student, but how do grad students dress? I guess, living in a school with a uniform has made me want to dress so as to fit in with my fellows.

Finally, I put on a set of long underwear (Chapel Hall is cold in February) and then a pair of cargo pants and a black turtle neck and a blue and green flannel. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw someone who wouldn't stand out much among the people I'd seen when I visited the campus of the grad school I want to attend. Living here for four years has sensitized me to the importance of props, symbolic "tools" one carries to enhance one's identity, the way a judge has a gavel and a doctor or nurse has a stethoscope. So, besides my clothing, I put on my deer knife and slipped my field notebook, a pencil, and my magnifying lens into a cargo pocket. Those are aspects of my identity here that I want to keep.

I changed back into my uniform, put my graduation outfit, including the props, into a paper bag, and realized it was time to head over.

The chapel of Chapel Hall is on the second floor. The first floor is all offices, a long hall with offices off to the sides, and the floor of that hall is all tile, with a mosaic of the solar system worked into it, all the planets and the sun in a line, bright, colored circles, set in white.

I turned off at Chuck's office, which I'd never been in before, except to clean when I was a janitor. Chuck was not there. Greg, Charlie, and Allen were. My committee. Greg sat behind the desk, Charlie and Allen in chairs on the side, to the right. There was an empty chair for me, in front of them all.

I sat down, rather nervously, and surrendered my bag of clothes.

"My knife is in there," I said.
"Good. I'll take care of it," said Charlie. He's never quite said so, but I've always gotten the impression that no one but me and my teacher should handle that knife, if possible. That's the rule for athames and for the swords whose use Karen teaches. I've noticed Charlie is also very choosy about who gets to touch his axe and his saw. It's a streak of mysticism he rarely talks about and I was glad that he volunteered to make sure nobody else had to touch my knife. It's proof we're still on the same wavelength. "Are you going to want your clothes pressed?" he asked.

"No, just washed and dried, thank you," I told him.

Greg took charge and asked me to explain, in detail, how I'd met each of the academic graduation requirements. Of course, they had my credit record before them, and I couldn't remember every single workshop I'd taken off the top of my head, but I think they were looking for me to demonstrate an understanding of how what I'd learned related to the requirements, proof that I was thinking about those requirements, being proactive about my educational career. I supplied such proof.

I also had to explain how I'd met each of the mastery areas, how the work I'd done with and for both Charlie and Joy contributed to this or that requirement. Again, I had to prove I had been thinking about my educational goals.

Then Greg asked how I knew that I'd met the requirements in each area.

"Because my masters said I did," I explained. "I have their votes."
"You do," confirmed Greg. "But how do you know they are qualified to vote for you?"

I felt real fear. I mean, if I can't even trust an institution to stand by its own faculty? It was like the bottom dropped out of something. But then I realized I was being asked not to trust institutions, or individual teachers, blindly, to not assume an authority figure was worth learning from just because he or she said so. I had to think for a moment. The whole thing was awkward, because Charlie was sitting right there and I had to question his competence in order to defend it.

"This community works," I began. "The people who live here are mostly happy and they support each other. They act on the values they espouse. That suggests that your leadership works, and part of your leadership is deciding who gets to be a master and who gets to teach what. And what Charlie and Joy do works. Joy is a veterinarian and the animals she takes care of live well. They are healthy until they die, and they die quickly and painlessly. I have experienced her Reiki and it seems to work--and I have seen it work on animals and young children, so it's not just a placebo effect. So the things I'm less sure about, magic and so on, probably work, too. And what Charlie does works, too, everything he takes care of, this campus...me...everything he says is true actually is, so far as I can tell. It's consistent with my experience and with everything I've read, including books he didn't tell me to read. So I trust him. I trust his professional judgment, and Joy's, and yours."

There was a moment of silence.

"Remember all that, someday, when you start to doubt yourself," said Allen. "We believe in you and we are competent judges."

The three looked at each other, as though engaging in some silent consultation. I saw heads nod, slightly. Charlie got up and walked around behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders.

"There is one more requirement you have to meet," said Greg, somewhat ominously. His voice sounded formal, ritualized. Something was happening, but I was distracted by Charlie's hands on me--it was the first time he had ever touched me for any reason except to treat one of my injuries. It felt affectionate.

"Huh? What?" I asked.

"You have one more requirement to meet," repeated Greg, when he had my attention again. "And it is not an academic requirement. Strictly speaking, it is optional in that if you stop now, you will still receive your college degree. But you will not have completed our program, you will not be a full member of our community, and you will not be eligible to become a master."

"What is it?" I asked. "Obviously, I want to do it, I want to go on."

"If you do this thing," said Greg, "you will not be allowed to talk until we tell you that you can. Any vocal communication for any reason, short of true emergency, will disqualify you forever. If you understand and are ready to begin, so signify by nodding your head."

