The Holly King, Part 13

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Mashipan falls from the Church's graces, Carson's Christmas abruptly ends, as does his movie (though less so), and also this story.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

Roving, peaceful shots of old Mashipan, the mountain priory, under snow. A Mashipanite shovels a walk. A lingering shot of the complex from its nearby cemetery. All of the stones have crosses on them, some elaborate, some plain wood. Carson narrates.

“Peter’s funeral was where my brother met Father Archibald Solano. He and Peter knew each other from seminary. Father Archibald had just assumed the role of abbot to Mashipan. A monastery for roughly a hundred years. Then the church gave up on it, leasing it as a sanitarium. When a cure for TB was found, it was abandoned. Available to the first disenfranchised, disgusted man of God who saw it.”

Video footage of Solano on a Swedish talk show in the still hip, but strongly revolutionary early 1970s. He is finely, but austerely dressed in a white and gold clerical gown and the host, longhaired, bearded in a blue suit with wide lapels, is achingly serious.

“Mashipan,” Solano says to his interviewer, “is not the first time nor will it be the last time that a community of human beings grows out of their supernaturally shared belief that their own humanity is responsible for the suffering of the world, on the one hand. But is, on the other, the relief of that suffering. Many souls, acting as one.

“Where we are different, at Mashipan, is that we are refugees, eager for the monasticism of the earliest apostles, but which does not require any allegiance to or patronage from a crippling, denuded, oblivious paternal church. A church that is a manifestation of the order of things which needs overthrowing.”

The host can’t help asking, “Then what would say is the difference between your order and for example, the Red Brigade?”

Solano, dignified, grins. Pleased to answer. “Mashipan is devoted to two things: aiding and alleviating the poor and oppressed of their earthly burdens. And two, Christian fellowship. Fellowship in the name of Jesus Christ, involving Christian faith, though not necessarily allied to a given church or essential belief. Other than the continuation of its own fellowship under Christ.”

"By historical standards," Carson says, "Archibald Solano was in the right place at the right time to be a questioning, near heretical monk. Still under the sway of Vatican II, which attempted to open the church to the modernity swirling all around it in the early '60s, someone in the church hierarchy granted Solano  permission to re-access Mashipan and steer it accordingly. It may have also been a way to grant him his own mountaintop banishment."

Back to Humphrey, speaking to Carson.

“When Peter died, I was consumed with a new emptiness. Not only his physical absence, but also the absence of clues he provided when he was alive, ways to think and revelations on how to feel. One of them being Solano and Mashipan. I approached Father Archibald, met him, started correspondence with him. Mashipan was already operating eight or nine years.

“What do you hope out of a monastic life, he’d ask. Am I clear on the idea of it as a journey rather than an escape? As a service to others rather than a retreat from them? And I’d answer yes. Yes to all that. And he, Father Archibald, I won’t say patiently – he doggedly called me on every one of my answers: what are you agreeing to? Tell me what you are agreeing to.

You can hear Carson ask: “Did you know yourself?”

Humphrey nods. “I did. The entire time. It took shape as a game. I had started asking him out of grief, for Peter, and my loneliness. I decided that if this man really wants to know why a willfully destitute, overly educated – “ he twirls his fingers up past his head like smoke “ – fucked in the head son of the upper class is alternately begging for, and intellectually playing with, the limits to his theology, I would lay it on him. If he chickens out, the whole thing was wrong to begin with.

“So I wrote him a letter that said...:”

Cut to a new shot of Humphrey wearing glasses and standing, with one foot forward reading his letter. He rocks on his heels as he reads, with more animation than he’s shown sitting down. The punk on the hood of the car throwing stones, reawakened.

“...Even the most ascetic hermit, the nakedest, hungriest, unwashed man in a crevice in the desert – in fact he especially – has an ego bulging in proportion to the extent of his asceticism. In other words, the ego of the dirty naked little mute in the desert is greater than all others because he says ‘I will make myself so worthless to prove my devotion. I will handicap myself, God, I will give up everything, even You, to prove my devotion.’

“A submissive to God stays in her home, goes through all that the priests command: marriage, all the weekly services, charity, confession, and casts her eyes humbly to the cross nailed on her wall at night, waiting. Waiting to join her God. Does God want submission?

“What I do not propose is a blind following of orders and papal utterances. My devotion is to synthesizing and then dispensing the quality of love and compassion that is said to come from God. But without diluting it one second to worshiping or even mentioning that God.

“What I propose, with my monasticism, is to be responsible for stopping my line in the progeny of my family. Stop it dead. Stop it from infiltrating society, insinuating its vein of accumulated awfulness into a world that is already choking on millions of others. Do what I can to improve that world, just a little, by my absence. Exist fully as the unexpected outlier. The random particle of chaos that does good. But from a long, unstaining distance.”

When he’s finished reading he lowers the letter and looks through the camera to Carson. You can see his chest rise, breathing.

Back to Humphrey, seated, recording his face as it evaluates his younger brother’s reactions. Whose voice you can then barely make out.

“You told me once your intention was to cut off this limb, your limb, in our family tree and end the dysfunction there. No children to pass it along. But there have been many many men and women like you. Hermits and suicides. Through the centuries. And yet here we are. Still.”

Humphrey leans back in his chair, his angled face sloping in consolation and grave attention. His feathery eyelashes blink once or twice. The moment hangs and descends. “You’re right. Engaging with atonement – striving to be at one with the divine – is not new. It still needs to occur in every generation.

“I know my atonement is presumptuous. Maybe even preposterous. And violent. Ad absurdum. And that letter was written along time ago.

“Still," Humphrey says, shifting in his chair, "the trick, Father Archibald eventually said to me, after months and months of not hearing from him, is not to make the atonement destructive. Or constructive. Just neutral. So that the intention of atonement lifts and the act of atonement remains. This leapt off the page at me. We were arriving at the same harmonious thought, from my time squatting and hating, to his simultaneous war with but love for his church, across lives and experiences and continents unknowable to one another and yet converging on the same source of beatitude.”

Over images of his brother performing chores and the necessary small jobs required of life in a monastery, Carson says: “When my brother says he wrote the founder of Mashipan, Father Archibald, letters of presumption, he doesn’t say that Father Archibald also found something in Humphrey’s words that fit his model of Mashipan.

“When my brother arrived, the order of monasticism was still intact, with a daily schedule, a series of liturgical activities, maintenance and chores, and one or two programs of Christian ministry. My brother refused to participate in any of them. Older brothers and men of God were astounded not just by his laziness or apostasy, but with Father Archibald’s willingness to permit someone like him among the pious, without any other duties expected from him. Father Archibald waited until my brother found a way to fit in.

Clips of Humphrey tuning, plucking haltingly, perhaps not so well because it looks difficult, a theorbo in the refuge of his cell (I had to look that up).

“His solitary atonement disappeared. Instead, my brother assigned himself curatorial duties. Gathering, archiving art and music. All of which, in its day, was meant to be devotional. But whose beauty and coherence he thought was transcendant. Whose sorrows or joys would no longer be expressed through Christianity. But could be experienced like art everywhere else. Expressions of reverence. Not to a diety but to the condition of the universe.

"Canticles honoring the Virgin became songs honoring the wonder of biological, carnal motherhood. Motets exulting the death of Jesus became fragile, compassionate songs of mourning and pity.”

