Part 7: Post 5: Walking in the Woods

I told Rick, the other day, that I've gotten a lot better at building fires lately. I mean, I knew how before, I'd gone camping, but now that I live in a house heated by wood I've gotten a lot better at it. I have a reason to be, I guess. It's a practical thing, now.

Rick laughed a little and asked if I'd ever cooked over a fire.

"I've grilled...and I make coffee and toast on the wood-stove."

"No, no, not grilling," Rick told me, laughing, "a grill isn't a real fire. I mean on a real fire you have to build."

Rick does this sometimes--decides this, that, or the other doesn't count as 'real' just because he doesn't like it. I think he got it from Charlie. A physicist would agree that a grill has fire in it. But it's true I've never cooked over a camp fire, if you don't count marshmallows, and I'm pretty sure Rick would say those aren't real food, so I didn't even try.

"So, what's so different about cooking over a real fire?" I asked. Obviously Rick wanted to tell me all about it, so I decided to let him go for it. I don't think he was trying to be obnoxious--he was trying not to be, like he didn't want to seem to be showing off. But so much of what he does he does alone now, practicing for living on the land next year, and I suppose it gets kind of lonely. And of course Charlie is useless for compliments. So I let him talk.

"Well, the thing about a real fire is if you don't get it going, you don't eat," Rick explained. "No lighter fluid, no nice, pre-shaped briquets, no bottle of propane, just wood, and the behavior of wood, and if the wood is wet or it's raining or something like that, what do you do? You figure it out or you don't eat."

"Couldn't you eat something that doesn't need to be cooked?" I asked. "Like apples?"

"Yeah, but a lot of my food does. Raw meat, you know."

I've gone with Rick on his collecting expeditions a few times. He isn't living off what he can gather now--he still eats most of his meals with us--but he's storing up food for use later. His year of living on the land begins at Brigid ("in February?" I asked when I first heard about this. "Train hard, fight easy," Rick replied. It's one of his sayings. I think he got it from Karen), so he needs to have a winter food store on hand already. Most of what he gets is actually vegetable--or mushrooms--though he hunts as well. It amazes me how much he knows. But most of the time he forages and practices his survival skills alone.

Most of the time when we go in the woods together we're working on my education, not his. Charlie told us to work on tracking and also to get to know the area and all the trails. Rick decided he'd really start teaching me tracking when it snows, because it's easier that way, but he does point things out to me sometimes, like deer scrapes and the tiny territorial marks of squirrels. In the meantime we're getting to know the woods, following this trail and that. If we have enough time we try to get lost and then find our way out again. I automatically name the trees as we go by, and I tell some of them to Rick--he doesn't know a lot of non-edible plants, so I get to be an expert, too, for once. I like that.

I still don't know how this latest assignment relates to anything, but I do like walking around in the woods so much. Maybe that's how it relates?

Part 7: Post 4: Reading Of Wizards

So, maybe I'm not completely doomed. I've finished the first book on my list already and I've started in on the second one, so I think, maybe, I can do this. Get all twenty books on my list done by mid-March.

Charlie said I can choose the order that I read them in, and as far as I can tell the books are listed randomly, except that ones with the same author are next to each other. So I chose to read A Wizard of Earthsea first, because I've heard of it before and it's basically a kid's book so I thought it would be easy--I mean, it's one of those "young adult" novels. It's pretty short.

I'd heard of the book before, as I said--a few people had said it was like an earlier version of Harry Potter, because part of the book takes place as a school for wizards, but really the mood of the book, and the way the author handles magic, is quite different. For one thing, this isn't a book about children. I'm not even sure it's really a book for children, either--it seems a lot subtler and deeper than that, though maybe I only think so because I'm reading it for school. But reading it was a bit strange, because while it isn't much like Harry Potter, it is quite a lot like this place. I don't think that's a coincidence. It was published in 1968, so the early masters could have read it before they even started the school. We got the idea of doing the Long Dance on the summer solstice from this book, I know that. I also wonder if we call our faculty members "masters," which is a weird term for a professor, because that's what the teachers at the school in the book are called?

I also wonder how much this book has to do with Charlie specifically? How much has this thing inspired him, or at least encouraged or confirmed in him something he already had? The protagonist's teacher (who is not actually part of the school) lives simply, spends a lot of time hiking and camping, can make things with his hands, like bows and walking staffs, and doesn't always tell his student what he's doing or why. At one point, after they've been walking together in the woods for a couple of days without saying hardly anything to each other, the protagonist complains he hasn't learned anything yet, so Ogion, the teacher, says "That's because you haven't learned what I'm trying to teach." Charlie underlined that part.

He's underlined a lot of things. Underlines, notes in the margins, exclamation points, question marks, in all different colored pencils and pens...it really surprised me. We used a lot of library books when I was a kid, so I was taught, it was really emphasized, NEVER to draw or write or mark in a book. I've kept that up all my life. It's almost like a desecration or something, to mark up a book. But Charlie marks his books (I've started the sequel, which is also on the list, and it's marked up, too). I imagine he meant for me to read the markings, or at least doesn't mind if I do, or he wouldn't let me use his books--he's actually insisting that I use his books. But it's strange to think he's really ok with it, since on some level the markings are so personal. They're what he was thinking when he read....One note even mentions AA--the climax of the book revolves around the protagonist saying his own name (I won't ruin it by explaining more) and in the margin there Charlie wrote "AA introduction?" And nearby, in a different color ink, "4th step, maybe? Or First?" I stared at that note for a long time.

It's been nice reading weather--calm and clear and wintery, but in a warm sort of way, if that makes sense. I mean, like how some winter days feel warm, even though the thermometer says otherwise. It hasn't been that cold yet, though we had our first snow the other night--big, pretty flakes fell for about half an hour and I stood on my balcony and watched. I don't have a porch light, of course, but I have a flashlight, so I watched the flakes fly out of the darkness and through the beam like moths. But nothing stuck. Anyway, this reading thing isn't going to be too bad. I'll keep a book with me all the time, in case I have a spare moment, and when I can I'll come out here to the porch at sit, wrapped up in my cloak, reading in the sunshine.