I was really nervous, now, but I nodded. And Charlie popped a blackout bag over my head.

Fear. Hurt. Confusion. Darkness. The fleeting thought that my uncle was right and this place was a weird cult that had shown its hurtful hand at last. I held tight to the seat of my chair, my whole body rigid, but I did not speak. I did not cry out.

"Trust me," Charlie said, whispering into my ear, so close that I could feel the heat of his breath through the fabric. "Nothing is about to happen to you that did not also happen to me. We are not going to hurt you."


"Trust us," said Greg, speaking formally. "Nothing is about to happen to you that was not done to all other graduates. Our objective is not to hurt, frighten, or humiliate you. If you ever feel endangered for any reason, you may speak, but not otherwise. If you have your flashlight on you, or any food, please surrender it."

I handed over my flashlight. I've carried it on my belt as a matter of course for four years, and so of course I knew how to take it off in the dark.

"Now, stand up and let yourself be guided."

I stood, and Charlie and Allen walked with me, one holding each of my arms, guiding me out of the office. They spun me around several times so that I did not know which direction we walked down the hallway--Chapel Hall has two main exits on opposite sides of the building--and we left the building and then walked around in the snow for a while. I could hear human voices in the distance, and, once, a bird. They turned me around several times again, following an irregular, random-seeming course through the snow. But we did walk straight for long enough that I thought we really must be going somewhere, as opposed to wandering in circles outside of Chapel Hall. For a while they actually carried me--Charlie must know how well I can navigate in the dark by now, that sightlessness alone would not sufficiently disorient me. I think there were times Greg must have held an umbrella over me, to prevent my figuring out which direction we walked or whether we were under trees or not.

Finally we came to a building (I could hear its looming shadow in the white noise of open space) and through a door. Almost immediately, we went down a flight of stairs. As far as I know, the Mansion is the only building that has a basement accessed from an exterior door, so I thought that's where we must be, but it didn't smell quite right for that--less musty, colder, and with a definite whiff of food. I didn't know where I was.

We walked down the steps, with Allen or Charlie telling me "step down...step down" with each stair step so I wouldn't trip or be startled, and then down along a long, carpeted hallway. The hallway felt close and insulated and it got warmer as we walked.

Finally we stopped and I heard a door open.

"Here is your room," explained Greg. "You still cannot talk. You will stay in this room, silently, until we come to get you. When we get you, you will still not be able to talk until we tell you you can. Once we close the door on you, you may take off your hood, but there will be no light. As you explore your room, you will find a cabinet-type door in the far wall. If you open it, you will find food and drink. If you put your plate and water bottle back in the cabinet, they will be re-filled, as many times and as often as you like--the cabinet has a second opening from the back, though the two doors cannot be open at the same time. You will also find a large box affixed to the wall and the floor in the rear corner. Open the lid and you will find a toilet and sanitary supplies. We will not lock the door, but you must stay in your room, unless you believe yourself to be in danger. You may do anything you like while you are here, including sleep, except talk. If you feel yourself to be in danger for any reason, do not hesitate to shout. Someone will hear you and help you and we will not penalize you for that. If you understand all this and agree, Daniel, so signify by nodding your head."

I think he was taking every opportunity to remind me not to talk so that I wouldn't speak from force of habit. I appreciated it, and nodded.

"See you in a bit, then," said Greg, and the three of them patted or squeezed my shoulders in a friendly way.

I heard the door close.

Year 4: Part 8: Post 1: Endings

Usually these stories depict events that happened close to the same date that I post them and one week's story is set about a week after the previous one. This month I'm doing something different. Today's post is set in the second week of January. --D.

I got back on campus about a week ago. It's good to be back, but I really don't know why I'm here.There was a meeting of the graduating class--most of us, anyway--yesterday, and we were supposed to be here for that, but I don't know why it wasn't scheduled later in the month. The masters aren't even back yet, except for Greg, who led the meeting, and it's really not his thing. At the meeting. he talked vaguely about events and responsibilities we need to be here for, but he wouldn't explain what they are, and at the moment there doesn't seem to be anything to do.

Not that I'm not busy--I'm applying for caretaking jobs for the summer and working on my grad school application (both of which seem incredibly complicated after the elegant simplicity of how they do things here) and I'm training for the Appalachian Trail. I'm now hiking ten to fifteen miles a day, mostly in circles, in the woods behind the school, with a pack on my back. None of it is for school, but it is important, and I couldn't do it as well at my parents' house. And there are some of us doing school work, running around, dealing with last-minute paperwork problems, settling up fees and debts and resolving issues with lost records or misplaced credits...I never appreciated before that in January Sharon (and Malachi, who handles money) has her hands full with graduating students as well as the new prospective students, who are wandering around looking amazed and confused as per normal.