Humphrey continues. “In retrospect I can see how disruptive I might have been, even to men who followed a very liberal, revolutionary priest like Solano to live here. They and I had much in common politically, morally, but the shell of their faith separated us. Or me from them.

“I would tease them to look at the eucharist. See? A tasteless white wafer. A body has tasty fat and blood and flesh. Or goad them into argument, like, why is loving kindness or forgiveness the only vehicle to an afterlife? Or even, why is there a redundancy like afterlife at all? I must have been very annoying. Childish.

“And yet Solano said nothing. To any of us, about this.”

Carson suggests: “Like Ingmar Bergman’s god of silence.”

Humphrey, it seems, doesn’t share his brother’s taste for cinema. He smiles, generously. “That was Solano’s preference. No authoritative interference. Without banishing me, he doomed several brothers into questioning themselves, their faith, their choice of coming to Mashipan, which to many was a last clerical resort. Some even questioned their service under Christ.”

“And you?”

“His silence, as you put it, condemned me again towards that solitary nihilism I thought I escaped from with Peter. I was again on my way to living a dancing, foolish half life of only questioning, without mercy or leniency, and an all-consuming self regard. Fortunately I learned. An exquisite teacher.”

Over images of monastic life at Mashipan, monks and novices dining, at prayer, in the kitchen, raking leaves, reading, Carson adds: “Many of the brothers left. But many replaced them, notably women. And despite the heresies being entertained on the mountain, it was news of the presence of women, commingling, that upset the diocese.

“Meanwhile, as if an unspoken spell or virus crept among the order, monks like my brother began one by one discussing and petitioning Father Archibald for the freedom of direction and action they knew was occurring off the mountain, among the nonreligious.

“They were hearing about NGOs and other secular groups doing essentially the church’s work without need for or direction of the church. Or even government. Groups of lay people, atheists included, devoted to alleviating the burdens of the poor without the underpinnings of spiritual doctrine. Fundamental morality was all the inspiration required.

“They were discovering that even Father Archibald’s radically stretched Christianity was getting in the way.

Humphrey in his cell: “I – one day we found ourselves arguing whether it was better that the contemplation of life resulted in compassionate service to others or the creation of art. And for some reason, after years of terrible arguments among us, in which brothers would break down or leave or even renounce their faith, for some reason that one argument cast a pall over us that lasted months.

“It was as if we had exhausted ourselves in argumentation. Our critical thinking was enervated.”

“Why?”

“Because, we had reached the point where we were questioning the very reason we were together. Productive contemplation requires peace and separation. Solicitude. Especially if you’re contemplating life through the teachings and example of Jesus. That is such an exquisite filter to think through, you need peace and solicitude just to approach any kind of understanding. Even I, poking the other brothers, never really advocated dispensing with Jesus. Just the doctrines built around him.

“Except that in reality, living via the teachings and example of Jesus means deliberately adding a burden to everything you do, especially contemplation. In contemplation, or call it prayer or meditation, you don’t want anything in the way. That’s exactly what you’re trying to overcome: anything that stands in the way between you and perfect living silence. 

“So the question became, why contemplate at all? Why sit up here, away from society if the precious thinking is not limitless and leads nowhere? Isn’t it better to either dedicate yourself to helping others or creating art than find the right Christian or spiritual impulse from your contemplation? Retreating is not advancing. These were the very reasons Father Archibald called to us. And this dynamic was being hampered – hamstrung – by a religion locked in nostalgia for a view of the universe that was already 2000 years old.

“When we realized this, we didn’t think oh this is terrible! In fact I’d say we thought it was a relief to identify one of the causes of sorrow in life and begin the work to circumvent it. When sister Yvonne decided to take off the cross around her neck and still desire living here as a base for her work, just not as a bride to Jesus, but as a woman, that was the start.”

Photographs of Archibald Solano in the pulpit. Reading and writing at his desk from his enormous ministerial chair. And one final one of Solano, with help from Humphrey and two other younger, stronger monks, heaving the chair into an enormous bonfire in the courtyard of Mashipan.

Carson: “After too many years of discontent and discouragement from the church, Father Archibald began to wrench his community from its see. It is a long, heretical and administrative process. But the day eventually came.”

Humphrey says, “When that letter arrived, turning Mashipan over to him, to us, it was an overcast day, in summer. Father Archibald had us all together in the courtyard and he read it – he and we were not surprised it finally arrived – but after reading the indifferent, formal termination, he added in his next breath, ‘And the earth said welcome.’ That felt like freedom.”

Workers at Mashipan carry crates and boxes as well as sagging, heavy looking rug rolls wrapped in paper to a staging area near the edge of the mountain. A transom has been rigged to hoist these items down to a loading area a thousand or more feet below. 

“My brother tells me that even before Father Archibald took ill, the community was already carefully making their way into a future where no one religion was adequate. Where, in fact, religion itself was problematic.”

From a balcony or loft, we look over a long high sanctuary toward its chancel and apse. Along its length, an abundance of heavy red, purple and yellow insulating drapery. Red carpet runs down the middle of what would be the nave, but the only pew is being carried away by two of the workers.

"The new mission Mashipan has found for itself is beyond ecumenical. One the one hand, its creativity in working with youth, in working to alleviate poverty little by little, in putting itself near those who are suffering is its strongest expression.

On spiritual matters, it is groping toward a reverence for the sacred that is not bound by anything other than its presence. The sacred moment is what the Mashipan community is after. And it hopes to keep a space for sacredness to perpetually fill in, the way an eternal flame is perpetually stoked. And one of the ways it tries to do that is by eliminating traditional icons of the religious. Icons which, as the thinking goes, trigger associations of the sacred which may be a step away from the actual sacred moment."

Humphrey walks through the snow, carrying a thermos to the men working near the obelisk. From a distance we see them put down their tools and meet him, taking cups and happily watching over the coffee pour. Tilting up, we see the cross is carefully, oh so carefully, lifting off its mount by a swarm of ropes.

"Having attended some of their lectures, though, I have to admit that they are still finding their way to useful inspiration. Fire and brimstone sermons may make the sacred sound crazy, but they are at least interesting."

A prolonged wide shot of a forest at snow-filled twilight. Then, cutting in, the bough of an evergreen bobs with snow and a spectral black takeoff of a bird. A ravine, overseen by hunched trees, seems even more still when you notice it’s a frozen stream. The wind pulls powdery snow from tree tops across the haze of an overcast dimming sun.

“I always meant to visit my brother at Christmas. I thought I’d do my interview with him and then experience what I thought would be a quiet seclusion of Christmas at Mashipan. In fact, when I got there I realized I couldn’t even be sure whether they celebrated Christmas at all."

Shots of Humphrey’s empty room and kept bed. “The third day I was at Mashipan, it was Christmas Eve. My brother was gone when I woke up and gone for most of the day. I didn’t know where he was, but we had covered most of what I wanted us to talk about, so I didn’t think about it too much. I took walks with my camera."

Shots of the men and women of Mashipan working, walking, reading. Another shot of the cemetery, cloistered among trees and overlooking a turgid gray snow cloud covering, and perhaps sprinkling snow on, the valley below.

"I was looking forward to filming and maybe participating in the Christmas service."

Down in the New Mashipan basilica. People busily fit hundreds of little sconces and chandeliers and votives with candles, adjust electric lights in the rafters, and, shoelessly, vacuum the huge red carpeting that forms the sacred heart of the sanctuary.