Part 7: Post 3: The Reading List

Charlie's Feet

 It's only been eight days since Samhain, but it feels a lot longer, I guess because I'm getting used to the new schedule and everything. Now that we're done shutting down Chapel Hall and the Dining Hall, I'm back to working only my four hour shifts as a janitor, so you'd think I'd have a lot of free time. I don't, not particularly.

Charlie may have taken the winter off, but he did not tell me to do the same. I have homework.

A few days before Samhain, he got me and and Rick together and gave us homework assignments. It seemed strange to me, at first that he only talked to us, since there are a lot more than just the two of us who work with Charlie. I think there might be ten or fifteen of us who work mostly with him, plus others who have him as master for something or other. But then, thinking about it, about half of them are graduating this year, so they wouldn't have homework, and almost everyone else is working with him for horticulture, so they'd get whatever instructions they needed from him through the groundskeeping team. So I guess it is just me and Rick. Plus our homework was related.

So, we met together in the Great Hall over lunch, with Charlie sitting nonchalantly on the arm of a couch and Rich and I standing more or less at attention before him, awaiting orders. We always seem to do this when we talk to him together--stand at attention. I don't know why, we don't act that way, either of us, I think, when we talk with Charlie one on one. Whatever the reason, and for all his barefooted casualness, Charlie seems to accept it as his due.

"You," he began, addressing Rick, "already have most of your homework. Just keep getting ready for Brigid. If you have any questions, you know where to find me." He did? I didn't. But Charlie continued. "But I want you to work with Daniel. I want you both to get familiar with the woods, even the Land Conservancy places, learn all the trails so you don't need a map. And I want you to teach him how to track, ok?"

"Ok."

"Daniel. You ok with learning to track this winter?"

"Sure."

"Good. And I want you to read."

"Read?"

"Yup. I'll give you a reading list, and I'll lend you books--I want you to use my copies, not any others. I'll put a box at the front desk. When you're done with one book, return it to Sharon, along with some writing on it--I want you to tell me what you think of the book--maybe a page worth? Single-spaced. Sharon will give you your next book. You tell Sharon what you want next, but one book ahead--does that make sense? You give her a book, she gives you a book, and you tell her what book you want after that, right?"

"Got it. Do I get the list now?"

"No, I don't have it yet. I'll give it to Sharon--check with her after the holiday."

"Ok, got it. How long do you want me to keep up with the squares?"

"Hmm?"

"The squares, you know, the, the plants in the squares...on the ground." Articulate I am not, or at least not always. Charlie frowned at me for a moment and then his face cleared.

"Oh, the quadrats. Your plant study. Keep that up until the first good snowfall. Then you can stop."

"Ok. Charlie?"

"Hmm?"

"How good do I have to get at tracking? I mean, by Brigid. Rick's really good, I mean." He smiled at me, almost--fondly?

"Don't worry. You don't have to become an expert. Get as good as you get--but I want you to be able to at least lead the tracking seminar in the spring, including the analysis and the afternoon presentation. In case I get a cold or something. Seems I'm sick for two weeks every spring, anymore."

So.

Well, I just got the reading list--and it has twenty books on it. According to the note at the top, I have till Ostara to get it done, but I should try to get as many done by Brigid as I can, so I'll have time to go to seminars and talks and such, if I want to. The thing is, that's over a book a week, on average. And looking over this list, not all the books are short. I've seen how Charlie reads. I've seen him sitting on the porch in the sun on a Sunday morning with a new book and I see him a few hours later, same spot, doing the same thing, except he's almost done the book. I've seen his library. I've heard how he quotes or paraphrases books, almost inexhaustibly. He has a book to refer to, from memory, for everything. I think he forgets not all of us can do that.

I'm doomed.

Part 7: Post 2: After the Party

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Campus is different now. I expected it to be, of course, it's not like any of this is a surprise, but it's still a bit jarring to see it actually happen.

They've shut down the Dining Hall, though I think they still use the kitchens to process meat and so forth, but we eat in the Mansion now. That means that we take turns cooking and cleaning, more like a family than like eating in a cafeteria. We have no classes and no talks, seminars, or workshops, nothing scheduled at all, except for zazen, group therapy, and meals. Yesterday we shut down Chapel Hall--and I mean we really shut it down, cleaned the whole thing from top to bottom, drained and winterized the plumbing system, and stabilized the composted in the basement. "We," in this case, is the janitorial crew. Not having classes means we have more time to work. It's like the whole campus is folding in on itself, compacting, for the winter.

And we do take up less space. Half the students are gone already, and more are going, at least for a few weeks. Pretty much the only people left are the yearlings and some of the graduating students, and they have a series of events and trips and retreats planned, so we won't see them much. This means the campus jobs--what some of us do to earn our keep, in lieu of tuition--all have to be reorganized. Everybody on the cleaning crew but me and Jahred have left, but since everybody on the food service crew stayed and mostly aren't needed, most of them have switched over to cleaning, which itself has been merged with maintenance. We're going to keep busy this winter repairing, replacing, and painting, all the things you can't really do with people in the way. The farming crew has laid off some people and groundskeeping will lay off everybody when the first big snowfall comes. The whole campus seems quieter, emptier. Most of the leaves are down and the bare trees look dreary and skeletal. I'll be glad when the snow comes and relieves the constant grey and brown.

