Year 4: Part 7: Post 8: Yule

Note; in 2003, when these events happened, the solstice was on the 22nd, which was also the fourth night of Hanukah. This year, the solstice will not occur until the 21st, but I'm posting this as though today were the solstice, because it's close enough. -D.

I'm getting tired of this bitter-sweet parade of "lasts," seriously. Last spring, last summer, last fall, last Yule on campus...I've gotten used to celebrating Yule. I like it. I like it a lot. How am I going to greet the holiday season without it, next year?

I suppose you could say the winter solstice is going to happen everywhere, and that's true (at least everywhere in the northern hemisphere--in the southern hemisphere the solstice in December is for summer), but it's the community that makes it meaningful to me--just as long as we have we, as Dr. Seuss says.

I'm at the Yule celebration now, in the Great Hall. The whole room is full of decorations and the scent of good food, and bits of wrapping paper and gift bags and people in their pajamas--we changed into our pajamas this morning at Joy's request after  lot of us got wet and cold during a snow-ball fight on the lawn in front of the Mansion. After that, we came down here and all ran around the room, finding our gift bags, each with a student's name on it, each filled with chocolates, candy, and fruit and little "stocking stuffer" toys, and then we had breakfast--pancakes, freshly made, and each round and golden as the sun. That was hours ago, and a lot of people have crashed out, gone to sleep on the couches and out-of-the-way corners of the floor. I might take a nap, too. Tight, after dinner, we'll clear all this away and have dancing, those of us who are up for it.

When and where else am I ever going to have an opportunity to act like this much of a kid again?

Earlier in the day, me, Steve Bees, Raven G., Joanna, and Eddie were all sort of huddled together, working our collective way through a bag of nuts. We had a variety of nut-crackers, but none of them were working very well, and nuts kept escaping, slipping out of the crackers and popping up into the air and rolling away. We'd have to chase after them, not always with much success.

"This is why chocolates are inherently better," asserted Eddie. "They're easier to eat."
"Chocolate has to be processed, too," I pointed out. "It's just that we don't have to process them."
"Exactly. The processing makes them better. That's why processed foods are called 'value-added products.'"
"But don't you think this, with the nuts, is more fun?" said Raven.
"I can think of more fun things to do with nuts," asserted Joanna.
"Well, there is peanut butter," suggested Steve Bees.
"I wasn't talking about food," clarified Joanna.
"Neither was I," Steve replied.
"Ew," said Raven, "Steve, I don't want to think about you and peanut butter."
"What?" he protested. "Anybody on campus can talk openly about their bodies and sexual practices, but when I make one little crack, I get 'ew'?"
"I don't want to think bout your crack, either," said Raven, and just then the English walnut she was trying to open squeezed right out of the nut-cracker, shot straight up into the air, and fell, knocking over her hot chocolate. We all scrambled to get the spill cleaned up before it could stain anything.
"You'll shoot your eye out," sing-songed Joanna.

Alien Steve, the new Nora, and Evie, who is one of this year's one-hit wonders, we clustered beside us, and they jumped up to help deal with the chocolate spill, too.

"Merry Yule," said Alien Steve to Steve Bees, as we sat down again. The two Steves shook hands. Apparently they hadn't yet gotten a chance to interact today.
"Merry Yule to you, too," added Steve Bees, addressing Nora. "Those were some pancakes."
"Thanks. I think using yogurt, instead of milk, made a big difference."
"Well, something did. Yogurt, huh? Could I have the recipe?"
"Sure. I think it's still pinned up in the kitchen."
"How are you liking Yule?" Steve asked."You and Evie." Both Nora and Evie are yearlings.
"It's not new for me," asserted Evie. "I've been Wiccan for years. I like how you do it here, though."
"I like it," said Nora. "I didn't expect to."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Well, frankly I thought it would distract from the birth of Jesus. A fake Christmas."
"Historically speaking, it's the other way around," asserted Eddie.
"Yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me."

"I didn't know you were Christian," said Steve Bees.
"You never asked. But I'm not very Christian. I don't know. I shouldn't have worried about it. Maybe I'm just getting more sensitive because I feel like I'm the only Christian here."
"But you're not."
"I know."
"You know, sometimes Yule here feels more like Christmas to me than Christmas does?" said Steve. "It's like Christmas when I was a little kid."
"I feel the same way," I said.
"I don't," interjected Alien Steve, who is Jewish.
"Does this feel like Hanukah?" I asked.
"Of course. It is Hanukah. I don't know what you all mean about the feeling of this or that holiday. This is Hanukah, therefore, this is how Hanuka feels."
"How's your Hanuka going, then," asked Eddie.
"Oh, fine, fine.
"What you get?"

For answer, Alien Steve pulled something out of his gift bag and put it on his head, wearing an expression as though he really did not deserve such ridiculous indignity. It was a head-band with alien-type antennae on it. We all laughed.

"You totally had that coming, though," said Eddie.
"Did not. I take my identity very seriously. It's not a joke."
"It's because you take it so seriously that it is a joke," I told him.
"Your identity, my sexuality," commiserated the other Steve. "Nobody gives us any respect."
"I could make some comments," said the alien.
"But you won't, because I'm better at making comments than you are," warned Eddie. Alien Steve threw up one hand in a gesture of resignation.

Steve Bees and Raven made a run for more chocolate and brought back a handful of candy canes to share.

"Now, these are easy," said Eddie, sucking on the straight end of a candy cane, and we all giggled. He looked at his candy cane a moment with an odd expression. "Not everything I do or say is a sex joke, you know," he said.
"We know," said Raven. "If it were, we wouldn't be able to tease you."
"Just tease back," suggested Joanna.

"I've been wondering," said Steve Bees, "If Yule is like Christmas for children, what is Yule for grown-ups? Wicca isn't more childlike than Christianity, is it?"

"Maybe only children still notice the important part of the holiday," suggested Evie.
"Maybe the grown-up part is what you have to be a grown-up to notice?" suggested Eddie.

Last night, when we started our Yule party (and lit three Hanukah candles), it was raining, not hard, but it was a cold, spitting rain, and I worried we were going to have another wet walk up the mountain. By the time we all headed out, though, the rain was over and the sky clear and full of stars. The air had gotten very cold and I could feel the ground crunching under my feet, but in the moonless dark I thought I was feeling frozen grass, or maybe a little slush.

Then we got to the top of the mountain, all silent, and waited, shivering, for the dawn and the music of the hidden masters. And when the sun lifted clear of the horizon, it did so all golden and clear and glowing, shining out on a world covered in...snow!

Everything was white, all the ground, covered with about a half inch to an inch, all the shrubs and the twigs and branches of the trees and the windward side of all the tree trunks, all painted white with clinging snow and ice, the whole world golden and white spreading as far as we could see out over the hills and ridges to the horizon.

And that's when we came back down to campus and had the snowball fight.

Year 4: Part 7: Post 2: The Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But otherwise the party seemed much the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year 4: Part 6: Post 2: Senioritis

Charlie and I seem to be ok again and, just to prove there are no hard feelings, he's given me another assignment.

Actually, he has given me work, though I don't think it has anything to do with hard feelings. We do seem to be relaxing with each other again. He approached me after lunch the other day and, looking somewhat embarrassed, asked if I minded another assignment.

"You don't really have to, you have my vote," he told me, "but there's something I'd like you to do."

"Charlie, you know I'll learn anything you care to teach me," I said.

He flashed me a very quick smile.

"I'd like you to write me a report on all the things that could possibly threaten your spot in the woods and what you, personally, can do to address those threats."