"I was certain that the service would beautiful. Perhaps even attaining sacredness. And I was especially looking forward to shooting my brother in attendance. That was more or less the shot I wanted all along. Why I was here. And then this happened.”

Humphrey leaning in his doorway, hands in pockets, seeming a little irritable, a little rushed, a little tired. Carson's voice. "I'm sorry, can you ... I'm ready."

Humphrey, after a patient inhale: "Alright. Take two. The news is I'm going to have to send you down to the valley. There's a room set aside for you. You can stay as long as you like, take what ever pictures and video you like."

Long hold on Humphrey, as if he's waiting for the camera to stop. "Because .... " Carson leads him, but Humphrey won't go there.

"That's enough. You should go. I have to go. I'm sorry. Someone is waiting outside to take you down." Humphrey turns and leaves the doorway empty. Carson lingers on it a while.

"Like I said earlier, I was surprised to find out that Father Max had come to Mashipan a few years ago. And I hoped I could meet him. When Humphrey said he wasn't well, I didn't know that he was in the Mashipan infirmary, dying."

Cut to the Mashipan grounds. Dusk is settling, fighting back against the grainy limits of Carson's video. First a shot looking up at Humphrey's room, which is dark. Then panning down to meet Humphrey walking towards the camera. Hands still in pockets, Humphrey strides with purpose, withdrawn. He walks briskly past Carson who quickly pans to keep up with his passing brother. And then changes his mind peremptorily reaching for and hugging Carson. The camera swings up and around as Carson returns the hug. "I'm sorry," Humphrey says, very closely, the mic on the camera jostling. "Next year, ok?"

"Of course," Carson says. The camera swings back down when Humphrey lets go. When Carson steadies it, we see Humphrey continuing away, up a path to another building near by. A little wooden sign out front says Infirmary. Carson holds the shot as Humphrey yanks open the door and enters, closing it behind him. The camera timidly searches up the face of the building, finding a window with warm yellow light. A grainy, smudged figure steps gently past the window.

Voices, a congregation, singing "Silent Night." The New Mashipan basilica. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the enormous candlelit space, ribboned and billowing with colorful wall hangings and drapes. Faces of people singing, following the words, glancing at one another. Children on the floor, some squirming. A woman, eyes solemnly ahead as if listening to the words she's singing. She turns to the camera, to Carson, to us, and smiles.

Outside the basilica, whose windows also shine from the inside. There's just enough light to sense its size, the forest nearby and the snow. And while the congregation continues singing, the camera tilts up, past the trees, up the cold crags of the mountain to the faintly lit monastery where Humphrey resides.

Fade.

Blackness. Sound of Humphrey’s voice. “Sure, one more question. Go ahead.” Fade in on Humphrey, still in the chair, being interviewed.

“What are your thoughts about Christmas?”

Humphrey’s taken aback a little. Carson’s question seems preposterous to him, with even some room for humor.

“Well ...” he starts, then apparently swallows a joke. “You’re still making this documentary about Christmas. Ok. Christmas – the time of the year around Christmas – seems the perfect time for reflection. And maybe a little more than that. Some fun and partying. Why not?"

Carson waits for more to come. "Is that it?"

Humphrey realizes he's not going to get away with just that. He takes a moment. “As an event, a dedicated holiday, well, this is what I think: I think about what it must have felt like to soldiers in the barracks of Rome, every year watching more and more people begin to celebrate the life of an executed Jewish political prisoner. And find their own belief about Mithras and his resurrection, become less meaningful. Less inspiring. The other thing people are talking about and finding inspiration in, that belief that excites other people so much starts to seem more relevant.

"I think about the quandry they must have gone through, the anger or incredulity they must have felt that at the same time of year they dedicated to Mithras, people were celebrating something else. More and more. At some unnoticed time, in some forgotten year the last few people who cared to celebrated Mithras got together one last time and never did so again. I'm afraid that’s what I think of during Christmas."

Another Humphrey pause. His fingers then fiddle with something on his chest, the mic. "Is that it? Are we – " Off goes the mic with a click. Black wipes across the screen.

Then, snow falls over the pines on Mashipan's ledge of the world. The snow falls without direction or drive. It falls on the garden, it falls on the stone benches and on the workers at the top of the scaffolding carefully ratching chains around the base of the cross which are hooked to cradling lines running up to a crane whose long yellow arm is grounded to a four wheeled machine waiting to lift and gently remove the cross from the top of the promontory.

*          *          *

Even after I turned off the DVD player, I felt Carson’s movie linger in the apartment. I was hungry, but didn't want anything. I decided not to form any critical decisions about his movie yet. Then again, I didn't know when I'd see him again. I felt a little embarrassed, for myself and for Carson, that someone would spend so much effort weighing the effects of religion on a holiday, especially Christmas. I'm not very religious myself.

Still, I felt edgy, a little dislocated, and really didn't want to ask why. The Bangalorean heat in my apartment moved me from the couch to my open doorway. Outside my garden apartment, the green of the shrubs and trees and the shroud of rain pouring down seemed like a separate, uncontrollable reality I could walk right into.

I knew I had to work and glanced at my watch. The hour was getting late, but the date, which didn’t matter to me before, grabbed my attention. It was June 23. I’d missed the summer solstice and in fact, I, or we, were already heading down the long long long fragrant path toward Carson’s darkness and delight, a winter future already underway. I ran my finger along the dripping edge of an ivy leaf.

The end /

Mithraeum (temple to Mithras), Ostia, Italy

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Start The Holly King here

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 12

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Humphrey describes his experiments in squalor, the priest who helped lead him out of it, and what their relationship led to.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

“We can stop....”

Humphrey raises his hand, peaceably – he doesn’t mind. He resumes.

“There had to be ... I had to put myself through..." he searches for the words. "Public excoriations. Standing up and cutting myself, or just walking over to a wall and with great intensity smashing my head against it. Never when I was alone – I would commit these things when I knew others were watching. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. It didn’t interest me. I was on a lot of amphetamines, I was on early forms of meth, but the clarity of the decision to do something to myself at a given moment ... I can still achieve that. So I don't think the drugs ... they probably only speeded up the decisiveness."

“For example, this person, this young guy who had just shown up, was telling this story, showing off his bona fides to the others, made eye contact me. And I grabbed a fork and holding that eye contact, into the palm of my hand it went.“

“You did that.”

Humphrey nods, dispassionately. “He got weirded out. Stepped back. Laughed. I held up my hand and flicked the fork at him with my fingers. It was ... dumb."

Over a closeup to his right palm, searching for the scars, Humphrey continues. "Except for the response it generated in me. I realized later, was: that wasn’t very pure. That wasn't real. It was affect, then effect. And I was really pleased with that epiphany. I felt as though I actually owned something. For the first time.

“They must have thought you were crazy. Dangerous crazy.”

“Some were scared. A few wanted me to fuck off. Some decided I was just the evening’s entertainment. But there was a visceral understanding among the group of what I was, just a fucked up creature who didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t steal or break any other social bond, so I was tolerated.

“But from then on, I wanted to find that purity. A physical structure of hate. I turned it into a trial.” He raises his large, unshaking hand like a pointed wedge. “Find that narrow line between hate for society of any level, groups, people, and still maintain a passive disconnection for those around you. And be vigilant about it. I wanted to be alive with execration. But not alone. And the drugs – they were getting in the way.