Most of the masters are gone. Greg is still here, both to lead zazen and because I don't think he has any other place he needs or wants to be. Very little in this world is constant, but Greg seems to be. He even eats breakfast with us still--the rule is that if you spend the night on campus or are hear during breakfast for some other reason, you have to go, but the rule doesn't seem to apply to faculty and staff in the winter. Joy and Karen have both come on campus this week, because they teach classes open to outsiders and the classes are still going on, but neither came to breakfast. They seem distant. Sarah and her family have moved out, leaving students in charge of the farm. I know they like to take their kids to live with their grandparents for a couple of months, so they can get out of the strangeness and isolation of campus for a while. Sadie still lives here, but she spends most of her time in town as a guest chef for a restaurant there. She's saving money to start her own restaurant, I've heard. Allen still leads each therapy group once a month, but he's rescheduled the meetings so he can do all four groups in the same week and not come in to campus otherwise. Charlie has vanished. He must be here, because I don't think he could be anywhere else, but no one has seen him in days.

Kit, too, makes herself scarce, but not as scarce as the others. I've heard that she and her husband like

A Feather of Finnist

to come to campus every few days in the winter just to hang out, and I've seen her here once this week already. She's the only one of the masters who has not turned her extracurricular activities over to students completely. I never went to her activities much, because so many of them revolve around music and I don't play, but I've been to her story-telling events a few times, and I just went again last night.

The way these things go is she'll announce a theme at breakfast and then that night all the stories have to be on that theme. They also can't be completely original--they have to be retellings of traditional stories from somewhere. And you're not allowed to read the stories, though you can consult notes. You have to recite them, or, as Kit says, tell them. She says there is a way to remember the main points of a story and re-invent it as you go, so that you don't have to memorize the whole thing and you can respond to the needs of your audience. Anyway, she tells the first story, and then other people tell their stories, and it goes on for maybe an hour. Then, most people leave and after they are gone Kit and whoever is left talk about the stories, analyzing their imagery and critiquing each others' storytelling technique. I've never told a story at one of those things, and I don't go every time, but went I have gone I stay through to the end, mostly because I like to be around Kit when she talks.

These things have an interesting effect on campus. For one thing, because of her storytelling gatherings, a lot of people tell a lot of stories at other times, too. They're practicing, or trying to decide on which story to tell, or passing on a story to someone who missed a meeting. For another, we've all gotten familiar with the myths of several different cultures, because we're constantly hearing stories. And because everybody knows that everybody else has heard a lot of these stories, people refer to them in conversation, write about them in their homework, and so on. It's like how some people talk about the Bible, and in fact some of the stories are Biblical, but we're also getting the Greco-Roman myths, the Norse myths, the Mabinogion, the Arthurian cycle, the Brothers Grimm, and a smattering of things from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia. I don't know half as much as some people here do, but I know twice as much as I used to. For example, did you know that there are West African stories about a trickster rabbit? They're very funny, at least when they're told right, and they reminded me of Brer Rabbit, which of course makes sense. But Kit pointed out that Bugs Bunny is a lot like Brer Rabbit, so it seems that Bugs Bunny is actually African-American.

Anyway, this week the theme was Beauty and the Beast. I attended, because there wasn't a lot else to do, and Kit started out by telling the story of Cupid and Psyche, which I remember from high school English class, but hadn't connected with anything else.

In brief, Psyche was a young woman who was so beautiful that men began to worship her instead of Aphrodite, so Aphrodite sent her son, Eros (or Cupid) to make sure that Psyche got safely married off as soon as possible. But then Eros accidentally pricked himself with one of his own arrows and fell in love with Psyche and so he arranged to marry her secretly. I'm not sure why, but Psyche ends up living by herself in an enchanted castle where she has everything she could ever want except that her new husband is still a complete mystery to her. He only comes to visit her in the dark. Eventually, she goes home to visit her family and then her sisters convince her to find out who this guy is, because he might be a monster. So when he's asleep she lights a lamp and he turns out to be beautiful. But a few drops of hot oil fall from the lamp and burn him and so he flies away, home to his mother. Then, to get him back Psyche has to do all of these things for Aphrodite, including going to the Land of the Dead to bring back some of Persephone's beauty. She falls into an enchanted sleep and Eros rescues her and they get married and live happily ever after.

I still wasn't sure I saw the connection, though I rather liked the idea of mind (psyche) and sex (eros) being married, which I hadn't picked up on before. But then someone said that story was a lot like East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and proceeded to tell that story.

In brief, a huge white bear comes to a poor family and asks to marry the youngest daughter in exchange for rescuing the family from poverty. With some reluctance, the girl agrees, and rides off on the white bear's back. He takes her to live in an enchanted palace and at night, in the dark, he takes of his bear skin and becomes a man and lays with her. Eventually she goes home to visit and her mother convinces her to find out what her husband really looks like, since he might be a monster. So, when he's asleep she lights a candle and he's beautiful--but she drops some wax on him by mistake and he wakes up and explains that if she had trusted him for a year she would have broken the spell that made him look like a beast by day, but as it is now he will have to go home to his mother who will make him marry an ugly troll. Then he and the castle vanish and the woman has to go through all sorts of adventures in order to find his mother's castle, which is "east of the sun and west of the moon." Eventually she does, but he is asleep and so she has to go through more adventures to wake him up. Eventually she does it, washes away the wax stains, and they marry and live happily ever after.

I still wasn't sure I saw the connection to Beauty and the Beast, though I could see the connection to Cupid and Psyche. But then someone else said that story was a lot like Finnist the Bright-Eyed Falcon, and proceeded to tell the story.

Finnist the Bright-Eyed Falcon

In brief, a windowed merchant has three daughters. The two older two daughters are lazy and vain, but the youngest is humble, hardworking, and beautiful without trying. One day the merchant asks his daughters what they want from town and the two oldest ones want cosmetics or jewelry or something and the youngest wants only a feather of Finnist, the Bright-eyed Falcon. He gets the other gifts but not the feather, and this keeps happening a few times till he finally gets the feather. The daughter then uses the feather, in secret, to call "Finnist, my beloved bride-groom." He appears as a beautiful man and stays with her till morning. Eventually, the other daughters find out and they fix knives to the window so Finnist can't get in. He cuts himself, flying against the knives, and calls out a set of instructions his bride has to follow in order to find him. Then he flies away. She follows the instructions and has a lot of adventures and eventually finds him in the castle of a queen. But he's under a sleeping spell, so she has to do various things to wake him up. Eventually she cries and her tears fall on the scars made by the knives and wake him up and he marries her instead of the queen and they live happily ever after.