"Any deadline?"

He shrugged.

"When you can."

"Got it."

It's odd, thinking about it, I really have spent very little time actually talking with Charlie. We seldom have long discussions. Aside from the occasional lunch together, most of our interactions probably last less than a minute and a half. And yet I feel like we're together almost all the time--when I'm working on an assignment from him, he is present for me, challenging, supportive, exasperating, just Charlie.

Anyway, I'm glad to have a project from him again, but I do wish he'd given me a deadline, because with "as you can" I'm not likely to feel comfortable until it's done. It feels like it's supposed to be done immediately. And yet, later that day, I did manage to go to a party.

More and more of us are getting the votes we need to graduate, and frankly we're getting a little silly. I mean, most of us already were silly, but there's a loosening. For example, this party. It sort of erupted out of this week's Callaloo, the "open mike" concern Kit hosts. I don't go every week, but this week I did, and about half the rest of the graduating class did, too. I think only two or three people there weren't part of our group. It was weird, like a convention nobody had to invite anybody to, we just showed up.

When the big crowd showed up, Kit sent a couple of people over to the Dining Hall to snag more snacks and some alcohol. Not a lot of people actually drank much, but it just being there made things seem more festive. A couple of people played or sang--I remember Dan (who is not me!) doing "Eleanor Rigbe" on his cello, and Raven G. singing something or other badly. A group of us, yes, me included, formed a chorus line and sang "Those Were the Days," while kicking our legs and falling over ourselves. Tommy, who I don't think I've mentioned before, sang "Proud Mary," and a couple of women, including Joanna, jumped up to sing back-up. That one surprised me, that Joanna would sing back-up--it was girly in a way I would have thought she'd find negative.

But that's kind of what I mean by silly--people doing things they normally wouldn't, just letting themselves go a little bit.

That's what Steve Bees did. The latter part of the evening became a concert for Steve and Eddie, singing mostly early and classic rock and roll and some Motown. That music is happy, light-hearted in a way most newer music isn't. Eddie favors it and sings that kind of music a lot.

Steve doesn't--he likes to listen to it well enough, I've seen him dancing to the music Eddie makes, but when he sings, he's usually serious. For a year or more, Steve's been a man on a mission. It's not like he never enjoys himself, but his passion, the important part of all his days, has been social justice. It's what he talks about, what he reads about, the end to which he is transforming himself. When he sings to himself, under his breath, he'll sing anything, things he likes, things he doesn't, ditties from commercials, but when he sings for us, it's always on message. He sings well, now, and we like his message--having deep conversations is a big part of what we do, here--but it's just something we notice about him. Steve is serious.

Which is why it was so good to see him perform some Chuck Berry and just having a good time.

Eddie, of course, is more or less always having a good time, but that's his message and he's always on it. His infectious joyousness is deliberate, religious, even political. This time, for once, there seemed to be no message, no challenge, nothing to think about, just two men with a couple of friends accompanying them on various instruments, singing "Rock and Roll Music," goofing off in their talented way.

Towards the end of the song, Steve sang alone, sweat visible on his face, as happy as I've ever seen him, while Eddie jumped and jittered and windmilled his arms, dancing around the little open area we were calling a stage. We were all on our feet, dancing.

Year 4: Part 5: Post 4: Living on Earth

I've never talked about Dan much, except to insist that he isn't me. We have the same first name, where the same age, and we've both been here three years and counting. But there, I like to insist, the resemblance ends, because he's always putting his foot in his mouth.

Except, I suppose, so am I.

Anyway, over the past several years he's matured into a talented musician. A group of us went to the Great Hall the other night to watch him play. It wasn't an official Event, but it didn't need to be. He just checked to see that nothing else was scheduled and put the word out that he planned to play. Maybe fifty of us showed up, which is enough to make a pretty good crowd in that room, which isn't all that large as performance venues go.

He played the cello and he did it wonderfully, with skill and passion and his longish, black hair flopping all over the place, his face starting to shine with sweat from concentration and effort. I did not recognize most of the songs, and many of them were classical pieces, which I don't normally listen to, but he was really good and it was fun just watching someone I know be talented.

He played for about an hour, and afterwards most of the crowd meandered away, draining slowly out of the room with much chatter and congratulations of Dan, off to do homework or something. A couple of us stayed behind to chat while Dan drank a bottle of water and kind of recovered.

By chance, all of us were part of this year's graduating group. Me and Dan, of course, plus Joanna and Raven G. from our group of yearlings, and Space Alien Steve and Eddie, who are in their third year, and Steve Bees in his second. Plus Jutta, who is a yearling and a one-hit-wonder, as we say.

Her name is pronounced "Yoo ta." It's German. She isn't, except by descent.

Anyway, we all sort of collected on the couches. Jutta was asking Steve why people call him Space Alien, which we used to do behind his back, but then we found out that he knew and didn't mind, so we dropped the pretense.

"Because I used to think I was a space alien," he explained.

"Used to?" I asked. He shrugged.

"Mostly used to," he amended. We all laughed, because of the way he said it.

"What changed?" I asked. This was big news. I mean, I haven't hung out with Alien Steve much since my second winter here, but his alien status was so much a part of him. We used to have these long conversations about it, late into the night, about identity and possibility and the definition of truth. And now he was saying "never mind?"

"Well, I still think I could be one," he said,"and I still feel like an alien, but...I guess I'm not sure the answer's so simple anymore."

"Ok, but I'm still a dude, ok?" put in Eddie, and we all laughed again. Eddie's masculinity was another part of those conversations.

"I don't get what's so simple about space aliens, though," said Raven, and held out her hand for the water bottle so she could have a sip. "You know, I wish we had the stove on so we could make chocolate or tea."

"With wintergreen!" said Eddie, because that's what we drank that winter, wintergreen and chocolate.

"You could start the stove, if you want," said Dan.

"No, she can't," said Joanna. It was almost eighty degrees inside. The day had been hot, and while the evening was cooling outdoors, the Great Hall hadn't caught up yet--not with fifty people and their body heat in it until recently.

"I don't get the part about space aliens at all, honestly," said the other Steve, Steve Bees, who wasn't there for those conversations.

"I've always felt like an alien," explained Alien Steve, "so I just assumed that I was one."

"Literally?" asked Jutta.

"Yes, literally."

"But that's impossible."

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is."

"How do you know?"

There followed a long and involved discussion about speed-of-light travel and resource limitations and whether science could legitimately say anything was impossible, anyway. Much shouting and giggling occurred.

"Forget chocolate," said Raven, "you guys need some pot."

"Except evidently we don't," Joanna told her.

"Anyway. Aliens and simplicity," said Raven.

"I feel like an alien so I thought I was one. That's simple."

"Overcoming the speed of light barrier, etc., etc., isn't."

"Yes, it is," Steve told her. "It's not unreasonable to suppose that a discovery we haven't made yet makes interstellar travel feasible. I have no idea if such a discovery is out there to be made, but I can't prove it isn't, and lots of things that used to seem impossible are possible now. Expanding possibilities are an established feature of our reality. But to feel alien and not really be? What does it mean if I can't tell if I'm human or not? Do I belong and not know it? How is that possible? Or am I alien in some other way, and if so, what way? What does it mean to be human? All of that. That's complicated."

"Ok, said Raven."Except I still wish I could get you high."

"I'm going to miss all you people," said the other Steve, Steve Bees. 

Year 4: Part 2: Post 9: Getting it

I haven't really talked about the new yearlings, yet. I've been making an effort to get to know them and I've got pretty much all the names down now. I've had some good conversations with many of them.