“As for the others – if they wanted to act against me, or use me, that was their prerogative. But the engagement wouldn’t come from me. I wanted to see how long that would last. And not go away by myself. If I did, I always knew it would be to kill myself.

“After awhile, this fragile, blank composure took over,” Humphrey says.

photo © by eschlabach

Quiet images of industrial despair: a dead bird on the floor of a wide sad room with a broom dropped and abandoned nearby; shears of white plaster peeling from the brick wall of a hallway; gray-white matted pigeon poop on a railing; water lapping against a knuckled pier. The dead, empty spaces of abandoned buildings that look busier with destitution than when they were working and swept everyday.

“I took this alcove, a closet really, and I would sit at the edge of this place, at the edge of my own murk and just watch. The place was always in twilight, echoing. I placed this mental shroud over myself: I wanted to feel dead – pretend that I was gone and see what the world, this space, would be without me. This went on for days and was pretty thrilling.

"I watched these two men – boys – stoke up a rivalry, work each other up. I liked watching it develop. It had a featureless, undisciplined feel to it. Wandering in the air between them like electricity and carrying them with it until they eventually collided. 

“I’d watch them over days, even weeks, months. They would go through loud, unbelievable announcements like ‘I’ll do anything for you.’ ‘You’re my bro.' My this or that. And they would compete with put downs and the number of others who would agree or join in on the put downs. They were the center of the group that way, the passion of the group. Nothing happened that didn’t circulate around them. And a few times a year, it would explode. A terrible bloody very intimate, carnal fight. Pounding, wrenching, kicking. Broken faces and hands. Head wounds. I remember the sound of it, the crunching and thudding and actually enjoying it. It was like theater.

“Then one would win and yet some how the other one would be the leader. The other one, the winner, would be shunned, especially by the girls. In their inverted world, that was order. The boys didn’t care. Their excitability was exhausted for a while, and then they’d just begin it all over again. The rise and fall of the seasons.

While Humphrey tells this, the images of industrial decay return, their emphasis shifting. A patient drip from a pipe that feeds a thin line of mildew on the floor. Dowels of weeds poke through cement. A hallway steadily being reabsorbed by vines jamming through a partially closed door, mold on the ceiling, wisteria easing itself down from high broken windows, moss in the wall cracks, tree branches reaching in.

“Finally, there was this time, it was late summer, when a few of the boys decided they were going to make a bomb or some such. They went to find and steal the ingredients. Some of the girls headed out on their own excursion. Heading to a concert in the desert, I think. I stayed. No one asked me to come, which was fine.

“A girl who came and went, a small girl, dirty, and probably not mentally sound came back where we were after months of being away. Everyone was gone, I was alone, for whatever reason. It might have been raining. Sitting inside this alcove, this indentation in a wall, part closet, part cave. She seemed even more lost than before, in bad shape. Cuts on her forehead, bruises on her neck and jaw, and, I found later, her forearm was swollen, with a bit of bone poking through the skin, as if she tried to protect herself.

“She had climbed the stairs to our floor, crossed this enormous space we had taken over with a shuffling light step, as if she were moving only to keep from falling over and made her way to this small filthy alcove where I was sitting. She didn’t really acknowledge me, but I got the feeling she knew I was in there.

Other photos come up while Humphrey continues, different in scope and feel. Not documenting a brother's squalor, but perfunctory. Evidence. Sad, flash-lit police photos of the girl's body in Humphrey's alcove.

“I sat there the whole time, even when she laid down next to me. I sensed right away what was going on and it seemed perfectly reasonable to let her die like that. I even allowed myself to get up and pull over some cardboard and a crappy blanket no one was using to cover her up because – and I was very rational about it – she was using me as a vigil. To help her on out of here.

"When it was over and I knew it was over, I walked down and went to the police."

Carson, off camera. "That's how I found you."

"That's how you found me."

Carson over a walking shot of a city sidewalk, broken and bursting from tree roots: "That's not the complete story. Humphrey actually first approached two priests who had been working in the area recently with a shelter, Peter Giles and Max Lincoln. And together they went to the police, who later found a huge amount of heroin in her system. And the injuries she sustained were days old. The police sealed up the warehouse, and the kids, Humphrey included, moved elsewhere."

Meanwhile, a picture of a man in jeans and black sweater among a sidewalk encampment of street kids. Like a teacher forgiven for his attempts at hipness, the man lays on the sidewalk, propped on an elbow, his back against a wall papered with torn bills, petting one of the kids’ pit bulls. He is surrounded by filthy clothes, and a farrago of debris and personal items, camped in their camp. The only one standing, shielding a match from the wind, a little outside the camp, is pierced and filthy Humphrey.

Carson zooms patiently on the man visiting the streetkids. “By the time I met Peter, then Father Peter,” Humphrey says, “I was ... aglow ... in this perfect kiln I made for myself. I was convinced I'd achieved that perfect, narrow line of hate, poised with hate. I had seen and relished what life would be like after I was dead. He didn’t try to soften it or dilute any of it. I remember congratulating myself that this handsome, interesting man was actually impressed with this state I made for myself. Maybe he was.

“But inch by inch he led me somewhere else, where ...” he pauses, retreating with a stiff, restrictive pull of his lips and a slight thrust of a wettening tongue, easing the words out one by one, “I was so vain with what I thought I’d done on my own and so eager to show this man what I could do with it. I stayed out on the street, longer even than I wanted to. And every time I'd see him, that resolve just chipped away. Rather than being this body without any kind of sentience, Peter led me to grab a hold of that fire with both hands. And pat it down, like ....” his face loosens slightly, a self-conscious raise of the eyebrows, “.... in his words, Prometheus."

A short video image, slowed to a mesmerizing crawl, in the poor, orangey candle light of a sanctuary somewhere. Peter and Humphrey, side by side. Peter looking watchfully as Humphrey, short hair mushrooming from his head, leans forward, head down, arms triangulated on his knees. Peter runs his fingers over Humphrey’s head in a single petting motion. The touch sends Humphrey out of his crouch, back against the pew they are sitting in, a smile opening on his face.

Carson narrates: “This is one of the few images he’s shown me. He probably thinks it says what he wants said about their relationship. It goes without saying that Peter figures prominently, intimately, in my brother’s life. Not the least being a guide wire to where he is right now. I only found this one that I took.”

“I don’t have much else at my disposal to describe Humphrey’s relationship with Peter. He declines over and over again, and I’m often left to my imagination. This may seem like self-censorship on his part, but I think it’s more like preservation. He likes to hold on to things. Participate in their weight.”

A quiet moment of monastical light in Humphrey’s Mashipan room. Then a slow pan to four crosswise photographs on the wall: two of Humphrey and Peter together, top and bottom. And to the left and right, two pictures of men not Humphrey or Peter.

“Despite my brother’s circumspection, though, I should be more clear here. Especially since I met Peter and visited the two of them occasionally.

“To me, Humphrey and Peter enjoyed one of those rare charismatic relationships you find in a book or a movie. At the time, Peter was a Jesuit priest, though an openly gay one at that. And involved in a long time relationship with Father Max Lincoln. While Peter was working his way into Humphrey, Humphrey was doing the same to Peter.”