And yes, I could see the connection to East of the Sun, West of the Moon--a lot of the details were actually identical. And I could see the connection to Cupid and Psyche, with the queen being another version of Aphrodite (though weirdly recast as a competing fiancee). And this time I could see the connection to Beauty and the Beast. And for the first time, I told a story.

I told about the merchant and his daughters, the youngest of whom wanted a strange gift--only a rose. And I told about the girl who found herself unexpectedly married to a beast in a magic castle. And I told about how she went home to visit her family and her sisters convinced her to break her promise to the Beast and stay longer than she should have and so that when she returned to him he was dying. And she wept because she loved him and her tears fell upon his beastly body and broke the spell and turned him into a man again and they lived happily ever after.

I told all of these things. And Kit smiled.

[Next Post: Homework for the Winter]

Part 7: Post 1: Samhain

Candle in bowl

Celtic sabbats, like Jewish holidays, start at sundown the previous day, or at least so says Kit. That's why, even though Samhain is certainly a big enough holiday for us to have the day off, our last day of class was actually the 31st, even though that's also when our big ceremony was. Samhain started the evening of the 31st, and then Samhain Day was the next day, the 1st.

My last class was Lies, Statistics, and Illusions. Of course, for all of us who were in it that was the last class, it was in the afternoon. When it was over, so was the school year. I'm sure Allen, as a therapist, was aware it was kind of a big deal for us, the end of our whole first year of classes. As a showman, I suspect he liked having final billing. He raised his arms in the gesture performers use to raise applause and told us to give ourselves a hand.

Class ended at five and the sun was already starting to set as I walked back to the Mansion. The ceremony was scheduled for seven, but we were supposed to arrive at the chapel around six-thirty. I called my parents and took a shower. I didn't eat--we'd been asked to hold off on dinner until after the ceremony, so I read a book for a while to avoid being hungry, then a group of us gathered together to talk for a while. Someone opened a bottle of wine but I decided not to have any. I imagined all the children, hundreds of children in the towns and hills around us putting on their costumes and heading out to get candy. That made me think--I knew the Sprouts had come on campus earlier today, I'd seen a lot of them at lunch, along with a few friends of theirs.They must have had a half day at school, except I'd never heard of schools taking a half day on Halloween, so the Sprouts and their friends must have gotten their parents' permission to skip class. That must be nice. My watch beeped. It was time to go to Chapel Hall. Night had fallen completely and when I looked out the window of my friend's dorm-room, I saw that the campus had become a sea of stars.

Walking over, I found the little lights lining the roads and pathways and doorways were little candles, hundreds of tea-lights floating in wooden bowls borrowed from the Dining Hall. I'd expected jack-o-lanterns but I didn't see any. Food rationing again, I imagine. Anyway, the affect was beautiful. Campus was full of people, everybody walking over to Chapel Hall at once, plus dozens of people, graduates, I suppose, in for a visit. Oddly, I didn't see any children. I would have thought they'd all gone home so they could go trick-or-treating, but I wasn't sure when they'd left. Allen had biked in with his kids but he couldn't have biked back with them because he got out of class so close to dark. They, at least, must still be on campus, but where? Were they upstairs sitting out the festivities in Allen's little apartment? But why would they do that? I couldn't figure it out. The night was clear and cool and dry and very dark, other than the little candles. That's one of the things I really love about campus--there are no porchlights, so when it's dark it's dark. It's relaxing. Samhain night there was no visible moon.

The ceremony started the same way the one at Brigit did, with the masters filing in to the sound of their small bell, except this time the candles they held were already lit. They climbed onto the stage, which was empty except for the tall candle-holders, deposited their candles, and then all of them except Greg and Allen left the stage and joined us in the audience. Greg held a lit candle, Allen held an unlit one. They faced each other silently for a moment, the tall, thin, older man and the shorter, younger one, and then Greg lit Allen's candle and left the stage. Greg was the Head of the Master's Group for the past two years. Now it's Allen's turn. I'm not entirely sure what the Head does, but I know the position rotates every two years among the Six (not among the non-teaching staff members) and that it's the only position of greater authority they have. There are no administrators, no principles, directors, chairs, or presidents, just the Six and their Head. After they transferred the candle flame we all clapped. Allen gave a short speech calling the ceremony to order, so to speak, and thereafter acted like a kind of MC.

First, Greg read aloud a list of names. I remember there was a sign up sheet in the Dining Hall all the previous week where you could write down the names of people you wanted memorialized. I didn't put any names down, though I'm starting to think I should have. I had a great aunt who died a few years ago. I didn't put her name down because we weren't close--I didn't live near her when I was little and I hardly knew her, but maybe I should have put her name down. Maybe I should call up my Mom and ask her to tell me about Aunt Ida. Maybe I should know. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me, though other people in the audience would sigh when certain names rang out, clap a little, or say "ho," which I've heard is what they say in sweat lodges when someone says something you agree with.  Three of them--their first names were Jim, Shrimp, and Tom--made Greg pause slightly before he read them, as though reading them gave him pain. The response from the audience all came from the front of the room, where the masters sat. These were people they knew.


I know those names; they have trees named after them. I didn't have to label the trees because they were too small, but they were big enough I had to go over and measure them to be sure. Tom's tree is a white oak and Shrimp and Jim have hemlocks growing right next to each other. I asked Charlie about them once, why the Shrimp Tree and the Jim Tree were so close. He said it was because they lived together and died together--in a car crash ten years ago. I didn't ask about Tom, but obviously that tree was a memorial, too. I've seen memorial trees before, wondered about them...and I don't think too many people pay any attention to them. At least this way, they don't just have the trees to remember them. Their names are said at least once every year.