But why am I here, why am I on campus? Why have they clearly arranged for us to be here, and then given us nothing particular to do?

I know why I'm here--it's to do something I'm not supposed to know about. And I don't know about it. I don't know what it is or when it will happen, only that something is. I don't intend to try to find out, as I have no desire to ruin the surprise.

In the meantime, the campus is covered with snow. It snowed, remember, back on Yule, only an inch or two. That melted the following day, but then late in the afternoon on Christmas it snowed again, a good eight inches, and while we've had some melting since, it's never all melted, and we've had several more snowfalls. At the moment, there are about six inches on the ground in most places, not counting the drifts, with a bit of a crust on top, so you can't make very good snowballs with it. When I hike my way through our hills, I break through the crust, crunch, crunch, crunch, as though I am exploring a magical world made of sugar, a sweet world of snow. I have not had to use snowshoes, yet, the snow has not been deep enough, but I hope that changes, soon. We're supposed to get more snow tonight, and I want to get some practice in.

Since I've been back, I have not had any more "encounters" with Joanna. How does it sound to say it that way? Writing it, I wonder...it seems euphemistic. Charlie would say not to hide from the world with euphemism. Kit would say not to treat sexuality as a thing that must be hidden. Not that I've actually spoken with either of them about my sex-life. But "had sex" sounds clinical, impersonal, and despite my initial worries on the subject, that's not how it ever felt with Joanna...and regardless of what you want to call it, we have not done it since before the holiday.

I had wanted to. I hadn't expected it to be over, yet, but after I got back--she was back already, as she doesn't celebrate Christmas--I found myself avoiding her. And I think she was avoiding me. Finally, yesterday, circumstance brought us together unavoidably as we both found ourselves waiting in line for the toilet in the Great Hall after breakfast. The awkwardness of standing next to each other even for just a minute or two was impossible to ignore, so after we'd each used the facilities, we sat down at the polished table in the Bird Room to talk.

"You don't want to spend time with me," she stated. It was not an accusation.
"No," I told her with some reluctance. "But I don't know why not."

She smiled at me, warmly and knowingly.

"Try this," she suggested. "What happens, if we do get together?"
"We have sex," I said, promptly. "It's kind of the thing we do."
"So, do you want to?"
"Yes," I told her, again without hesitation. "But, I don't know, I think I want more than that. I feel...I don't know. I don't know how to describe it."
"You romantic," she told me, as though she were teasing me for something embarrassing. I happen to think being a romantic is a good thing. I frowned.

"You haven't been trying to hang out with me, either," I retorted, trying to reclaim some of my dignity with her. But she just giggled, like I'd caught her at something. I've always found her impossible.

Then she grew semi-serious again.

"I think it's time," she said. "To get out or to get deeper in. This thing has run its course."
"Get deeper in?" I asked.
"That 'more' you wanted. Do you want that, a relationship, with me?"

I said nothing. I couldn't understand why she was making it entirely about what I wanted, as though I were a therapy patient or something. I knew perfectly well she didn't want to be in a romantic relationship with me. There were so many things I wanted to say that none of them made it out of my mouth.

"Then I think this thing has run its course," she repeated. She took my hand, for a moment. Her skin was cool and smooth. "This isn't a break-up," she told me. "That's the advantage of not going out, we don't have to break up."

But it felt like a break-up to me.

I wanted to say, what occurred to me to say, was "So we don't get to have sex anymore?" But Joanna would have laughed at me. I hate when she does that. And it would have sounded as though the sex were all I cared about, when it isn't, or shouldn't be, except that that's what all this was supposed to be about, wasn't it? Just sex, with no strings attached? I never wanted to date Joanna, I just got tongue-tied in her presence because she's goddam beautiful, and because she always invades me just slightly. She keeps me off balance, just slightly, all the time. Of course I wanted her, but only on the surface. I would have been crazy to want anything else. And it was on the surface that she offered herself, so I said yes...and somehow I ended up with all kinds of strings attached to a woman who obviously never liked me to begin with. Except sexually, she was never nice to me.

But the sex...I hadn't expected that to end so abruptly, to go from having a lover to not having one in a conversation around a dining room table. But then, how else do such things ever end? And how that felt...I can't explain it, I can't name the feeling, the way Allen taught me to do, not precisely. The best I can do is say it's like being cut off, walled up, sealed in...I am suddenly alone in a way I wasn't before.

I walk around campus, watching the janitorial and maintenance teams working to prepare for the influx of new students, watching the yearlings going to meditation, meeting in their therapy groups, finishing up their assignments from over the break, and watching the new, prospective students wandering around, confused and amazed. It all looks so normal, so reassuringly ordinary.

The number of things that are simply over for me right now is heavy on my mind.