Carson slides the camera across the wall to a photo of Father Max: dark, sharp and kind like Anthony Perkins. “Together, Max and Peter had started the outreach that led them into the lives of Seattle runaways and squatters which eventually led Peter to Humphrey. And away from Max.

We slide across to the fourth photo, an older, goldenbrown, shiny headed man with thick eyelashes and glasses. “And from there, it led Humphrey to Father Archibald Solano, the founder of Mashipan."

The bottom photo on Humphrey’s wall is a photograph of Peter relaxing on a tidy midcentury mustard couch, his legs on a glass coffee table, reading. Behind is a wall of books. Humphrey, his head on Peter’s lap, sleeps with a book on his chest.

“As with any new relationship, Humphrey was dazzled by anything associated with Peter. Especially his faith. For a little while he enjoyed, even accepted I think, the pageantry of the liturgy. He never missed a mass Peter led. The depth of Catholic theology amazed him. But just as quickly, he developed a preference for early Christian apocrypha, Gnostic writings, Neoplatonism. Anything which challenged or was banished from Roman orthodoxy.

“Which may have just been a way not to lose himself entirely. He was vigorously devoted to whatever ideas Peter had for ministry. Organic soup kitchens. Bedside readings in prison hospitals. Difficult return visits to the anarchists. But as Peter pulled Humphrey toward engagement, Humprhey led Peter to renunciation.”

Carson lingers on the top photo of Humphrey and Peter sitting on a rock, shirts off, vividly talking. Humphrey picks up where he left off.

“One of our favorite pasttimes was fine-tuning a plan, our mission. Waiting for a train, going up an elevator, one of us would say ‘convert derelict buildings into housing’, or ‘organic farm for shelters.’ “

“Did anything come out of this?”

For the first time, Humphrey grins, sentimentally. “One of us would get excited. And then usually it was me who’d look a little more closely into it.” And then reasserts himself. “And inevitably I’d find that these were being done already, or someone tried and it didn’t work. Maybe not in the church. Which usually was Peter’s point. To work them through the church. Which was not something I wanted to do. To do on behalf of the church. Any church.

“For one, the bureaucracy is monumental. And the church itself is prone to siphon for other purposes. But clearly, the church – his Church – would never allow the kind of partnership we had in mind, let alone enjoying in our home. And I didn’t particularly want to join Catholicism.

“He had gotten very good at accepting what he could from his church. And ignoring the rest. To me, the Catholic church was – “ he leans back into his chair. This is Humphrey’s favorite act of mischief, unveiled:  “I assigned my own anathema to the Catholic church.”

Carson waits to hear more – this is one of Humphrey’s thoughtful pauses – but has to ask, “Which was ...?”

“That for whatever ideals it professes, the church is antithetical to them by its structure. That it exists as an institution is eternally contrary to itself and thereby abominable.”

Another wayward grin, more self-conscious, reflective. “Peter could tolerate a lot.”

“Whatever their plans were," Carson says, turning back again to the four photos on Humphrey’s wall, moving in with long steady zoom, "they never had a chance to enact them. Peter died five years or so after my brother left the street. He had been a voracious smoker and died of emphysema.

“The passage of time muddles things even further. On this trip I learned Father Max eventually made the move to Mashipan himself, a few years ago, with Humphrey’s urging. Humphrey maintains this has been a platonic, working relationship. But together they started Mashipan’s juvenile mission. Which opened and expanded Mashipan for the first time down to the valley. On a wide, easily accessible meadow they built a retreat and sanctuary which has since become Mashipan's face to the world. They also work in prisons, established health and pregnancy clinics, worked in city shelters and delinquency halls, police gang units and provide pro bono legal help. Almost everything Peter and Humphrey talked to each other about."

Down in the valley, a shot first of an unassuming sign on the road: New Mashipan. Then, the gently rolling community of buildings and grounds under snow. Many more people are down here, just not in robes, many of them young, excited, gathered in small groups with backpacks and dufflelbags on the ground near a line of buses, as if they'd just been dropped off. Some of them wear red Santa hats. Two girls walk past Carson. Both smile and wave.

“It’s sad, but also a little reassuring to think that all this sprouted from Peter's death. Though how Mashipan got to this point is really where we're going here. In the meantime, I asked my brother if I could meet Father Max.”

Cut to Humphrey, listening to the request, demurring, nodding as if he should have known Carson would ask. “He’s not well. We’ll see.”



/continued

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Next: Christmas at Mashipan and the end.

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 11

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which Carson climbs to the Mashipan monastery to visit and film his brother Humphrey, who used to live in self-imposed seediness

 ◊      ◊     ◊

From above, Carson’s copper Volvo winds along the glittering black asphalt of a mountain road. It looks like the Rockies or the Sierra mountains, though it could be the Alps or the Cascades or the White Mountains for all I know.

A title card, in pointy gothic lettering: Christmas With My Brother.

“Like my sister, my brother Humphrey left the house after high school and really never looked back. And like my sister, he went through a period of shaking off every last remaining pedigree of my family. We didn’t hear from or see him for years.”

A few photographs of Humphrey, a lanky, blonde-haired boy, delicate, a little feminine with his arms crossed. But on his face a cold loathing.

“For all of Shannon’s excesses, Humphrey far exceed her. Addictions, lots of questionable sex, a plethora of drugs, riding herd with anarchists. This is a picture of Humphrey I took almost fourteen years ago, when I was in college and I tracked him down to a squatters camp in an abandoned warehouse in Seattle. He'd already spent about six years like this.”

The picture is blurry, but there’s Humphrey: leaner, tatted and pierced, no hair, waving a bottle of something, the only person standing in a graffitied, derelict structure. Surrounded by squatters indistinguishable from piles of clothes. Humphrey’s giving Carson the finger. He has a Rasputin-Manson mad ferociousness, with black little eyes and a gaunt, torn t-shirted nihilism.

“He told me he wasn't interested in what passed for a political structure, even among the anarchists. He was their untouchable Lord of Misrule, in charge of nothing, letting anyone screw him if they wanted but fighting with razor blades if prodded. Their wicker man. The most fucked up member in the group, willing to do anything if it meant cracking a bottle over his own head to prove it.

“I tracked him down because of a postcard he mailed, out of the blue, delivered to my dorm one year, for my birthday. It came from Seattle. I didn’t tell my parents. Instead, I got in touch with the Seattle police and with city social workers. After a few months, they had a pretty good idea which camp he was in.

“Strangely, right after this photograph, he and I started to become friends. But that’s another story.”

Back to the copper Volvo, pulling into a gravel turnout of the winding road, carved into the side of a mountain. A man in a long brown coat, like a friar’s cape, sits on a log, waiting. When Carson emerges alone from the car, putting the still-running camera on the roof, you can barely hear “No, not long,” before the two of them hug. Sasha, or anyone else for that matter, did not come along.

Carson grabs a bag and up a path they go. A last camera glance to his Volvo almost looks like an advertisement for a slacker car brand: shot low, his wreck sits against sky and wind and other snowy peaks in the distance, condemned to afterthought.

“Today, I’m visiting him in the mountaintop monastery he's lived in for nine years, Mashipan. It’s not the first time I’ve been here, just the second or third. There’s no parking up there. They usually bring guests up by shuttle but the driver wasn’t around so I drove up. We’re up so high that when I make a final check on my car, it feels like saying goodbye to the world.”