There are the usual weird name double-ups, notably three guys named Michael and one woman, Michelle. Fortunately, only one of the guys actually goes by Michael (the one in my dorm). The other two go by Mike and Mickey, respectively. We have a single new Raven, in addition to the one Raven remaining from my yearling group, and a new Nora, too. I know that sounds weird, to say a Nora and a Raven, like people with a given name are commodities or something, and that's not what I mean. But there are two students here named Nora now, so how else am I supposed to say it?

The new Nora is interesting. She's only twenty, but somehow she tested out of half the program. She'll only be here two years. She was in college before and has a lot of transferable credit, plus she has an active spiritual practice--she's Christian and she's an athlete. That all takes some doing. She's on the food service team, but wants to be a doctor.

"Only twenty." That makes it sound like I'm so much older. I'm not, of course. But when I came here I had almost nothing that would transfer. I can understand how you can build up a lot of advanced standing if you come here and you're thirty or something, but...basically, I'm impressed.

Anyway, we're going through the same acculturation process we do for every group of yearlings, using gentle suggestion and reminders and conversation to make them of us without their noticing we're doing anything deliberately at all. They'll figure it out next year.

Steve Bees is figuring it out now.

This is his second year and his last year--he'll graduate with me, making us part of the same class, in a weird way. He's changed a lot since I first became aware of him. He has this drive, now. The whole campus pays more attention to social justice issues because of him, he really pushes to learn what he needs to, and he does it in such a way that everyone else learns, too. He doesn't just ask questions, he asks Greg to do talks on the subjects he wants to hear, and then he makes sure other people show up. He says things in this way where it doesn't seem at all confrontational, except that you can't get what he said to you out of his mind. None of the rest of us can do that. Not even all the masters can.

Anyway, the other day over lunch, after the people, mostly yearlings, we'd been sitting with got up to leave, he made a kind of "huh" sound and spoke, without looking at me.

"We're not just chatting with them are we?" he said. "We're teaching them. And you taught me."

"Well, not me personally very much," I admitted, "but yes. None of us spend long enough here for this place to be this weird accidentally."

"You can make a culture, make a society." He sounded very impressed.

"Yes."

"Then, I suppose all societies are made. The world is what we make it be."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"We should make a better one, then."

Year 4: Part 1: Post 4: Deer Students

It's weird having Ebony and Rick and Andy gone. I don't mean to imply that I'm grief-stricken, except maybe in a very mild and technical sense--I'll see them again, after all--but campus feels quite different without them.

I do still have friends on campus, though, and there's a whole flock of yearlings to get to know. I'm not socially isolated by any means.

In the meantime, I've been taking apart deer.

Rick was in the habit of patrolling the main road for roadkill. He often ate it himself, or offered it to the campus dogs and cats, if it was a little past fresh, and he and Charlie used a lot of animal parts in their art. Other students do the same still, so I don't know if someone else is going to take up roadkill duty, but I don't think anyone has yet. Anyway, before he left, Rick found and brought in two deer carcasses but he didn't have any immediate use for them. They've been in a box in the barn, frozen.

A few days ago, Charlie thawed them and used them in an anatomy workshop which I attended. Curiously, the workshop wasn't open to yearlings, only to senior students whose primary masters invited them--handling roadkill can be dangerous and Charlie wanted to make sure that everyone involved could be serious and could work quickly, so the meat would not spoil during the dissection. Besides me there was Raven G., Eddie, and Oz, an animist who works in the library and wants to become a large-animal vet.

What we did was dissect the deer, first one and then the other. Workshops have four three-hour class meetings, by definition, and each carcass, one male and one female, as it happens, occupied us for six hours.

What we did was a cross between a scientific dissection and butchering game. We skinned each animal and removed its digestive system, then removed its other internal organs, then stripped the meat from the bones--bit we took the time to name and examine each organ and to note its place in the body and we did not disarticulate the skeletons, nor did we slice through any muscles. We removed each muscle or muscle group whole by cutting its tendons. We also took the time to dissect some structures that didn't actually need it, such as one of the eyeballs. Charlie used an electric bone saw to cut the heads in half, rather than shattering the skull to access the brains (Charlie prefers to brain-tan hides). It took a long time, although not quite as long as a full gross anatomy course would have. We did both carcasses, one after another, so we'd remember more.

Mostly we avoided speaking, except about the work itself (open mouths gather no blood spatters--we wore safety glasses and gloves, too), but there were some lighter moments and some digressions. When Charlie cut open the first of the skulls, Oz said "yum, yum!" and we all laughed.

"My family used to eat sheep's heads when I was little," Charlie commented, mildly. "On special occasions. Cut in half, almost like this." He said the dish was called "kaboo-ootz," or something that sounded like that. It obviously wasn't an English word.

"I thought "head" was capo," said Raven, who knows Charlie's family is Italian. "Or does it being a sheep's head make a difference?"

"I don't know," Charlie said, sound distracted. Then he sat back on his heels and answered Raven more fully. "You're thinking Florentine Italian. Most Italian-Americans aren't Florentines. There are, or were, actually a lot of different Italys, and a lot of different Italian languages. When Italy was unified, Northern Italy, including Florence, was dominant, culturally and economically, which was why so many Southern Italians emigrated. They took their versions of Italian with them. I'm not fluent in my grandparents' dialects, though. I don't know if that word meant sheep's head or just head in general. I learned Florentine Italian in school."

"How many languages do you know, Charlie?" asked Raven.

"I'm fluent or nearly so in five--in French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and English. I can read Greek and a little Irish."

"That's impressive," said Oz, who doesn't know Charlie that well. He doesn't take compliments gracefully.

"Not really," he said, after staring at her for a few seconds. "There's no reason or excuse for American monolingualism," and he gestured that we should get back to work.

All of us have taken Charlie's "Disassemble a Woodchuck" talks multiple times, and we had to do a lot of preparatory reading before dissecting the deer, so it's not like we went into the experience without a background, but there was a lot to learn and we learned a lot. Typically, he never told us why he was teaching deer anatomy, though, never explained what it had to do with our regular studies. Oz, at least, would be able to use the information in her planned career, but Eddie wants to train service animals, Raven wants to stay in horticulture, and I don't know what I'm going to do, but I have a hard time imagining deer anatomy will have much to do with it. But he always has a reason and on some level we all knew it because we'd all willingly taken the workshop.

At the end he had us all sit in silence for five minutes, which is an extremely long time to just sit there not talking, it feels like eons, and then he asked each of us to say how we felt about the deer and what we'd just done.

"Sad," said Raven, without hesitation. "I don't feel bad about dissecting them or anything, but it's sad that they died. I just feel really sad for them as animals that they had to die this way."

"Excited," said Eddie, though his voice sounded a little puzzled. "I'm not sure why, but all this was fascinating."

"Gross," said Oz, and laughed. "I shouldn't say that, I'm going to be a vet, but this whole thing was just icky."

"I don't know what to call my feeling," I admitted, and they all looked at me. I tried to explain it as bodily sensation and thought, the way Allen taught me when I was a yearling. "My body felt excited but...quiet at the same time. I don't know. I want to know this stuff, it feels like a duty or an honor or something. I don't feel sad or disgusted or...I just feel like it's important to witness this, to understand. It's...beautiful or...something."

I was not at my most articulate and it kind of embarrassed me, but when I was done talking I looked over at Charlie and he was looking at me. His eyes were shining.

