Cupcakes

Friday was the last day of school. Forever. Thursday night was the big send-off, with a big dinner and dance.

Classes at Pacifica are divided into two tracks so that the professors don't have huge classes and there's time for everyone to participate in discussions. E track would have classes one week, and G track the next. The only time we ever met is at the summer sessions, when for once we have class together. It's rather like two cats meeting. There's a bit of bristling and while eventually they agree to live in the same house, they liked it better before. This isn't just how it was for our year, apparently.

Our "E-3" cohort has been very close from the first quarter. As I told one of our professors at the dinner, while almost all of us are introverts, we also have Shannon. Shannon is an actress and a goddess-mother type who wears bright clothes and lots and lots of bling and whose laugh you can hear all the way across campus. She has inspired most of the women to brighter clothing and more jewelry, and this last quarter we all sprouted feathers in our hair thanks to her.

She also inspires us to more expressive behavior when we are together. At the dinner, the emotion of our last time together combined with the exultation of being DONE made us a little crazy. We toasted each other, and then we started pounding the table and calling each of the professors over to our table in turn, where we toasted them and thanked them and hugged them and cried a little (and so did most of them). Then the E-2s all stood up and held up their glasses and shouted "E-3 WE LOVE YOU!" and so we had to stand up and toast them back (we do love and admire the folks coming after us a lot). All in all, a rowdy time.

Meanwhile, across the room, the Gs sat silent. I felt rather sorry for them.

Then it came time for the class gifts to the school. The G-3s donated a gorgeous hand-carved mask - I believe it was of Dionysos - but didn't say anything else. Then we got up and presented ours: a statue of Hermes, mounted on a large rock Sharon got out of a river and carved with our initials and a design with the tree of life in the center, the alchemical symbol for Hermes (the trickster god of communication with whom we have become very familiar in our writing), a Celtic design border, and a quote from Jung: "Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks within, awakens." Sharon and her daughter designed this and she and Gay also made us all t-shirts and book bags with the design on it. So then we gave Patrick, our department head, one of the t-shirts. Then Kathie, our poet laureate, got up and recited this poem by a former Poet Laureate of the USA:

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires tailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.


Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.


Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.


In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Which perfectly encompasses my school experience.

Then we danced. At the end of the night we all - and we got the Gs to participate at last! - were on the stage of the auditorium singing "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey at the top of our lungs, another perfect summation of our experience.

Friday was quiet. We still had class, but the afternoon was given over to hearing some of each other's writings, and then the inevitable sharing circle - for which the Es and Gs separated, Patrick taking the Gs and the Es remaining with Chrissie, who was our teacher for our very first class and now our very last class. We were subdued now (I wonder if the Gs finally became exuberant?) and mostly shared memories of our first time on campus. Shannon finally broke through and went around the circle naming every person and what she saw in them, so after that it went more to appreciation. But still quiet, except for the one person who had always remained on the edges who now sobbed and sobbed and finally burst out "I love all of you!"

We then hung out together, not saying much, for another couple of hours before people started leaving. Most of us were still around that evening and went out for dinner, but we were still subdued. The letdown had begun.

The next morning I got up and said goodbye in turn to Morgaan, who got in her old beatup "Baja truck" and headed for Mexico, and then Jet the outlaw biker rabbi, who roared off in her black leather and silver jewelry on her Harley to Ojai. No one else of those remaining was up yet, so I wandered down to the beach - I always started all my trips with a walk on the beach - and wept for a bit.

Then Emma found me and we walked back up Linden Avenue, got take-out to eat on the road, and headed back to the hotel to get our luggage and catch the shuttle to LAX. She was in need of caffeine so we stopped in at the new cupcake place where she got what she said was the best Mayan Mocho espresso ever, and we both bought a gluten-free chocolate with mocha frosting cupcake for the road. We got to the shuttle, finagled seats together, and settled down for a really wonderful talk. Emma is half my age almost and half a foot taller than me but we are so alike it's actually a bit scary. She has a German shepherd :)

We toasted each other with our cupcakes and ate them. It was the perfect ending to my time at Pacifica.