Some of the names Greg read belonged to famous people: Edward Abby, Jacques Cousteau, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, it was an eclectic list. I guess they count as cultural ancestors? And then there was a long list of plant and animal names--the names of recently extinct species, I suppose. After the reading of the list, three people got up, one by one, to eulogize people who had died within the past year.

And then things got a little silly

Kit lead us in a song, but is seemed like most people knew it already and I quickly learned the refrain. A person would stand up, sing a verse, and then we'd all sing the refrain. Then someone else would sing a verse, on and on for maybe five or six verses. The verses were small eulogies, I guess they change every year as they honor different people. The thing is, though, they were kind of light-hearted eulogies, and the refrain--I think it was a rewritten version of some other song. It went like this:

Hats off to dead folks, wherever they may be,
'cause they had the best hopes for you and for me.
I stand up for dead folks, so you'll hear me say my
hat's off to dead folks, and I know I'll be one someday.

I mean, really? Everyone around me was treating it like this rousing sing-along and I shifted around uncomfortably in my chair. Hats off to dead folks? I liked the sentiment, but it was just so irreverent. And weird. Like, aren't memorials supposed to be sad? Not goofy? I don't mean I had any intellectually well-thought-out objections, I mean I just felt weird about it. But after a few verses I kind of got into it and started laughing along with everybody else. Some of those verses made the people they were about sound really cool, like I wanted to know more. And, I mean, if I were dead I think I'd kind of want people laughing and having a good time in my honor.

It made me think, too of Aunt Ida, wishing again I knew enough about her to write a verse for her. My Mom knows all about her--they were kind of close--and I don't know anything. I should really find out, so one more generation will remember her. And I should learn more about my grandparents, while they're still here. And...it sounds stupid, but I was thinking about my kitten. I had this kitten when I was little and it died and I was completely heart-broken, but then I got older and I thought it seemed stupid to be carrying around this grief for an animal I only had for a couple of weeks. And then when Aunt Ida died and my mother was so upset I didn't want to put that kitten on the same level as my mother's aunt...I stopped thinking of that kitten as a loss. That's why, in the talks I've been to in the past couple of weeks, when they asked if I'd ever lost anybody I said only my Aunt Ida, and we weren't close. But I'm thinking...Charlie has a framed photograph of a dog on his desk. He doesn't know I know that, I don't think, and he never talks about having a dog, but he doesn't have any pictures of humans framed like that. The dog's picture is framed in silver. And so I think that if Charlie can remember a dog like that, I can start remembering my kitten again. RIP Sanchez.

So after the song was over, we all stood up (for dead folks) and cheered and then we milled around for a while, all of us, like we were at some kind of reception, like the ceremony was over, even though it felt unfinished to me. I went and found people who had sung eulogy verses and asked them about the people they sang about and I asked some of the masters about Jim, Shrimp, and Tom. I found out that they had been among the Six at one point, were, in fact, three of the six founding members of the master's group--Jim was the healing master, Shrimp was an artist, and Tom was a craftsman. Shrimp and Jim were a male couple whose families refused to bury them together. A portion of their mingled ashes were scattered on campus instead, in secret.

I was talking with Allen about them, and I think everyone around me was sharing stories about this dead person or that dead person,when a bell rang, the high, silver-sounding bell that the masters processed in to. And Allen stopped mid-sentence. He stopped seeing me, it seemed like, and stepped away from me, moving deliberately like he was in a procession. All the masters had suddenly moved into ritual mode. They extinguished all the candles on stage but one, and then they processed out, Allen carrying that one lit candle out of the room to the ding! ding! ding! of the bell. The ceremony was over. The year was over. We left the chapel. There was going to be food and drink and a fire at the fire pit near the greenhouse, we knew.

On my way out I heard something that sounded like a struggle of some sort, but everyone around me ignored it, so I did, too.

When we collected at the fire pit there was indeed plenty of food set out on tables, plus hot chocolate and cider, both hard and sweet, and a couple of people already had out their guitars and drums. I noticed both Allen's wife and Kit's husband were there, plus Joy's grown daughter, Serenity. Of course, Coffee Joe was there, and his and Security Joe's son. It wasn't anywhere near as many people as had shown up at Litha--Charlie's siblings weren't there, for example, and none of the students had family visiting, but there were a lot of people. And then someone said that Allen was missing.

And he was. It was odd, because everyone else was there, even Greg, who rarely went to parties, and Sarah, who was usually uncomfortable with things pagan, though she liked parties in a general way. Everyone was there, but Allen was conspicuously missing.

Just then, a small figure, either a woman or a boy, it was hard to tell which, strode suddenly into the clearing. It wore a homemade costume, vaguely pirate-ish, and carried a plastic sword and a very real lit torch. In the torchlight I could see it had a black patch over one eye and a bandana tied around the head, covering the lower half of the face. I didn't know what was going on. The older students and the faculty pretended like the figure were armed and dangerous. When it spoke, the voice was high and strange, deliberately disguised.

"We have stolen Allen! We have him! He is our prisoner, and you will never see him again if you do not do what we say! We are in charge, now!"

The figure was a child, and in a moment I had figured out who he must be; it was Allen's own son, David. The sprouts were playing a prank--except that he'd called Allen Allen. Of course, normally Allen's kids called him Dad or Daddy, but all the other sprouts always called him Dr. Allen. The sprouts always call the adults on campus Ms., Mr., or Dr. Somebody. I'd never thought about it much, but hearing one of them not do it sounded really weird. It seemed like more of a violation of things that the charade of threat.