Year 4: Part 1: Post 2: Feeling Weird

So, this is my last year. I'm still kind of blown away by it.

I'm not the only one, of course. There are at least thirty-four of us graduating next Brigid--more, if any of the new yearlings turn out to be one-hit-wonders. Ten of us are fourth-years. We were yearlings together. It feels like that was a million years ago.

Dan, who is, I always add, not me, has become a competent Wiccan priest and a gifted violinist. He's a good storyteller, too, and doesn't put his foot in his mouth as much as he used to.

Joanna is now  a Wiccan priest and spellworker with an interest in someday becoming a women's studies professor. I still can't quite speak coherently in her presence and she still teases me every chance she gets.

Raven G., the last of the Ravens, my fellow horticulturalist, is an animist very much after Charlie's model.

Sally, one of Joy's students, is even younger than me but is now a skilled horsewoman. I don' think I've talked about her at all, but she works in the library so I've actually talked with her a lot--usually about the location of one or another book I needed.

There's Brad, a martial artist, a student of Karen's and a member of the security team. Darren is also on the security team, but wants to become a therapist. Diane and Donna are both fellow students of Charlie, and Dillon studies both martial arts and Zen flower arrangement.

(Nora and Kayla are fourth years, too, of course, but aren't graduating with us)

But among all of these people there are none who have ever done this before--started their final year. By definition, anyone who has is already gone. And yeah, I feel weird about it.

"'Weird' isn't the name of a feeling," said Allen, when I talked to him about it at breakfast. He was giving me a hard time. When I was a yearling in group therapy he made a point of getting us to name our feelings.

"Disconcerted, then," I amended. "Slightly anxious."

"Why?"

"I don't want to leave," I told him. Greg nodded. Greg, Allen, Dillon, and Raven G, and I were all having breakfast together. The Dining Hall sounded really noisy after months away from it, and, at least to me, the whole thing seemed nearly elgiaic.

Allen nodded, too.

"When I graduated," he said, "I was nearly grief-stricken. I was a one-hit wonder. It wasn't long enough."

"So, you came back?" said Dillon.

"I did, although that's not exactly why. If you can't make it on the outside emotionally, you'd have a hard time getting hired here."

"I'm not there yet," said Dillon. "I'm still here, I don't want to worry about whether I'm coming back."

"Grief-stricken?" repeated Raven.

"Yeah."

"Maybe that's what I'm feeling," I volunteered. "It's like nothing here is real anymore. It's like I've already left. And it feels like I just got here."

"That's not unusual," said Greg. "As you get older and more mature, you'll get better at coping with loss, better at moving gracefully through beginnings and endings."

"I hadn't thought gracelessness was my problem."

"Of course not," Greg said, with some humor. I didn't understand. "But you said there's no one left who's been through what you're experiencing. That's not true. All of us in the master's group, except me, have been graduating students. And it's not like we don't know you're graduating. Have fun with it, meet your final credit requirements, and we will have events scheduled throughout the year to help you make sense of the transition. That's our job, after all."

You know, thinking about what Greg does for a living--mostly, he teaches meditation--you'd kind of think he'd advise me to stay in the moment. I mean, getting upset about leaving when leaving is still almost a whole year away--it's not really very Zen. He could also have said snap out of it, because nothing is really wrong. It's not like graduating from college is a tragedy. But instead he tells us that feeling a bit freaked out is normal, that we're not alone, and to have fun.

I guess neither Greg, nor any of the other masters, like to spend much time on the obvious truths.

Year 4: Part 1: Brigid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, the naked one was Raven F.

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

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

Year 3: Part 6: Post 2: Looking Foreward

I said a few days ago that it’s felt like fall for a while. And that’s true. But it didn’t look like fall. 

Only a few of the trees were just starting to turn. But last night a storm blew through campus and this morning, for whatever reason, the trees had turned. I don’t mean all of them, or that any turned completely overnight, but a lot more trees have a lot more yellow and orange in them now. It looks like fall.

It looks like Fall inside, too. We’ve got the whole campus pretty much decorated for the season, now—displays of pumpkins and corn stalks in doorways, little winter squashes on the tables in the Dining Hall, vines twine up the walls and across the ceiling of the Great Hall…we’ve worked hard to get it all set up over the last few weeks. The place looks good.

What we haven’t had to do is rake leaves on campus. Charlie says the best mulch for a tree is what it grows itself. All around here, where we have trees we have ground covered in leaves and broken twigs, all year round. The difference in the fall is the ground gets a fresh and more brightly colored coat. We do rake leaves off campus, though. Charlie has a deal worked with our neighbors where we come and take away their fallen leaves and compost them and use them to mulch our garden beds and farm fields. That will probably start next week. It’s fun—I remember last year how we hitched a cart to one of Joy’s horses and took that cart out along the main road picking up leaf piles….

But the advancing season is making me think of other things, too—all the people graduating. Graduation itself isn’t until February, of course, but after the school year ends at Samhain we won’t see the graduating students very much. I won’t even be on campus very much, though I’ll be here more than I was last year in order to keep my commitment to sleep outside an average of once per week. So it’s like Samhain is the beginning of the end or something.

38 people are graduating this year, including four mastery candidates. I’m not honestly all that concerned about most of them leaving—other than being happy for them, of course. I’m not really friends with most of them and some are people I hardly know. And some aren’t really going anywhere—Arthur, for example, is earning his Green Ring at Brigid, but he’s not leaving. His whole reason for coming here was to get involved in this community, so he’s probably going to stay on as an ally—as long as there’s room he can live on campus for a fee and help out.

But other people—this year’s graduating class includes Rick, Willa, Ham, Jim, three more of the Ravens, and Ebony. And both Rick and Ebony want to come back and get their rings, so they’ll be going into Absence. No offense to any of my friends who are staying on, of course, but right now I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty lonely around here next year.

In the meantime, I’ve started doing my outside thing. This past weekend I spent Saturday night out in my spot—I would have spent Sunday night out also, but that storm was coming in and I turned chicken. My plan is to do two nights a week when I can, so I’ll have the leeway to skip a week when I have to. My parents think I’m crazy, of course. Specifically, my mother is angry that Charlie is “making” me do this. She’s grumbled some about what am I paying room and board for if I’m not allowed to sleep inside. Which is all very strange because my mother loves camping—she and Dad go camping for a few days at a time at least once or twice a year and says she wishes she could afford to do it more often. And she knows I used to love going camping with them. So why is she complaining about Charlie “making” me do something she knows I enjoy and that she wishes she could do herself?

But I’ve long since learned not to worry about my parents’ reactions to this place. It’s just because they love me.

Year 3: Part 4: Post 6: Updates

So, I've realized I haven't talked much lately about what a lot of my friends here are doing. Here, for your reading pleasure, is an update:

Nora

Nora's nineteenth birthday is this week. It's strange to think she's as old now as I was when I started--she still looks so young to me....

But she's obviously matured a lot. She's not rebellious so much as independent, now. When she started, she was only taking half as many credits per semester as the rest of us, since she hadn't finished high school yet. Now, she's gotten her GED and while she has two more years to go, she seems to have mostly caught up with the rest of us in other respects. She's been studying Wicca, bee-keeping, and aromatherapy, and seems very much a witch in her own right, now. The big news is that she's raising money to start her own business making scented candles, massage oils, and lotions.

Kayla

Kayla is sixteen and looks and acts like a teenager now, instead of a child. Since she's no longer nursing Aidan, her relationship with her son is much more like if she were an involved big sister or an aunt, which is probably how it should be. She's still taking just one class per year, spread out over the entire year, while otherwise home-schooling. Her mother is concerned that she's too isolated from other kids her age, so this summer Kayla got a job off-campus as a junior counselor in a day-camp for children. She seems to like it.

