Difference between revisions of "The wood cutting school"

A simple text. 'Let's talk, meet where we first saw each other.' Ezekiel now sits on the ground under the tree that the Victoria, Note, Alma, and Kai were at the first night. His eyes are closed. His hands resting in his lap, small stains on dirt on them. He might have been cleaning up a few of the graves on his way to the tree. At a glance he might appear to be asleep.

Alma's been running for a while. Her bird is guiding her. When she reaches the cemetery, you feel the wind stir, and a very low hum. The air smells salty for just a moment. Alma says "Yes!" holding her arm up in a fist (like Rosie the Riveter, really, not at all like someone having sex with a cemetery), then waves Note off. She staggers over to you and collapse to the ground to rest. She looks almost damaged.

Ezekiel brows raise slightly his eyes assessing Alma as she catches her breath. "Multi-layered training then? Running plus plus?" A small almost appreciative smile to his face, the smile affecting the tone. It is a good first step into the conversation. "So let me ask you, how many steps down the path have you taken with your Atman?, if you don't mind answering."

She grins at the joking comment, and looks puzzled at the question. Trying to measure her experience is hard. "I'm not sure how to answer that. Last year," she starts to stretch, "was intense. I feel like I spent most of the year constantly like sitting next to a huge speaker at a concert but I couldn't see it."

Ezekiel nods his face clearly showing the signs of an internal debate. "So magically you may actually be my superior. I have spent sixteen years thinking on my beliefs but almost no time exerting my will onto the wheel in exercise of them." A small pause, as he hopes that makes sense. "So in a way I have a good base from reading a lot of books, but no..." A small smile "On the job training really to speak ok. I am the equivalent to a second year philosophy major with a job at a fast food joint."

A black speck far away resolves in to a crow, flying back to Alma. She lands. The breeze that stirs her feathers is not the same breeze that's going through the rest of the graveyard. Alma touches Note and continues. "No," She seems really suprised, "You have so much more experience than I do. I also spent months last year not being able to function. I felt so crazy. I didn't know what was going on. My mentor was driving through Detroit and found me almost frozen dead."

"Shock? Stroke? Paralysis? Did you ever find a reason?" Someone just told them they were almost frozen dead. The mind reels. Even in a world of magic things make sense. The how varies based on the viewer but there is sense. Ezekiel blinks trying to fathom it, trying to put it altogether. "Or do you mean actual human popsicle?"

"Hypothermia, exposure. Not like literal ice. Sorry, I sound pretty confused all the time." She pauses and takes a couple of slow breaths. "I had come back to the US, and my brother was dead. His wife was in the hospital for weeks." She starts to explain the waiting and visiting. "I kept hearing things. And I couldn't sleep. I wandered around a lot talking to people. Have you been out of work suddenly after constant study? I was working on stuff in New Zealand, like ... and then I came back here." She stops stretching, and sits, but isn't still. She's jittery but looks exhausted. Note hopes up to her shoulder and starts grooming her hair.

It wasn't looking good for my sister in law, and my brother--I'm my niece's guardian now." she waves her hands out as to show the guardianship has no bounds. "It's hard. like you, maybe if you don't get all your course credits, all that time, gone? I am almost ready to defend but now I'm here. And then I thought my girlfriend was dead. I followed her voice out in to the cold. It was late, I was walking home from the hospital. I didn't really care that I wasn't dressed warm enough, wasn't dry..." She looks at you to see if she should go on.

Ezekiel is following along without comment. A flex of the eyes here or there, possible surprise at certain things, or perhaps interest. Otherwise he does not interrupt her, a glance to Notes grooming, then back to Alma, he nods his head, a small wave of his hand, a silent 'Do go on'

She looks at you like she's admitting something embarrassing. "People are kind of irritating sometimes. I like it in the middle of no where." She scritches Note. "I like birds. They make sense." She pulls a thin taper of a leaf out of a pocket and makes to hand it to you, but isn't pushy. "This is a tool. little barbs. anyway," she doesn't want to get too derailed and continues. "People. I kept seeing all these ways I could do things for them. Someone sick? I could pick things up and give them more time to rest. really really normal things, ok?" As if to contrast with really far out bizarre shit. "And then I started to see how throughout my entire life, everyone--no everything--was out to help. Life was an ever expanding growth of connections and acts that make us all part of a whole. And it was all love, but yes, sometimes grief. and then I realized how much I love everyone, and I felt called to help them. But I'm a behavioral ecologist you know? I didn't study lots of touchy feely crap in school. I mean, I studied human psychology too, undergrad, but we focused on cognition and memory and then I went on to study corvid intelligence and island ecologies." And then her eyes get big "But it's the help again! My advisor in New Zealand. He worked so hard with me and we got a grant so that I could do research here. And he's helped me come to terms with being in this city. In *a city*. Have you heard of the Baltimore school of ecology? I hadn't. He has me studying it."

After Alma is done speaking Ezekiel carefully takes the barbed leaf into hand and glances at it. A glance, a quirk of the head, maybe he can see how it could be used. Ezekiel kneels down on the ground next to Alma. "The way I have looked at things you are right. We also always help, even if we don't know it. We also harm in equal measure." His finger traces a circle in the dirt. He then starts drawing lines across it. The lines seem to radiate out from the center but the trajectory of many of the lines is different. The cross over each other, the rub, they move. "A man drops a twenty dollar bill walking away from the ATM. A few minutes later a woman worrying about how she is going to pay for her children's meal is elated. She found this unexpected gift. She picks it up. A man walking very fast while talking on his phone almost runs into her when she suddenly stops to retrieve the bill. He falls out into traffic. A car tries to dodge, his a powerline. Three city blocks lose power, including an emergency clinic..."