Obviously, everybody except the yearlings were in on it somehow--it must be another tradition.The masters and some of the students begged and pleaded. They melodramatically groveled, but they could not make the boy relent. The ransom would have to be paid, and it must be paid in candy. The begging and the pleading was an act, and the child obviously knew it, though he played along, too. But the bargaining was quite real. The kid haggled fiercely with the adults, who clearly didn't want to give him as much candy or as many new privileges as he was demanding. He called several of the others by their first names, rather pointedly, but no one ever acknowledged knowing who he was. In the end, David won his fellow sprouts far more than I had expected them to get: nearly five pounds of candy each ("only the good kinds!"); plus a couple of glow-in-the-dark toy swords; three jars of jam, to share among all of them; and a promise that this year they would all be allowed to have sleepovers on school nights, as long as the guest went to the same school and everyone stayed caught up on homework. Then they returned Allen, bringing him into the circle flanked by costumed guards of ridiculously small size but fearsome mien. He'd been treated fairly roughly, it seemed, bound and gagged and face-painted like a clown. The booty was exchanged for the prisoner, with a few more first-name addresses just because they could, and the miscreants cheered and ran, taking their treasure with them and leaving Allen standing there, still tied up. He could barely walk, since his legs were tied together above the knees. At least the gag turned out to be fake, just a bandana tied across his mouth, but he refused to speak until it was untied.

 Allen could not untie himself, so we helped him, but, predictably, as soon as his gag was off he started laughing.

"You taught them to tie knots this year, didn't you?" he accused Charlie, "I really couldn't get out." Charlie protested his innocence, but he had in fact taught a knot-tying course at the summer camp.

"At least they've learned to paint faces properly," Charlie pointed out. "Last year they used my sister's make-up."

David in his Samhain costume

"What is going on?" I asked Rick, who happened to be standing next to me.

"Trick or treat," he explained. "They do this every year, kidnap one of the Masters, or sometimes a senior student. Last year it was Charlie. Twenty years ago it was the Masters' own idea. The Six set the rules, said how far the kids could go, instigated the whole thing. Since then it's been passed from kid to kid and none of them know the game was invented by grown-ups anymore. They bring their friends. When you see them again, remember to pretend you don't know who did it."

"Do they know we can recognize them?" I asked.

"The older ones do--it's sort of like Santa Claus, I guess. The line between pretending and believing is a little thin. But them being in charge for one night isn't a charade--you saw Allen, he really couldn't get loose on his own. And twenty kids against one man, he probably couldn't have resisted capture without seriously hurting them. He really was at their mercy."

Trick or treat!

[The song, "Hats off to Dead Folks," is a rewritten version of "Hats off to Old Folks," by Steve Romanoff. It was first recorded by Schooner Fare on their "The First Ten Years" album, in 1986)

Sixth Interlude

Hi, all, Daniel-of-2013 here.

It's sort of odd to be writing as though I were two different ages, two different people, almost. It's like my younger self is becoming an alter-ego of mine, as though we both exist in parallel, not in sequence. Of course, as I've said, this account I've been writing is not exactly what my younger self would have written at the time. Some aspects of his perspective I've forgotten, while others I've had to alter. I wasn't a very good chronicler when I was twenty.

One difference I am aware of also, and that I'm thinking of particularly as Samhain approaches, is that when I was twenty I was more or less entirely isolated, psychologically, in the present. I don't mean I had some zenlike awareness of each individual moment--in fact, I daydreamed much more than I do now, and I saw the world through a much thicker lens of personal bias and opinion. I mean that I was isolated from any sense of history or continuity. I was intellectually aware of the passage of time, of course, but emotionally I had no basic sense that the world could be fundamentally different than I saw it, that my ancestors had once been young men and women involved in their lives or that I was going to be somebody else's ancestor. I wouldn't have said so at the time, but I was basically a kid, a boy, with a boy's view of the world as static and basically organized around his own desires. I was never selfish in a malicious sense, but I was more self-centered than anyone who knew me, quiet, self-effacing, good-boy me, would have guessed. Except, of course, the masters, who saw through me and everybody else and managed to like us, most of us, anyway.

What changed? I had a child and I lost a friend. I don't think of the Veil as personally impermeable anymore.

So, for my traditional group of corrections--

I'm going to talk about what campus was like after Samhain after I talk about Samhain. That makes sense, of course, but in doing so I may give the impression that much of it was a surprise. It wasn't. I knew that the Dining Hall was going to shut down, that the therapy schedule was going to change, all of that. I was also much better prepared for Samhain itself than my story might indicate because in the weeks leading up to the holiday there had been a series of workshops on genealogy, finding family history, the creation of ancestor altars, the various versions of ancestor-veneration in different cultures, and so forth.  A group of people made posters honoring various people who had passed on, and though I chose not to make one, I did help get some of them ready to hang. So I was in the mood, I guess.

I should also resolve a small inconsistency. I've mentioned that Sarah was harvesting huge numbers of small pumpkins, but as I'll explain, there were few jack-o-lanterns on campus. Those pumpkins actually went into our feast on Samhain Day, which is the 1st. We had our main ceremony on Samhain Eve, which is on 31st, the day before. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to talk about that feast specifically or not. I want to keep the focus on the ceremony.

Finally, what Kit said a few posts ago, about witches using broom-handles to apply flying ointment--I don't know if that's actually true. I know she actually said it, and I've encountered references to flying ointments in other writings, but I have not investigated the historical veracity of those sources, nor do I know whether Kit read about that use for broom sticks somewhere or simply decided that idea made sense. I suppose I could ask her, but the truth of the matter is I don't really care. I have other things I'd much rather talk about when we get together, and as you could imagine we don't get together nearly as often as both of us would like. But I do want to be clear about which things I say are reliable and which are not--that was one of the aspects of Charlie's teaching that really stuck and was, of course, only reinforced in graduate school.

So, we're going to get together for Samhain this week, all of us from school who are still in the area, plus a number of people who moved away and are coming back to visit. We've moved Carly's crib into our room to make a guest bedroom, and everyone, it seems like, is going to have someone on their couch or in their spare bedroom. We've adapted the old ceremony, and then we're going to have a big party the next day. It's funny, Carly is almost the same age now that Aiden was in the story. Of course, he's twelve, now, almost not a sprout anymore, but it's so easy to remember him as that baby boy dancing in his baby way at that pre-Samhain party. Carly is not as interested in walking as he was, but she can crawl already and is constantly getting into things. She's not as outgoing as Aiden was as a baby, but she likes to watch people.