Andy

Andy is in his final year here. He is physically healthy, clean from drugs, and seems...more grown-up. It sounds odd to say that, since of course he's something like fifteen years older than I am, but for the first year there was definitely something childlike about him, and that wasn't always a good thing. Now, there's still a trace of that, but he seems almost, well, normal. He, too, is going about going into business. He has an off-campus job in a bicycle shop and the owner is seriously considering making him a partner. Once his credit is rebuilt, he wants to buy the place.


Arther

I haven't talked to Arther much this year. He's on campus as a candidate, and he often teaches workshops on various aspects of Wicca. He seems happy.


Joanna

Joanna is still a puzzle to me. She is not kind, but I seek her company anyway. Being on the receiving end of her teases and jabs, as I often am, is rather like being tickled--you laugh and try to get away at the same time. Maybe that's it--she makes me laugh. I've been told my writing seems overly serious. Maybe I'm overly serious. Maybe I need to laugh more?

She is working on becoming a yoga instructor and she makes, and sometimes sells, ritual implements, like chalices, wands, and alter cloths.

Rick

Rick is mostly living indoors again, though I can tell he still has mixed feelings about it. This is his final year, here, and he's spending it completing a few credit requirements he'd skipped earlier. He still does trail work with me, sometimes, and we go tracking together. I am still learning from him. We don't talk often, or at much depth, but I know he's wondering what he's going to do when he leaves here--and, more broadly, what he's going to do with his life. He doesn't have any clear answers on that, yet.

Ebony

I have not talked to Ebony in a while. I don't really know what she's doing. She's been spending a lot of time off-campus and seems unhappy, for some reason. She insists she's fine.

Ollie

Ollie is, of course, off-campus, having graduated. He's not in Absence yet, though, so he did come to visit at Litha. I don't hear from him very often, but his fiancee, Willa, does, and she gives us updates. He's starting graduate school in the fall, going for a masters' in Divinity. 
 

The Ravens

Of course, there are multiple women named Raven in my story, and I really should have established some way of differentiating them from the beginning, but I didn't.


There are four women named Raven left on campus, three of whom are Allen's students and planning on graduating this year. Two of them are in the Reiki group with me and one of those is a good friend of mine--she's studying totemic animism with Kit and there are overlaps between that and my studies with Charlie.

The fourth Raven is graduating next year and is one of Charlie's students. She's on the groundskeeping team with me, and we get along well.

Year 3: Part 1: Post 12: Celtic Pride

So, a group of us were talking over breakfast this morning.

"Anyone doing anything for St. Patrick's Day?" asked Nora.

"Why?" asked Kit. "Why would I celebrate a Catholic bishop?"

"You know," said Xavier, turning to a yearling named Tommi, "he didn't really drive the snakes out of Ireland. He drove out the pagans. Snakes symbolize the Druids. That's what the holiday really celebrates, the exile of the Celts."

"Well, sort of," put in one of the Ravens. "St. Patrick didn't exile any Celts. They're still in Ireland. And there were Christian communities in Ireland before St. Patrick got there. Don't you think the snake story is one of those explanation-myths? I mean, there never have been any snakes in Ireland. Don't you think the Irish ever wondered why?"

"The story has an anti-pagan subtext," insisted Xavier.

"I feel...disloyal or something if I don't celebrate it," said the other Raven. "I mean, I'm Irish. For me, it's about solidarity among Irish people. That's why we wear green."

"Everybody wears green on St. Patrick's Day," put in Nora.

"Well, maybe everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day?" said Tommi.

"I feel like I'm Irish," asserted the first Raven. "I guess I'm a cardiac Celt."

"How does Irish feel?" asked Allen. Raven blushed. She knew perfectly well he was about to take apart her reasoning. She didn't answer and Allen went back to eating his eggs.

"Ok, what do you think of Eamon De Valera?" asked the second Raven.

"Who?" said the first Raven.

"Eamon De Valera. Modern Irish history 101. Haven't you seen Michael Collins?" The second Raven rolled her eyes. "You can't be Irish just by drinking green beer. Drunkenness and food dye are not ethnic characteristics."

"I didn't say they were!" complained the first Raven, sounding hurt.

"Raven, do you think Irish heritage is important?" asked Kit, swirling her coffee.

"It's important to me," said the second Raven. "I mean, it's not like I learned anything about paganism from my parents, but being Irish is what got me interested in Irish paganism."

"Which has a debatable relationship to any modern form of Wicca," put in in Nora.

"Granted," said Raven, "but I didn't say I practice historical Irish paganism. I said I got interested in it. And one thing led to another. What about you, Kit? Are you part Irish?"

"Not as far as I know. I'm Greek." And indeed, Kit's version of Wicca contains both Celtic and Greek Classical elements, along with a lot of modern components.

"I'm part Irish," volunteered Allen, "but I'm mostly English and German. It doesn't inform my spirituality at all."

And me? I said nothing. I only listened and ate my eggs on toast.

Year 2: Part 8: Post 5: Fellow Students

Here I'm doing a list of students whom I mention frequently in the blog--there were actually about a hundred students on campus at any given time. I knew most of them, at least to say hi to, and while I wasn't friends with all of them, I was (and am) friends with more of them than appear as recurring "characters" in the blog.

In any case, here is a brief blurb on each of the students whom I have mentioned at least twice in the blog so far. I figure this way readers who have just joined the story can look up descriptions that I originally scattered across many posts. I've added some information I couldn't fit into the narrative, plus physical descriptions--so I don't have to repeat myself when I describe people, everyone on the list identified as white. Almost all students on campus were--that's who walked in our door. Maybe we should have tried to change that, I don't know.

(I have edited this piece to add "characters" who have joined the story since I first wrote it)

Andy 

Andy started the same year I did. He was in his mid-thirties at the time. He came to campus originally as a bicycle thief--he was a homeless drug addict who hoped that a bicycle might help him get back on his feet somehow. When he was "saved" as a Christian and got clean, he repented and returned the bike and at that time asked to join the school. We put him through a detox program and got him treated for chronic hypothermia and more or less helped him put his life back together. He ended up learning bicycle maintenance as a craft and now owns a bicycle repair shop.

He was unusual on campus in being Christian. He was outspoken and passionate about it, but he never seemed uncomfortable with the pagan school culture--on the contrary, he's always said that we embody Christ better than most Christian churches do. I don't know if that's true or not. There was always a childlike eagerness to Andy. There is still. He says it's because he spent so much of his early life high that he never grew up. I think it's because  he had a very difficult, painful life and he just got tired of pain and fear and doesn't want to have any more of it. He has no family left, except us. He's sort of average-looking, in terms of height and so forth, with dark hair, pale eyes, and bad skin. He looks older than he is.

Arther 

Arther also started my year, but graduated at the end of that year. He was in his late sixties at the time and had been a Wiccan High Priest for decades. He joined the school shortly after his High Priestess, his wife, died, because he didn't want to be alone. He already knew most of what the school had to teach and already had a college degree--more than one, I think. As a student he was white-haired and wrinkled but still physically robust. He is now in his eighties and his health is beginning to fail but he can still hold his own in an argument.