Carson carries his camera with him on the walk, occasionally swinging it toward Humphrey. The pupil-less eyes are gone. He has a weathered, handsome face with eye wrinkles that expand into a sympathetic sorrow like El Greco’s, wide ripples from a happy kerplunk of his eyes. This gaze is what he was hiding in the other photos. It seems it’s all he needs now, a scrutiny both pitiful and wildly awake.

Humphrey shakes off his younger brother’s inquisitive camera, stops talking in mid-sentence, making Carson drop the camera down to dangle over their boots. He keeps the sound going so that we get pieces of their conversation over the crunch of gravel: “ ... not going to be like some heartrending family confessional.” “No, god no,” Carson says. “At least I hope not.”

Over inserts of great granite peaks and his brother’s long-legged sturdy gait, accustomed to long hikes up a mountain, Carson explains: “My relationship with my brother, actually, is pretty good, better I think than the one I have with my sister.

“But Humphrey is determined to steer his involvement in this project himself. He will do anything to avoid being a part of memoirs, confessionals, or autobiographies because, he says, they are inherently narcissistic. Mendacious. Diversionary. From the truth, he means. He is not strictly an ascetic. Though I know it sounds that way.

“We’ve covered all this before, but now that he sees my camera, he reiterates his position on the long walk up. It’s his ideology he wants to share, not his personality. I tell him I’ll do my best, but as a person, he’s hard to avoid.”

Several boot steps up a pebbly and snow strewn route, around ice dusted boulders. A previous snow storm seems like old news. The path is often narrow and the way Carson keeps the camera by his leg, you expect a misstep any second: an out of balance scuffle and a pitch over the edge.

Where they’re going you’re not sure, until Carson raises the camera for a glimpse of a large, white stone complex dug into a shoulder of the mountain up ahead. Frosty blue sky shines above it.

“This is my brother’s home, Mashipan. A community on a rock at the top of the world.”

Letting his brother walk ahead, Carson pans slowly over the grounds: a three story main building, a few smaller stone buildings, a large fenced area with uniform snowed-over bumps: a sleeping garden. Black trellis archways, a snow cloaked statuary, and a shoveled walkway cuts across the grounds and heads to a boxwood patio with stone benches. The benches sit at the cusp of a slight fall off to another flat terrace that widens, then abruptly drops to the valley far below. On that terrace stands a huge graystone obelisk mounted with a wooden cross. The whole sculpture is latticed with scaffolding.

Up ahead, Humphrey greets a fellow Mashipanite with hands in prayer and a perfunctory bow. As Carson catches up, he passes faces: nodding, acknowledging, round and pink, long and withdrawn, white-haired or bald, smiling, indifferent, male and female.

“Having been here before, it’s good to see people I know. Most of them don’t seem to mind a kid with a camera. I already accept there are times and places for it. They have rules.”

We cut to an echoing arcade, following behind Humphrey. He climbs up narrow wooden stairs past two or three closed arched doors, then at the top swings his door open as we move past him into a small room with a bed, a table, a window. Carson carries us to the window, pushes it open with his hand, and there is the green and white mottling of pine forested mountains beyond. He tilts the camera down to where we just walked: the compound of Mashipan with its snow cleared walkways, benches, scaffolded cross, and robed people.

“The trick is working within the rules. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been allowed to bring my camera without Abbot Keating, Abbess Lamarcke and the prior Father Wilhelm agreeing to it.” The three of them stand together, robed in white or in the case of the prior, in beige, as solemn and weighty in their silence as a Greek chorus. “I’m allowed here in return for images of Mashipan for their website.”

“It’s not a trivial arrangement. They have never allowed a camera to visit before, but the changes underway at Mashipan, they tell me, make having one here for a few days worth the trouble. It turns out that my timing is pretty good, in more ways than one.”

Two workmen inch their way out of a side door of the main building carrying between them a wooden crate with “UGANDA” stenciled in red on one side. A third man squeezes past, balancing a rolled up carpet on his shoulder.

“Of course, I wouldn’t even be here, or even heard about Mashipan if my older brother didn’t live here.”

Humphrey in his cell, pulling off the long friar’s robe, hanging it up meticulously and pulling on a sooty wool sweater.  It’s a small room, big enough only for the bed, desk, a comfortable looking reading chair, a bookshelf. On the wall are the smears of color from drawings, I guess, by their nephews.

Carson also shows us, individually, a small collection of medieval icons inlaid with gold, hanging on another wall. And a little white ipod on a shelf. “Like my agreement with the abbot, I defer to my brother’s ground rules.”

“Over there,” Humphrey points, painting his finger along the floor and against the wall. With one hand, Carson dutifully unrolls his sleeping bag where Humphrey points. “And every morning, you can roll it up and keep it in the corner.”

“For instance,” Carson says, “I thought a cot was waiting for me, but Humphrey decided it would take up too much room.”

“You’ll be all right,” Humphrey says. “You’ll see.”

“Living arrangements aside, most of the rules basically involve his speaking and my listening. His answers to my questions are often on other topics he has in mind. Many hours were spent arguing about this.”

Unlike the footage of his mother and sister, Carson goes for more formal shooting styles with his brother. He cuts between one set up, a two shot, Frost-Nixon style, with the camera placed to the side and a second camera, trained just on Humphrey.

“I’d really like, Hump, to talk about – “

“Humphrey.”

“Ok, sorry. I think going back a little into your experience in Seattle helps give context to all this.”

Humphrey sits in his chair, sipping tea from a wide glazed cup.

“This,” Carson narrates, his taped self sitting still watching his brother sip tea, “is a Humphrey-sized pause. They occur frequently, coinciding purposefully with his breath, a generous period he gives himself to tend to his thoughts before dispensing them.”

Humphrey, concluding his sip, nods reflectively.

“This is just an example,” Carson adds. “I’ll edit most of them out, so don’t worry.”

“What I’ve learned here,” Humphrey offers, “is more to the point of your documentary.”

“Whatever you want to say,” Carson says on the tape. “Where ever you want to go.”

Another studious pause, over which Carson concludes himself: “Like the abbots, Humphrey has an ulterior motive other than acquiescing to his little brother’s documentary dreams. He has a formulated point of view and is deliberate about it. Fortunately for me, this point of view does in fact coincide with the points I want to make in my movie.”

From his chair, Humphrey nods, this time consenting. Contrary to Carson’s gentle insights about his brother’s pauses, Humphrey seems very much like a serious man suffocating impulses. Every moment a conquest.

Humphrey says, “I will say this – about coming to Mashipan....”

He holds up a finger, redirecting himself in mid-sentence. “I’ll summarize, so we can move on: What I was doing in Seattle could be construed as personally and socially destructive. Without question. I was outside of society on the one hand. But I was also constantly looking back at it, referencing it, regarding it. Involved in it from a distance.“

They don’t move on. Carson asks, “When did this start, with you?”

Humphrey answers over images of a protest march, circa late ‘80s, early ‘90s. Anti-capitalism, pro-environment, anti-globalism. The marchers, dressed up in apocalyptic costumes, carrying signs, are loud and angry, all denouncing one thing or another. But nevertheless engaged in a political system.

“I think about this. With little to offer. But my earliest memories were not – cheerful. Even or perhaps because of the comfort our parents provided. Though that’s no reason, being born into the bourgeoisie. I’m just satisfied my thoughts then were real.”