It's very strange to see my own dominant characteristic suddenly appearing so blatantly in someone else.

Part 6: Post 11: Transitions

English Ivy

We have a lot of traditions here that nobody ever talks about. I've noticed this before--like how we do certain things for each of the holidays but no one ever says why. Or how no one ever said we have to turn lights out and eat local and all those other things, we just do it. Anyway, I've found another such hidden tradition; the end-of-year party.

Nobody really said anything about it. Nobody said it was a tradition or a big deal or a ceremony. Just the other day Arther said there were a couple of people getting together in the Great Hall after dinner and I should go, too, and it turned out that all the people who are graduating, all the masters, and most of the yearlings were there. Everyone else was mysteriously doing something else.

It was a big party. There are about thirty people graduating this year, which seems like a really small graduating class to me, but with maybe fifteen yearlings and all fourteen masters, plus Aiden and a couple of earlier graduates from off-campus it still added up to a lot of people gathered together in one room. There was no particular ceremony, just a fire in the fire place, lots of food and drink, and some great music.The music, of course, was home-made--Kit and some of the others brought instruments and played and sang, not like a band providing entertainment, more like a campfire, with a couple of people singing or playing on and off as the mood struck them. Mostly they played familiar stuff, Simon and Garfunkel, Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, Grateful Dead, but also some traditional Celtic stuff, some--I think they're Greek folk dances, Kit admires Greek culture, as I think I've mentioned--and some contra dance tunes. Mostly we talked over the music, if we weren't dancing or singing along, which I mostly wasn't. But I did stop and just listen--I think all of us did--for a few songs. One stuck in my head because I almost recognized the tune but couldn't quite place it. I have a good memory for lyrics, but instrumentals are harder, and it was this beautiful duet Kit did on her cello with one of her students, a violinist named Sinclara who's graduating in February after three years. No singing, just the cello and violin soaring around each other, beautiful and kind of sad. I asked about it later--it was "Empty Chairs," by Don McLean. I know that song, but somehow I'd always thought the title was "Never Thought You'd Leave," after a line in the refrain.

Asian Bittersweet

At one point Kit and some of the others played a waltz and a few people started dancing, which looked really cool, with the black or brown cloaks swirling around as the dancers swayed and spun against the backdrop of the honey-colored wood and the arrangements of corn stalks and dried flowers and seedheads, pumpkins and gourds, all occupying corners and tables and vases all around the room and the garlands and wreaths of grapevine, bittersweet, and ivy twined seasonally up light fixtures and corners and partway across some of the wooden beams along the ceiling. The bittersweet and ivy is exotic and will be burned when we're done with it, but it gives a wonderful fairy-tale look to the room.

Aiden spent most of the party wandering around, dancing, and looking up at the adults and squealing with laughter. I don't mean wandering around on his own. He's nine months old now--"he's been out as long as he was in!" as Kayla says--and can't walk on his own yet, but he can stand if he holds on to something, and with someone to hold his hands he can sort of walk and he gets a tremendous kick out of it. He dances by bouncing up and down a bit, especially when the music gets faster. He doesn't like all music equally--he actually frowned at some songs he didn't like, and he seems to have his favorites. He was wearing a little brown onesie handmade to look a little like a master's uniform and people kept calling him "the baby master" or "Buddha baby." He didn't get the joke, I'm sure, but I think he could tell we were talking about him and that we were joking, so he would look up at us and grin and giggle. His hair is dark and long enough to get in his face a bit and his eyes are this brilliant blue.

Mostly we milled around and talked to each other, all of us who could talk, and Aiden, who can't talk, milled around and giggled.

The community here subdivides in a couple of different ways, I've noticed. I'm a yearling, for example. I belong with the yearlings. I'm also a member of the Turtle Dorm, Therapy Group 1, the Janitorial Team...I'm one of Charlie's students, I'm one of the younger students, I'm male, I'm straight, I'm Christian, etc. But no matter how many different ways the community divides up, I've never really noticed the "Class of 2001" as a distinct thing. We don't have classes in that sense here, because we each move through the program at different rates. You don't necessarily finish with the people you start with. I didn't even know who-all was planning to graduate, though I knew a few of them. And now here they all were--I could see who they were, because they were the ones at the party who weren't yearlings and weren't masters or alums (or a baby). I could go up to the ones I didn't know well, even, and ask them questions about what they had studied and what they planned to do next. I could look at them as a group, and they could look at each other. I wonder if that's why we had the party?

I don't think I was the only one wondering that.

After a while, people began to leave, off to do homework, or sleep, or whatever else. I didn't feel like going to sleep, and I'd finished my homework already, so I wandered over to the couches by the fire and sat down. Charlie was there, drinking something from a mug and staring into the fire. I couldn't tell if he was cold or not, because while he'd wrapped himself up in his cloak like a big, brown cat, I could still see one of his feet poking out and, quite typically, it was bare. I wrapped myself up in my cloak, too, finding it quite cozy, and belatedly realized I'd mimicked him. We didn't speak. Greg came to sit by the fire as well, straight-backed and stern and looking preoccupied. Wren and Tenny, two women I didn't know well, came to sit together on the couch, giggling like teenagers. They're both planning to graduate this February, after four years. One by one, everyone either left or accreted to the group on the couches by the fire. Kit asked us if we wanted any hot chocolate. She had a pot of it, a cast-iron cauldron on a swinging cast-iron hook, heating over the fire. The hot mug felt good on my hands, though I hadn't thought I was cold. I took a sip and tasted...well, chocolate, obviously, but something else, too. Some kind of spice?

"What'd you put in this, coffee?" asked Allen, of his chocolate. Kit paused for a moment to think.