Aidan

Aidan was not a student thirteen years ago--he was a toddler. His mother is Kayla, who was only twelve when he was born. The circumstances of his conception are not my story to tell, but the man was an adult and is still in prison. He was adopted by his grandmother, Sadie, who was on staff, but Kayla has helped raise him. He's a teenager now and knows she is his real mother. He's a sweet kid, still pretty little, with thin features and dark hair.
 

Daniel 

Me, of course. There was another student in my year named Dan who was, like me, 19 when we started. Like me, he was a young 19. He and I never really got to be friends and I spent a lot of time worrying that people might confuse the two of us, since he was very good at putting his foot in his mouth, but he's basically a good guy. I haven't heard from him in a while.

As for me, I'm tall, skinny, kind of awkward-looking, honestly, with brown hair and eyes. I usually have a Van Dyke beard--that's a goatee plus mustache.  You can't tell, since I'm the narrator, but really I hardly ever talk. I like listening better. And people like to talk to me. I don't know why.                               

Ebony

Ebony started the year after I did and she is something like fifteen years older than I am. She is also--and some readers have guessed this--one of the women I dated on campus. I have decided not to talk about my romances in the blog posts because all of them were marred by my self-consciousness over still being a virgin. There is no way I could write about that in character as my 20-year-old self, so I haven't. Ebony was my second girlfriend on campus and we were together for a couple of months. We ended badly, but recovered our friendship. She is still closely involved in the community.

She is on the short side of average, pretty (of course), with thick, long, brown hair. Her eyes are brown but look black because the pupils dilate a lot. Physically speaking, she is almost totally blind and has been so since birth. Spiritually, she is not blind at all. She doesn't think of herself as blind and she identifies more strongly with sighted people than with blind people. She calls it "transability."

Eddie

Eddie started the year after I did, but we only became friends in my third year. The other reason I did not mention him at first is that it is difficult to tell his story with any degree of depth without mentioning that he is transgendered, something that he is not always open about (he can pass a cisgendered and usually prefers to). I do disguise identities for this blog, but I write as if I we simply my younger self telling you things, and my younger self would not have told you about Eddie's status. Finally, I spoke to Eddie himself about it and he gave me permission to write about him freely.

He is on the short side, for a guy, wiry and muscular, with short, light brown-brown hair, blue eyes, and a movie star-handsome, oval face. He is a complete flirt and very much a ladies man--I don't mean he's a player. He doesn't use people. Instead, he celebrates and glories in them. He also sings, dances, and raises and trains therapy and service dogs.


Joanna

Joanna was another student in my year, and 11 years my senior. I would not have said we got along--she made fun of me a lot--but we kept finding ourselves spending time together. Eventually we became friends when I learned to ignore her teasing. I always thought she was gorgeous, which might be why I put up with her, but she honestly didn't mean anything bad by it. I think she expected me to tease her back, but I've never been able to. I get kind of tongue-tied around her. Still.

She's on the tall side of medium, with thick blonde hair and hazel-blue eyes. Her features are strong, straight, and covered with pale freckles.


Kayla 

Kayla was, as I said, only twelve when she gave birth to Aidan. She hadn't even realized she was pregnant. The masters decided that enrolling her as a student would give her an opportunity to connect with supportive adult women who could identify with some of her experiences better than kids her own age could. But academically she remained a home-schooled kid for many years. She was a bit pudgy before Aidan was born (that, plus his being premature helped hide the pregnancy) but thinned out afterwards. She's of average height but thinly built, with a narrow face and long, blonde hair.

Nora 

Nora was another early-starter--she was sixteen when she joined the school as a student, and the masters gave her a six-year plan and required that she get her GED before she could finish. She fought with her mother a lot, and for the first year or two was deliberately rebellious--her hair is black, but she kept bleaching and dying it various colors, like purple, pink, and green. She ended up getting into Kit's version of Goddess-based feminism and also bee-keeping. From bee-keeping she expanded herself into making scented candles and massage oil. She has a strong, almost chiseled-looking face, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin.

Ollie

Ollie was my "buddy," the older student assigned to help me out when I first arrived. We ended up as good friends, although our courses of study were very different. He studied reason and philosophy as a spiritual path, with Allen. Ollie has always been gentlemanly to the point of delicacy; I never heard him use coarse language or make sexual jokes, even in all-male company. He's a Baptist preacher and, like Andy, found something in the pagan community of campus that augmented his Christianity. Unlike Andy, he has always been painfully self-conscious of his status as a member of a minority at the school. To his own surprise as much as anyone's, he fell in love with (and has since married) a woman who glories in her paganism. He is tall and slim and brown-haired, like me, but his face is oval and clean-shaven.

The Ravens 

By a weird coincidence, seven of the women who started with me all called themselves "Raven." Their interests were different enough that they were rarely all together, so it was less confusing than you'd think it is, but I made the mistake of not giving them nicknames for the blog so it's been difficult to really present them as separate people with distinct characters. Three studied magic with Allen, but one became Zen Buddhist, another became a totemic animist, and the third never talked with me about her religion. Three more studied Wicca or magic with Kit, and the seventh was, like me, mostly Charlie's student--though she focused her studies with him on horticulture.

Rick

Rick was, in a way, my closest friend on campus and he is the one of my fellow students with whom I have kept most consistently in touch. I qualify that with "in a way" because Rick himself does not really like human beings and does not quite feel like one of us. He likes some individuals and I do think he likes me, but he usually prefers to be alone. There were basic things about him that I didn't learn until years later because he simply didn't think to mention it. For example, he's gay. He wasn't closeted, he just didn't want to date within the fishbowl of the campus community where everyone soon knows everything. But I've never been one to talk much about my thoughts and feelings, either.

Rick and I get along because we give each other space and because our studies were always so closely intertwined. Like me, he studied with Charlie, and while he studied outdoor survival skills and I focused on spirituality, on a deeper level our studies were much the same. He is tall, slim, with short, black hair, and black, bushy eyebrows and a round face with high, taught cheekbones. He does not look quite human.

Steve Bees

Steve Bees arrived in my third year. There was already a man named Steve on campus (I have mentioned him, but we never got to know each other well), so after the new Steve stepped on a yellow-jacket nest his first spring, people started referring to him as "Steve--you know, the one with the bees?" and eventually it stuck.

He is medium-tall, with pale eyes and curly, black hair--or, rather, it was black when he arrived, in his mid-twenties. Much of it's grey now, as is the beard he grows occasionally, and it makes him look older than he really is. He is another of the school's Christians, a Quaker, though it was Greg's Buddhism that led Steve to embody his faith's commitment to social justice and Charlie's animism that made him a true contemplative. He is unusually able to learn from (even contribute to) other traditions while remaining rooted in his own. He is also a truly gifted singer. I have seen him dressed in novice-white, in the brown of a candidate and then a master, and in a series of mundane but expensive-looking suits (he is a lawyer, now). But when I think of him, in my mind's eye he is always wearing jeans and a t-shirt and he is always smiling.
 
Veery 

Veery started my second year and graduated in my third year. She could sing beautifully, loved watching and learning about birds ("veery" is a kind of bird) and studied psychology with Allen. She was short and stocky, with a cute plump face and beautiful auburn hair. She was the first person I dated on campus--we were together for a few weeks early in the summer of 2001. We didn't have a whole lot in common besides mutual physical attraction, and in the end we broke up because I wanted to have sex with her so badly that I had no idea how to ask her. And she got tired of my awkwardness on the subject. Our breakup wasn't acrimonious but we didn't become friends and I haven't heard from her in years.