Suddenly the video careens off, followed by a shaky, tumbling series of clips of the march that turns into a riot at the hands of anarchists who descend like monkeys. Bottle bombs are lit and thrown, glass windows broken, black hooded Converse sneaker-wearing bodies jump up and down on cars, newspaper boxes thrown into the street.

Carson runs a clip of one of the monkey car jumpers, at first throwing blocks of concrete, then kicking awkwardly, prancingly at someone trying to pull him down. Then freezes. He doesn’t outright say it, but it looks like Humphrey.

“Thoughts such as?” Carson asks.

Though he’s off screen, you can hear Humphrey's willingness stretch thin. “Distress, disassociation. An intense aggravation against everything around me. Smells, colors, the way the world came at me. It was very instinctive, my reactions. Not rational. Like the reaction you have if you land in boiling water.” A unsentimental pause. “Except in my case, it was not, ‘Get out!’ It was – ‘hate!’ And it felt correct to extend that to myself. It felt like a kind of bravery.

A few more pictures of Humphrey and the squalor he lived in, assumedly taken by Carson after tracking him down. You wonder what Carson thought of discovering his brother in a trash strewn, lunarscaped warehouse, but the smudgy blacks and piercing silvery light from empty windows is all he offers: Humphrey barking at a chained pit bull, someone’s unhinged pet; a moment of repose: Humphrey carefully carving under his nipple with a pen knife; close up of Humphrey and his thin, tired, derisive face partly obscured by his large menacing hand grabbing the camera. Getting friendly with him, as Carson said he did, must not have been easy.

“I liked playing with it, that hate," Humphrey says. "It was electric and elastic. I could, I believed, remain in charge of my own destruction. It felt like a gift. Delivering my own destruction. A power I could deploy any time I liked.

“Which was often,” Carson suggests.

photo © by eschlabach

“.... Yes ... as often as I liked.” A pause, initially recriminating, then forgiving. “You’ve got me talking about this after all."

/continued

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Next: Squalor, love

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011

The Holly King, Part 10

 Start The Holly King here    |   Previous Part

In which bonfires, fireworks, the arrival of Beiwe and the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King are better than other Christmas parties.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

Out in the driveway, a hairy delivery man in white coveralls and rainbow knit cap pulls a keg from his truck and stages it among eight or nine others as Ken hoists another onto his shoulders.

Shannon and Ken, with experienced help from the kids, prepare for the party: moving tables, signing for deliveries of slabs of meat, chipping ice into buckets, placing candles just so. They cook sugar to pour into the candy cane molds, trim the trees outside with popcorn, cranberries and the homemade canes, roll logs into theatrical seating in front of the bower, and place luminarias every three feet along a path from the house out to the logs.

Shannon answers a question from Carson: “We began having solstice parties I think right away, maybe that first Christmas I moved in. And that was only because I wanted to have a big bad ass Christmas party in the country, make a lot of noise and ruckus. But no one up here in this neck of the woods wants anything to do with something as bourgie or mainstream as Christmas, so we threw a solstice party. For whatever reason, people prefer the idea of a solstice party up here. And ever since.”

“What do you think about Christmas? Generally?”

“Generally?” Shannon dwells heavily on the question. “It’s – “ she looks at her kids, deciding. She lowers her voice. “The way it is out there – " her hand pushes away from her, over the trees. " – In Mainstream AmericaLand – my first reaction is: are you kidding? I mean, from here, off the grid, it seems loud, noisy, stressful. Too busy, too bright. A mess, really. A complete mess. Something to be avoided at all costs." She glances to her kids, sure they haven't been following the conversation. "But my second reaction is, well ... it has its plusses and minuses.”

Shannon continues while images of the solstice party crank up, first with people arriving, friends and neighbors hugging and laughing, the potluck chefs unveiling dishes on the oak table, kids playing in the snow, Ken lighting the luminarias, kegs being tapped. Four or five people watch a huge pig, maybe it’s a boar, roast on a spindle over a fire outside.

“On the one hand people find a way to be charitable and use the, I guess you’d call it, spirit of the season for some good. For some unknown-mystery-of-the-universe reason, this time of year really ignites humans. Don't you think? We’re engaged. With the world, the cosmos, each other. I mean, there is such a thing as kindness, and people do strive to show some. At right about this time of year.

“But on the other hand. Most of what we call Christmas, really isn’t supportable. Not the money, not the insistence of gifts, the wretched traveling. It’s the capitalist mandate, on steroids.

"And the overriding social message that’s sent out,” Shannon continues, “is: this is expected of you now. To participate in it and contribute. Accept it. The messages are loud and clear and reiterate over and over. You should be out, spending money, gathering, collecting, spending again. Because the kids, members of your family, friends, they will think better of you if succeed at this, and on top of that, the economy needs you. If the cash registers are singing, then all is well with the world

The house quickly fills. Among the conventional minglers in puffy down quilted coats and wool caps with ear flaps, many are in costumes: 19th century Victorian carolers with bonnets and muttonchops; Renaissance Fair wenches and Henry VIIIs drinking from goblets; lots of Father Christmases; Wiccans in luxurious black velvet long coats with fox fur cuffs and collars holding hands with little wiccan tots dressed as ponies and wolves; a lordly but very anomalous Klingon male with his lion-maned Klingon female consort.

“That’s a crazy message," she adds. "No wonder the Christian fundamentalists go haywire over it.”

“The ‘Where’s the Jesus?’ crowd,” Carson suggests.

She chortles. “Exactly! It becomes a sort of cultural in-joke: 'isn’t it funny how we’re all crazy doing this? Getting on line for the toy of the season in a blizzard? Gosh, hope it ends soon! Ha ha!' Society expects you to absolutely burst at the seams with consumption and to spread it around and not really have a great time doing it. Happy holidays!" She winds up making herself laugh.

“I can see why you want to avoid that,” Carson says.

“Right? Well, thing is, we're just like them in our own fucked up way. That's the irony. Neither one of us is a model parent. We're ... we just want our kids to grow up smart, strong and caring, engaged with nature and the universe and not cowed by the expectations of others. That’s what we tell each other. Like anyone else, we make things up as we go along, including having a party at a time of year when the urge is really strong to throw a big party. When it’s dark and cold out.

“The solstice party, I hope, is a little antidote to all that. I told Ken the other day: this is actually a kind of karmic corrective. A little creative craziness in the distant forest.”

Four women in white gowns embroidered with moons and stars, powdered faces, each with the same long blood-red hair, walk in mysterious, four cornered unison; lots of teenagers wearing wool caps with little ears on them, sometimes cat or fox or donkey; a tall and courtly Papageno and Papagena fit bottles of local brew under their beaks; otherwise ordinary-dressed folks, like Ken, shooting rifles in the air; a snowman playing a pan flute; a little girl serenely nibbling a cookie whose crumbs flake down onto her penguin costume.

Not one but five bonfires are lit and burn in a large pentagonal area beyond the alidade, melting the snow, summoning the mud. It compels the biggest bellied men to take off their shirts in the toasty middle and wrestle.

Later, there’s a bareback equestrian barrel race and a kind of nomadic capture-the-flag on horse back starring a fluttering red banner with a real skull (human? really real?) on top; a stilt-walker performance with fire (juggling, eating); a well-attended children’s magic show; a huge snowball rolling race; and the hippy equivalent of Andean pipe players: the ever-present drum circle. One of the drummers is dressed like the Abominable Snowman.