"Yeah, some. Do you like it?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's good," he said appreciatively. Kit went back to ladling. I didn't think my chocolate tasted like coffee, though.

"Charlie, you want some?" she asked him, cordially. Charlie slowly came back from wherever it is he goes and shook his head.

"I'll stick with the cider," he explained. "It's the only time of year I get to drink any." Of course, the rest of the year the only cider on campus is hard, and he wouldn't buy it from the store. Kit shrugged, ladled out a last cup and handed it to Wren, and took her own up back to her seat. We all settled in by the fire, nine of us, counting Arther, Joanna, and one of the Ravens.

"Hey, my chocolate's hot!" exclaimed Wren, startled.

"Well, yeah," said Tenny.

"No, I mean spicy. Like cayenne or chilli. I like it...but I don't taste coffee."

"I don't taste chillis or coffee," I admitted. "I taste...something else." Wren and I traded cups and she told me I had cardamom in my chocolate, among other things. Hers was good, but tasted nothing like mine, other than the cocoa base. We all exchanged sips and discovered that everybody had a different flavor, although all the chocolate had come from the same pot.

"Nice trick," commented Allen, casually. Charlie sipped his mulled cider in thoughtful silence

 "I wish I had a spoon," Arther muttered to himself and then said, more loudly and to everyone else, "it's strange, I'm a yearling and I'm graduating. It's like I'm at this party twice."

"We're in a similar boat," Charlie told him, with an uncharacteristic openness. "We're all staff, but we're all graduates, too. Except for Greg."

"You were never a student here, Greg?" Joanna asked. She hadn't heard any of his story, I guess.

"I'm always a student here," Greg corrected her. "I just was never a novice or a candidate."

"He's always been the meditation teacher. The early masters found him and drafted him from some local meditation center," Charlie explained. "Closest thing to a monk they could find, I suppose."

"But you weren't a monk?" Raven asked. "Not formally, I mean?"

"I never took vows as a Buddhist monk, no," Greg clarified. Then, anticipating another question, he added "perhaps if I were Japanese, and living in Japan, I would have. But we have no tradition of monks as part of society here. I didn't want to shut myself up in a counter-cultural enclave. Of course, that's just what I've gone and done, anyway." He sipped his chocolate thoughtfully, peacefully. We were all quiet again for a bit.

"What's it like to be a graduate of this place?" asked Arther.

"Depends who you are," said Charlie, "And where you go. I like being of this place. But then, I came back. I like it here." I tried to imagine Charlie being anywhere else and couldn't. I tried to imagine this place without him in it and couldn't.

"It's not that bad," asserted Allen, "to leave here and be out in the world, as one of us. You'll have a different perspective on things, but of course as a Wiccan priest you're used to that already."

"I feel normal in this place," Arther admitted. "It's the first place I ever have." Quite an admission for a mildly bombastic sixty-eight-year-old. Or, maybe he's sixty-nine now. I'm not sure.

"That's true for a lot of us," said Charlie. I looked at him in surprise and he ignored me.

"But we're all different from each other and from everybody else," put in Allen, "though there are differences of different degrees and kinds. And at the same same time, we are all normal inside ourselves, though not everyone believes it. You learn to carry your personal normality with you. And when you can leave, then you can come back."

I never thought of it that way before. They always say that graduates have to leave, before beginning their candidacy, in order to prevent the community from becoming too insular, but Allen's comment suggests there could be something else, too.

"Kit, could I have some chocolate after all?" Charlie asked, holding out his, now empty, mug. Kit brightened in a way I'd never thought of her as dark, and ladled him out some chocolate with a sudden, subtle, girlish pride.

"It's good," he pronounced.

Gaultheria Procumbens (redberry wintergreen)

"What flavor is it?" Raven asked.

"Fennel and--maybe wintergreen?" He did not offer anyone a taste and nobody asked. "Gaultheria or Betula?"

"Betula," Kit replied. "It's bigger." Charlie nodded his approval. Gaultheria I have not heard of, but Betula is a birch tree, and both yellow birch and black birch smell like wintergreen if you scratch the twig bark with your thumbnail. Hence birch beer, I'm sure. I keep forgetting that Kit knows that sort of thing, but of course she keeps the herbarium stocked. And of course, she was once his student.

I looked around the room and tried to imagine not seeing this place anymore for a while. Of course, I'm moving in the other direction--farther in instead of farther out. Pretty soon, in just a few months now, new yearlings will be coming in and I'll be the one of the senior students and supposedly know what I'm doing. I'm transitioning, too. But what would it be like to leave and know that the place

Whale and Mariner

might change irrevocably while you were gone, and to know that way might lead on to way, as in the poem, and not bring you back? I looked around at the vines curling along the ceiling, the guttered, but currently unlit candles everywhere, the big brass vase of dried flowers and seedheads spreading themselves like a vegetable peacock at the back of the room...I could hear the fire crackle and I could hear, farther away, the tinkle of the fountain in the Green Room where certain fish spend the winter. So many weird but utterly familiar things--the rocking llama, its polished driftwood mouth curled into a sneer, the andirons with suns and dragons on them, the old milk carton of books currently filled with titles on sex magic and which nobody gave a second thought to at all...And, I just noticed it, above the fireplace on the mantle, are little sculptures made of what look like small sticks glued or

Camel and Hump

tied together, some with painted paper mache skins. There is a whale eating a man on a raft, a camel with a crooked hump that looks like it's meant to come off, a wrinkled-looking rhinoceros, a leopard only half-spotted with a man kneeling beside it, and an elephant with a crocodile pulling its trunk. And there were more, thirteen in all. I counted them.

The whale made me think of Jonah, of course, but I couldn't make sense of the others. But I kept looking at them, as the others talked, until suddenly the light-bulb turned on in my head.

"Oh!" I said, then I think I blushed because everyone was looking at me all of a sudden.

"Just so," agreed Kit, who had been watching me.

[Next Post:Monday, October 28th: Interlude]