Willa 

Willa was Ollie's girlfriend. She is now his wife. She's a self-described tantrika, meaning that sex is a big part of her spiritual practice. She was unapologetically promiscuous before getting together with Ollie--that their relationship worked out surprised everybody, but they seem very happy together. She's medium-tall, with long, light brown hair and large, expressive features.  

Year 2: Part 1: Post 9: A Sort-of Party

"Yes, I can tell," said Rick as I walked past him through the Great Hall after lunch.

"Wait, what?" I asked. I hadn't even noticed he was there.

"I can tell. You were wondering, earlier today in the woods." He was smiling at me, enjoying himself, waiting to see if I'd figure out what the heck he was talking about.

I cleared my mind, the way I've learned to do, to let the answer surface, if it's going to, and I saw myself, outside, in the snow. I'd gone tracking earlier in the day, and, out in the woods, I'd had to pee. But the thing about tracking is you don't just become aware of other animals' tracks; you also become aware that you are leaving tracks, too. Anyone else who knows how to track can tell exactly what you've been doing. It's like being watched all the time. So, I felt a little self-conscious and I kicked up some snow to cover my stain. I'd been wondering whether he'd be able to tell anyway.

"What are you, Sherlock Holmes?" That made him laugh.

"Well, I do aspire...."

"Ok, how did you know?" I might as well give him the satisfaction of asking.

"I saw you today--I wasn't watching, I just saw movement, so I turned to look--you were looking around, as though to see if anyone was watching and then you kicked at the snow. Then you looked around again, and looked at the snow for a bit. I guessed that you were wondering if I could still tell you'd taken a leak there. And I can--I've seen kicked-up snow like that before."

"Show-off." He shrugged, not disputing anything.

Rick and I have spent most of the winter together, except when I was sick (he hardly comes inside now). I've really learned a lot from him. He's an extraordinary naturalist and tracker. I'm not sure if I really know him well, though. I'm not sure anybody does, though I'm not his only friend. It's not that he's reclusive, exactly, and he doesn't grumble and growl like Charlie does, but...ok, as an example, if Charlie sees something that interests him he has to share it. That's part of the point for him. For all his grumbling and growling, Charlie gets a huge kick out of teaching. So do all the other masters. Rick doesn't. I think he could probably find a unicorn print or something and not think to tell me. He's just like that.

The thing is, I don't think Rick likes people. Just like some people don't like cats or can't stand spiders, or whatever, Rick doesn't like human beings.

So I was pretty surprised when he invited me up to his shelter today for "a kind of party."

"A party?"

Rick just laughed at my surprise.

"I said it's a sort of a party.Two or three people. I feel like being social, I guess."

So Raven G. and Darren and I joined Rick at one of his shelters for a drink. That was his party. We drank what he called maple-jack out of a clay jug, ate raisins and venison jerky, and talked for an hour or so. I hadn't really ever hung out with Darren before, so it was neat getting to know him a little bit. Joy is his spirit-master, and he's studying something he calls totemic animism with her, which sounds like a kind of inside out version of what I'm studying with Charlie, so I'd like to talk with him about it more. I didn't really get a chance today because he spent most of the party talking with Rick about art.

Rick is an artist. I wouldn't have called him one before, since he doesn't make pictures or anything like that. He's also not like Darren, who is learning to make devotional objects out of wood and soapstone. But Rick has to make a lot of his own gear, and obviously he has to make his shelters, and everything he makes is a functional work of art. The lean-to we had our party in, for example, is made of even-sized poles lashed together with leather, but all the lashings are dyed red (with beet-juice, I'm guessing) and on the corners of the frame the tails of the leather thongs have feathers tied into them. The leather curtains rolled up along the edge of the roof have abstract but vaguely floral designs embossed into them. He unrolled one of them to show us. Charlie is the same way; everything he makes is functional, but everything is also beautiful. The two have different styles, though. Their work is easy to tell apart.

Rick wouldn't let us stay longer than an hour. He was worried we'd get cold, just sitting there. That's something about Rick--he won't let anyone get wet or cold outside in his company. I've seen him pour water with the same care, to avoid spilling, that most people reserve for bleach or something else likely to destroy clothing. It seemed strange to me--I mean, I don't like being cold, but it's hardly a big deal. You tough it out. But Rick explained that, living outside, once you get wet or cold, you usually stay that way.

But before we left, I asked Rick why he'd bothered to have a "kind of a" party to begin with. The other looked at him. I guess they'd been wondering, too. He paused a little, then explained.

"It's been a month I've been out here now. And I'm still here."


[Next Post: Friday, March 7th: Planning to Win the Egghunt]

Year 2: Part 1: Post 3: Discussion Topics

Rick was ok. He spent the night in a sort of snow cave he made by packing snow over a frame made of fallen branches. He says he wasn't even that cold.

I actually forgot to worry about him, so I must have known he'd be ok. I was walking through the Great Hall that morning on the way back from yoga when Rick walked in. I suppose he wanted to change his clothes before breakfast or something. Charlie was sitting on the couch, reading his book, in exactly the same place he'd been the previous afternoon, as though he'd never left.

"I told you you'd be fine," he said, without looking up from his book. Rick looked at him for a moment in dazed confusion and went upstairs. As soon as he was gone Charlie dropped his book and his pose and grinned at me. He had to share his joke with someone, I guess.

The new students have been here a week and they're starting to learn their way around, but they are still so obviously outsiders.I remember that when I was new the school seemed so strange at first and then gradually became less so as I got used to it. I knew that I'd changed. I hadn't thought about how it felt for the senior students to have this influx of people who don't really belong yet. It's disconcerting.

I'm helping them become insiders. I talked to Ollie about it, and I talked with Allen, and I'm starting to learn the trick of talking to these people so that they get a sense of a new way to think without feeling like they're being told what to do or how to think and feel. I know that sounds sinister, like brain-washing, but it really isn't.

It's not like we're making everyone think alike. We don't think alike. The masters don't think all alike. Allen says that part of the reason we have new students, and the reason why mastery candidates have to spend time away from the school, is so that we don't end up all thinking alike. We need new material. And yet part of the point is the opportunity to occupy a different culture than what exists in the outside world. That's kind of what I meant when I decided I wanted to belong inside those Harry Potter robes.

Obviously, anyone who enrolls in any school voluntarily does so in order to change. You want to change into a more educated person, a more professional person, a more grown-up person, whatever. I guess the only thing that's different here is how much energy goes in to shaping what goes on outside of class. It goes back to something I noticed a year ago--a lot of places are very proud of being environmentally sensitive, culturally sensitive, supportive, whatever, but then when they're not paying attention to themselves they kind of revert. Like at my old school, the one I went to for one semester? There was a big sign on the wall in the student center that said Reduce Reuse Recycle! but they sold water in flimsy four ounce plastic bottles. So how serious could they have been about the reduce and reuse part? I guess, in most places, what happens outside of classes and special initiatives and so forth just happens. Here, we make it happen.

There's no sharp line between classes and life here. There's no sharp line between staff and students.

Rick on the Stairs

There are workshops and even classes taught by candidates and I've seen masters show up as participants at workshops and things. And of course, all of them, except Greg, are alumns of this place. And we do a lot of things staff would do at another school--we clean and cook and farm and so forth. I guess we kind of teach, too. We all make this place.

I'd forgotten how many ideas come up in these conversations. Some of the new students are absolutely brilliant, they know all this stuff. Zarah is this raven-haired mystic witch who could probably teach Kit a thing or two. I bet she'll be a one-hit wonder (a student who graduates in only one year, like Arthur was). Easy is a licensed therapist and a professional singer. Vic is a college dropout who spent a couple of years living in the woods in the Pacific Northwest and seems to know everything about the outdoors there.