We see Ken conferring with Shannon and a few others, notably a small elegant elderly woman in a green and black robe with a tall white collar. She’s the celebrant. They’re looking at the sky, which is black and oblivious with impenetrable cloud cover. They also look at their watches.

“Well, it’s almost ten thirty,” the celebrant says.

Ken inhales with a wet sniff. “We should just do this any way.”

“The fireworks will help,” someone says.

“The solstice will still happen,” Shannon adds, briefly placing her hand on Ken’s arm, reminding but comforting. The small group nods collaboratively.

Carson: “Ken’s plan, from the very beginning was to start this year’s party at midnight and last until dawn, having pointed his sculpture on the exact latitude the first rays of the new, solsticial sun will appear and train them onto the apple tree. He gave up on that, Shannon told me, for practical reasons like no one would stay up that late, least of all the kids. Plan B was using a laser borrowed from the nearby university for the same affect, which Shannon and the fire department [cut to the drum circle] also scuttled. Plan C was the way to go: a huge mercury-vapor lamp used at a local timber camp. Except that his contact for the lamp never arrived. This council is the result.”

“Ok, let’s go,” Ken says. He looks to the celebrant. “When does it happen, again? Officially?”

“Eleven thirty eight.”

“Maybe I can aim some kind of beam ....”

He tugs at his lip thoughtfully, turns, and is gone. Leaving the others to fend for themselves. The council look at each other and then in Ken's direction and then at each other: what’s going on?

“I’ll get us started,” the celebrant eventually announces.

“Despite the behind the scenes weather problems, the ceremony they’ve planned, like Broadway, still must go on. And what that is is a series of rituals taken from ancient lore, mostly northern European. Beginning with the arrival of Beiwe.”

That would be the lady, in a long white leather and fur coat, with a little girl in white fur and leather at her side, who is led around the grounds of the farm in what appears to be a wicker sleigh, lit by swinging lanterns. The little girl tosses small evergreen tips behind them.

“That’s Mary Anne Klieg, as Beiwe, and her daughter Dakota. They’re local. She teaches chemistry at the university. Tradition has it that Beiwe’s carriage is made out of reindeer bones. Her husband Bob is a hunter and he and their friends spent most of the year carefully building this out of deer and moose bones. Gruesome and awesome, all at the same time.

“About Beiwe: according to Professor Wolfstram, to the early Iron Age tribes of Finland, the arrival of Beiwe, and her daughter Bewei-Neia, means a return of green grass for the reindeer to eat. Not only is she a fertility goddess, but is also, given the long winter nights, the bringer of sanity. That’s her job as a deity, bringing sanity.

“There are other performances,” Carson says, over corresponding imagery. “Fire dancing. And a mock sword fight between the Oak King and the Holly King."

By the light of bonfires, two large men, dressed like Druids, wield large swords against one another, with great heaving clouds of exhale and body heat. “It lasts until the Oak King, the bringer of the new year, protector of light and warmth, flowers and red robins, vanquishes the Holly King. Who will have his rematch in June. He is the bringer of darkness, contemplation, rejuvenation and wrens. Rudy and Jake here own a bar nearby and hit the Renaissance fair circuit pretty hard each year.”

The winning Oak King, big Jake, then walks to a little boy in a white cape and kneels offering his sword. The boy touches the Oak King’s head and walks to the celebrant standing in Ken’s bower. He gives her an offering of little cakes. Pleased with himself, he runs over to his mother, Mrs. Pappagena, who has taken off her bird head and left it inside. Her son buries himself among her feathers.

The celebrant speaks to big Jake, the Oak King who kneels before her: “Holly King, lord of the waxing year, I name you the victor. Now is the time you take up the scepter and rule the land of the Goddess until the time of the summer solstice, when once again you will do battle with your brother.”

Big Jake:  “As it is with the universe, so it is with man. We also journey throughout our time, from birth until death and to rebirth upon our way."

Through this enactment, I kept hearing something on the soundtrack and played it over and over. It’s hard to pick up the first time, but it’s there: a diesel engine running, like from a tractor, coming closer.

“All over the world,” the celebrant continues, to the assembled, “we wait eagerly for the arrival of the sun, the long sun, the sun that brings light, warmth and life. Birth, life, decay and death proceed just as the sun makes its way across the universe, bringing birth life decay and death with it. As it goes, we go. So let us give time to our thoughts of loved ones past.

The party descends to a quiet reflection, though the sound of the tractor nearby is now unavoidable and some in the crowd notice it. When Sasha’s camera swings to the celebrant, you can tell she hears it too. But she marches on.

“The cycles of life are the only truth the universe provides. We find simplicity and truth in these cycles for they teach us love, compassion, courage. To honor the neverending circle and to welcome the return of the light, we light a candle –” as many in the audience do. The celebrant dips her candle into the iron bowl which ignites with a small exciting whoosh. “And we proclaim, return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!”

That appears to be it, but the celebrant looks in a direction as if ‘abide with us’ was a cue to something. Sasha’s camera finds some commotion in the crowd. People stir, look behind them and with minor confusion and awkwardness, separate themselves down the middle of the audience. A few stranded stragglers leap across the empty middle that Shannon is trying to keep clear with a wave of her arms: one side or the other, please.

The celebrant appears to get what’s going on, so she says, loudly, over the sound of a nearby engine, “Ok, well, from the top! Again, we proclaim; Return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!” Hundreds of heads look behind them, to the side, up at the sky, but nothing comes.

The celebrant cocks a May West hip. “Don’t you just hate when you ask for something ... ” she says, and then it comes. Somehow, from a Ken-rigged contrivance with tractor, work lights, and metal sheeting, a fierce light is cast through the bower and poof! The fey little apple tree is lit with a narrow beam of light. It’s actually pretty cool. People hurrah and say “welcome sun!”

And then come the fireworks overhead, from who knows where.

“The party lasted all night,” Carson says. “And it ranks as one of the coolest, most fun nights I’ve ever had. Despite the obvious let down at dawn, when there was no sun. Just a white disk glowing behind the gray cloud cover of midwinter."

More scenes of partying, late into the night. There is music, passed out little kids in animal costumes sleeping over their parent’s shoulders, the roast pig is passed around. 

“Is their solstice party any closer to the primal truth of the holiday than my parents’ choir albums, cocktails and aluminum tree? Many of the ancient rituals around the winter solstice, Professor Wolfstram says, involved carnal sacrifice. Bewei, for instance, was celebrated by killing and skinning little white animals. Human sacrifice was not a rarity either and considering the plight of humans in a little understood universe, plunged in darkness, a ritual killing makes sense. You might be willing to appease anyone or anything, in every manner available just to bring the light, and warmth, and food, back.

“Today, though, it just seems ... nostalgic ... to invite Bewei to your solstice party, especially if your guests dig a veneer of bloodsport.”

A Thousand Stars for Company © Julianna Swaney

People stagger home in the snow, arm in arm, carrying sleeping children, riding off in fishtailing snowmobiles, while two holdouts, a barechested guy and a girl wearing a pink hat with pointy cat ears try to keep a smoldering bonfire going, one knee-snapped branch at a time.

/continued

  ◊      ◊     ◊

Next: Christmas with Humphrey, prodigal son.

  Next Part

"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011