The Euthanatos stops as he could go on and looks at Alma. "We are all connected and always have been and always will be. We die. Our body feeds the rest of the wheel, or soul either ascends to change the shape of the wheel itself, for we have learned all we can, or we return to the wheel at a different point to continue our journey. The former is rare, the latter is common."

Alma listens intently, nodding but also sometimes frowning in irritated thought. She's still following. At Ezekiel's pause, she points at the leaf and says quietly "They use them to dig grubs out of dead-falls. It's amazing." her face glows with joy explaining this to you, but then frowns a little. "In suburbs and urban areas people clear away dead wood, we won't see the same types of behaviors in a developed place." She stops, trying to pull together things, but pauses to see if he has more to add.

He glances to the leaf again and then to Note, then back to Alma. "Cool. I didn't know that was a thing." He hands the leaf back to her. The concept of it is interesting to him, however there is not the raptured joy at the knowledge either. After a moment he glances to Alma and decides to continue "Your Atma is your soul. Your past awakened. Trying to teach you. Show you. For most they don't hear they do things. The slow way." A small cynical smile on his face. "If you can hear or see your Atma I consider you to be lucky. I have one. Of this I am certain, but I have no guide. I hear nothing. In my path I am like everyone else. Doing the best I can and hoping I learn something from it." A small sigh and then a glance to Alma seeking comment, questions, etc.

Note takes the leaf from Alma and sticks in her hair. Alma grins a little at that. Then she admits, "I respect that you believe that, but it's just not how I see things. I think reincarnation is just a story. What people think of as memories maybe are just echoes from a memory, or some small piece of someone." She looks really concerned as she continues. "This religion is distracting from how things really are. I don't believe in the death penalty, and I think having a religion like this makes it easy for someone not to care. The way I see things, we should focus on making it possible for people to live in this life. I'm a mistake to someone 50 years ago? Maybe they would think I should die so that in a mythical next life I marry respectably? I don't want to make mistakes like that. Can you see where I'm coming from?"

Ezekiel considers her words for several moments, perhaps making her more nervous due to the wait. In the end he says. "I can see where you are coming from. I also in some ways disagree. In other I don't think you see the intent, or purpose of us." A pauses and glances to Note for a moment his eyes considering before looking back to Alma. "I don't think it is a religion, exactly. What I was taught, and what I believe is right, is that if I must kill it is to protect the sanctity of life, and to keep the wheel spinning, to write wrongs." A slow breath, focusing of thoughts shown by the slight furrow of a brow. "There are those who upset the balance so to speak. They would seek to unmake reality, steal souls, end the paths of many en masse. The manner they tend to do this is so atrocious that almost anyone would want them stopped." A small pause a slight kilt to the head as if to say 'anyone who is sane'.

"Do I think we should ends someone's life because they don't follow a religious structure, didn't marry early, didn't enough children, no that is ludicrous... and I would try to stop anyone tried to enact such a belief on others. Do I think we should stop a man who walks through hospitals suffocating infants in such a manner that it looks like rash of SIDS? I do. and I would."

"You make it sound easy with that example. I don't think real life is going to be so clear." She sighs. "I know I don't have it figured out. I'm taking a lot of stuff on faith and 'assuming the virtue'." Note has since gone off to the Elm tree. Alma pulls the leaf out of her hair and idly bends it with her finger as she continues. "I think we are more like keepers of a system. and systems are hard to understand. We don't have New Caledonian crows here and we may not get them because humans in our culture decided that deadwood should be cleared away immediately. That's literal. I know things aren't all literal but this is the vocabulary I have, ok?" She looks at you hoping you'll be patient. "I know that there is some system or systems of life all around and maybe there is this metaecology like metaphycics. I know how easy it is to fuck up an ecosystem and easy it is to make things words when you try to repair them. This is why you have more experience than I do. I assure you. I have all this learning to catch up on. I bet you know more about history and poetry and who knows. And you have more lived experience than i do. I didn't see what you saw in battle. I'm doing small things right now, ok? Like washing dishes."

Ezekiel smiles slightly, not amused with her, more of it is ok, don't look at the whole thing right now. "Small things are fine. Small things, small task they all add up to your everyday that makes you. I am not saying are a member of great crusade to protect all of existence." A small pause a look out to the cemetery. "Some people are watchers, observers, they study the system, learn it, scholars." His eyes return to Alma and focus on her. "How you live is your choice. I won't tell you otherwise. You have to sign up, so to speak. Not everyone fights. Not everyone studies. Not everyone totally believes. It takes time."

His eyes wander again going distant thinking of another conversation. When he speaks next his eyes are still looking at that memory, his voice taking on softer, farther away tone. "I can tell you without the conviction of choosing the path, then moving forward is a lot harder." The old soldiers eyes focus on the present again and back to his fellow Euthanatos. "I spend most of my free time helping at the VA. You have your studies. Just because we are awakened doesn't mean it is all we do. In fact sometimes the little things are even more important. One step at a time Padawan." a small smile, so the big soldier might be a little bit of a geek.

Alma rolls her eyes and laughs at the Padawan comment.