This morning Vickie, who knows everything about healthy eating and organic food, asked me why I eat meat.

"Because it's here and I like it," I told her, which is true.

"Don't you think about the animals?" she asked. I started to say yes, I do, which is also true, when Vic interrupted.

"Oh, come off it," he said "You don't really expect us to to put up with that kind of lecture at breakfast, do you?"

Vickie blinked at him. I think she felt hurt.

"Why not a lecture at breakfast?" I asked. "We're paying to be at school during breakfast, aren't we?"

"Yes,  but I didn't pay for that lecture!"

"How do you know? I don't remember getting a complete syllabus when I signed up. Did you?" I took a bite of my sausage as I spoke. Both of them looked at me in confusion. They couldn't tell what side I was on.

"Why don't you ask the animal if it's ok to eat it, instead of arguing?" suggested Zarah. She had not taken sausage, though she did have eggs.

"How?" I asked her.

"You really want to know?"

"Yes."

"Ok, I can teach you. Maybe as soon as I get settled in here a little more?"

"That would be great."

"I don't believe that any animal would be ok with being eaten," complained Vickie. "No offense, but how can you tell it's not just your stomach talking, when you get permission?" I thought that was a very good question.

"I am," I told her.

"Are what?"

"An animal who is ok with being eaten."

"I bet Vickie is, too," put in Vic, chuckling. She slapped him, a backhand across his shoulder, not hard, but not exactly friendly, either. He rubbed his shoulder and frowned. I laughed.

"You had that coming," I told him. He apologized. "No, but seriously, I wouldn't mind some other animal using my body after I'm done with it." I was thinking of my promise, the words Charlie had taught me to say; give me of your flesh and leather and bone, and I will give you mine when I am a deer. But I wasn't going to tell them that. There are things, I had learned, that you don't talk about. "Though, it's true I don't want to be done with my body for a good long while, yet."

"Well, there you go," said Vickie. I glanced at Ollie, passing the conversational baton off to him.

"Have you ever wondered how many animals are hit and killed by vegetable delivery trucks?" he asked.

We weren't trying to talk Vickie into eating meat, though most of the people who started when I did and were vegetarians aren't now. Most of us who started out eating meat eat a lot less of it. When I'm off-campus, I don't eat meat at all now, if I don't know where it came from. We were just trying to get her to think about it.

The masters are busy giving talks and seminars and workshops to introduce themselves to the new students. At least, that's part of the reason--you can get tastes of working with everybody, without having to commit to taking whole classes with them. You can also get tastes of subjects you aren't really going to take classes in. Like today, I went to a talk Kit gave on movement, on using dance and music for expression or something like that. I don't know if she gave the same talk last year. If she did, then I didn't go.

Kit has a degree in dance movement therapy, and I don't really know what that means. I'm not interested enough to take a class in it, but given a chance to spend the afternoon with Kit, I'll take it.

She didn't do much talking, actually. She just jumped right in. She'd assembled a kind of orchestra entirely of percussion instruments--drums of various sizes, a xylophone, a washboard, tambourines--and just launched right in to a concert. They did "Riannon," and they were fantastic.

I know that song mostly from hearing it on the radio. It always sounded like light pop to me and I never paid much attention to it,* but Kit's performance was fantastic--the music had this throbbing, infectious quality and the lyrics were wild and mystical.

After they'd gone through the song once the band began again, and Kit formed us into a circle. We took turns in the center of the circle, dancing, as the band went through the music over and over. Sometimes Kit commented or encouraged, but mostly we just danced and she held the space for us. It was a lot like the exercises we did on the Island last year. I suppose the yearlings will do it again on the Island this year. I was a lot more comfortable this time and we had a lot of fun.

Talks are usually an hour and a half long, but I don't think this one lasted that long. After most of us had gotten a chance in the circle and people seemed to be flagging a bit Kit ended it. Most of the group dispersed, but I had nowhere else I was supposed to be so I hung around. One of the Ravens said she had fixings for milkshakes in the fridge and did we want any. Kit said sure. In a few minutes, a group of us were sitting by the woodstove drinking maple snow milkshakes through reusable straws.

"The sap isn't running yet, is it?" I asked. Raven shook her head. She works in the Dining Hall.

"No. This is from the last of last year's syrup."

"It's very good," commented Kit. "You made this with snow, not ice cream, right? And sheep's milk?"

"Yes. The new syrup will be coming in soon, though, I think."

"Yes, it will," Kit confirmed. "We've blessed the trees already."

"Blessed the trees?" I asked. "Who is 'we'?"I could imagine Charlie having something to do with it. Anyway, those trees are my friends.

"The Master's Group. The Six, mostly." She must have seen something on my face because her expression softened. "You're not exactly barred from participating, but we do it at a time when students are otherwise occupied. You'll get there."

I poked at my milkshake with my straw.

Joanna spoke up, changing the topic.

"That dance-thing," she began. "It reminded me of 'Going to Kentucky.' You know, how everyone got their own turn in the middle to dance?"

Kit nodded.

"Huh?" I said.

"You don't know 'Going to Kentucky'?" Joanna asked me. "Kit, let's show him!"

"Sure thing," agreed Kit, putting down her milkshake.

"Going to Kentucky" turned out to be a musical dancing game. We formed a circle, with one person in the middle who danced as everyone else sang.

We're going to Kentucky, 
We're going to the fair
To see the senorita 
With flowers in her hair.
Oh, shake it, baby, shake it
Shake it if you can
Shake it like a milkshake
And drink it if you can.
Oh, rumba to the bottom
Rumba to the top
Then turn around and turn around 
Until you make it Stop! 

On the word "stop" the dancer stopped turning and pointed to someone in the circle, who then becomes the next person in the center of the circle. We played a couple of rounds and had a lot of fun, laughing at each other and goofing around.

"Wow," said Easy, when we returned to our milkshakes, "Kit, you are like one half camp counselor and one part Stevie Nicks."

"Yup," Kit agreed. "Although I do have other parts," and she sucked up the last of her milkshake.

"Are you a Welsh witch?" asked Zarah.

"No, Greek, mostly," Kit answered. I must have looked confused.

"Stevie Nicks' record label is Welsh Witch Records," Joanna explained, taking pity on me.

"Is Nicks a witch?" I asked.

"She says she isn't," Kit replied. "And if she's in the broom closet she might as well stay there, if that's what she needs to do."

"Broom closet?" asked Easy.

"What witches hide in when they're pretending not to be witches," I explained, happy to know something.

"People do that? Still?" asked Easy.

"Sure do," said Kit. "Never 'out' a witch without her permission. It's not always safe." Kit uses the word "witch" to refer to both men and women, but she also says "she" when she isn't sure, the same way a lot of people say "he."

"If everyone were out, it would be safer for everyone to be out," said Zarah.

"That might be true," Kit said, "but remember, everyone was out, once upon a time. That didn't stop the cowen folk from coming after us."

"Cowen?" asked Easy.

"Non-witches," I explained, though I'm not actually sure that the implied distinction ever actually existed.

"But," protested Joanna, and another conversation was off and running, another debate, in along series of endless discussions in a magical little community ringed round with snow.

[Next Post: Friday, February 14th: Working Cats]

* Note: When I was twenty, I had never actually seen a video of Fleetwood Mac performing. I have since, and was very impressed. I would not call them "light pop" now. Kit's performance that night was actually very close to the original in style, though the instrumentation was very different and Kit's vocal register is a bit lower.