Year 4: Part 7: Post 7: Telling Sharon

We decorated the Great Hall a few days ago, and we helped the Dining Hall staff do the Dining Hall last night. It’s not so much a change as an addition—we added evergreen garlands and candles and bowls of oranges and chocolates and of course the tree with its ivory ribbons and strings of red beads, the orange and gold-colored glass balls like magical fruit and the flock of blown-glass birds, all almost literally on top of the twined vines and dried flowers, the squashes and gourds and corn-stalks of Samhain.

And we did the Great Hall overnight in secret so that in the yearlings woke and found the place readied for Yule in secret, as if by elves.

I love that part.

I’ve also been making other preparations myself, and not just for the holidays.

Almost a week ago, now, Sharon handed me a letter addressed to me that had not come through the mail. She offered not a word of explanation, so I opened it quickly, in her presence, opening that if the contents made no sense she might possibly answer questions then.

It was from Rick,

Hey Daniel, how fast can you walk? I got a job for the summer with a logging company—it starts in June. If you still want to hike the Appalachian Trail with me, we’ll have to leave the week you graduate. If we go fast, we can make it. I talked to your parents and they can outfit you for Christmas/graduation presents. I gave them a list. I’ll take care of everything, I just need to know whether you’re interested. Tell Sharon.

“But he’s in Absence,” I protested.

“Yes, and I have the authority to make an exception—and I made one,” said Sharon, smiling. “The function of Absence is to keep people in the school from supporting or influencing those outside, not the other way around. And it’s certainly not intended to prevent you from making plans for when you graduate. You can tell Rick yes or no. No more.”

“Tell him yes,” I said, on impulse. But I have discovered that my impulses, at least certain kinds of impulses, are good.

I have spent the past week ordering books on the Appalachian Trail and on long-distance hiking and winter backpacking from the library. I’m still not entirely sure what I’ve gotten myself into, but it’s starting to look interesting.

But now I had a new problem, one I needed Charlie’s help to solve. Only Charlie had vanished again after we decorated for Yule. I knew he was still on campus because I found the occasional bare footprint in the snow (his ongoing joke that nobody except me seems to even notice), and anyway, where else would he be? This is his home and more than his home. He’d be here. But he was invisible. I thought about asking Greg to carry a message to him, since Greg still eats breakfast with us and still leads zazen for the yearlings every morning, but that seemed like cheating, somehow. If Charlie had gone invisible, then I had to earn my right to his help by seeing him.

And yesterday I finally did.

He was walking up the Great Hall stairs one evening, just as if that were an ordinary thing for him to do. No one else was in the Great Hall, and I hadn’t bothered to turn on any of the lights. I was sitting by the fire, just thinking about things, in its light alone, when I heard him on the stair.

“Charlie!” I said, quietly, but he turned. The light was on in the second-floor landing and his eyes must have been adjusted to it already, because when he looked towards me he obviously couldn’t find me. I waved. “Do you have a minute? I have cookies.”

He came over and settled on the couch next to me.

“Bribery is unnecessary,” he told me, taking a cookie, “but it does help. What do you need?”

“I’m doing the Appalachian Trail in February with Rick,” I told him. “Is it ok if I train—hike and camp—in the Conservatory woods?” Remember, much of the woods behind our campus is Conservatory land that we’re not allowed on except for educational purposes or to do work there.

“Yeah, of course. But you’re doing the whole Trail in February? You must be extremely fast.”

He was joking, of course.

“No, we’re starting in February.”

“Don’t get too cold. Anything else?”

“I’m not sure. Are you in a hurry?”

He shrugged.

“It’s pretty, here," he said. "You’ve got a good spot.”

“Sit and enjoy it for a bit. I won’t tell anyone.”

“You are someone, Daniel,” he told me. “You have already told yourself.”

I had mixed reaction to that. On the one hand, being reminded by Charlie that I am somebody felt good. On the other hand, he seemed to be implying that I count as one of the people he’ trying to avoid right now. Nevertheless, he sat there with me for a while.

“Rick has a summer job,” I said, after a while. “Do you think I can get one, too? I’ll be on the Trail during the hiring season.”

“Yeah, sure. Start looking now.”

“Any suggestions?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Pretty much anything, but I’d rather do something that kind of extends what I’ve been doing here somehow. I thought of trying to go work with Rick, in logging, but….”

“You like trees too much for that.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“I wouldn’t think logging would be your thing. How about caretaking?”

“What, like looking after old people?”

“No, no…well, you can if you want to, but I mean looking after a campsite or something. In the backcountry, something you have to hike in to. You’re more than qualified.”

“Yeah? Who hires for that?”

And he named half a dozen different agencies and commented that he had once worked for the last one.

“As a caretaker?”

“No, trail crew. But it’s the same department. Caretakers do trailwork, too. I might know some of the people still there.”

“Yeah? Can you write me a reference?”

“Write yourself a reference. I’ll sign it. Give it to Sharon.”

And he got up and disappeared into the dark.