Freshly Laundered & Hanging Out to Dry: Chapter4

Chapter 4
Anticipation Mounts

Unless we feel great compassion for mankind
we can’t do our work in this world. _JG Bennett

New students arrived daily during the transition period. Everyone had a story of how they came to Sherborne House.
“I studied with Mrs. Popoff,” was a statement I’d heard repeated several times. Mrs. Popoff, an active member of the Gurdjieff Foundation, had also been a student of the philosopher P.D. Ouspensky and had worked with Gurdjieff when he’d come to New York City near the end of his life in the 1940s. She ran a Gurdjieff group on Long Island and prepared a number of her students to attend the first or second courses. From what they said, it sounded as if they had done a lot of Movements.
Some students came to Sherborne with their friends from other study groups or had known Mr. B through his writings or his community at Coombe Springs.
One of the American students told us he’d learned about Sherborne when a book of Bennett’s had fallen on his head while he was perusing the ‘esoteric’ shelves in a bookstore. Another American said he’d been invited to attend a public lecture Mr. B was giving in Boston.
“I never attended lectures,” he said. “For some reason I went to this one and was mesmerized by what he had to say. Mr. Bennett spoke about the hard times that were sure to catch up with us because of the imbalances within our institutions and how man was interacting with nature. I’d been studying ecology and reading the economist Schumacher, the social critic Theodore Roszak, and John Lilly who was researching consciousness. Coming to Sherborne just seemed like the way to bring all these ideas together.”
Mayvor, an adventurous Swedish woman met Mick, who had been a student of Bennett’s at Coombe Springs, on a bus in India. He was the one who suggested she come. Rumor had it that she was at Sherborne to break her drug addiction.
Every tale included at least one unlikely event that contributed to the feeling that having found Sherborne was some kind of magic. One student told a story about what happened to her friend Linda on the first course. Instead of making a spiritual quest by traveling to India like so many of our contemporaries, Linda had the unique vision of tracing her American cultural roots back to England, where she hoped to meet an Englishman who understood the meaning of life and could teach others. On the flight over, she sat next to Ada, a woman who already knew who her spiritual teacher was—Mr. Bennett. She was on her way to Sherborne and she insisted that Linda write down the school’s address, predicting that the young woman would soon follow her there. Linda had no intention of going where this chatty stranger was trying to push her. However, after two weeks of wandering about and making no progress toward finding her teacher, she gave in and showed up at Sherborne. Intimidated by the scale of the estate, she tried to make an inconspicuous entry at the kitchen door. Just as she arrived there, Mrs. Bennett happened to be putting a couple of empty milk bottles out on the doorstep.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Uh, I’ve come to see Ada,” Linda stammered.
“Oh, yes, you must be the girl from the plane. We’ve been expecting you.”
When Mr. B began an interview with her by asking why she had come there, all she could say was, “to visit Ada.” His gaze made her feel like he knew her instantly and it didn’t feel good. He invited some students to tell Linda about their studies at the school. They talked with her all afternoon. Later in the day, Mr. B questioned her about her commitment to being there and whether she had earned the money needed to attend. Tuition, $1200, was the exact amount of money she had brought with her.
When he asked about her Work experience, she said she had none.
He explained, “Many people with experience have learned the wrong way. It takes a great deal of time to undo bad habits. You are lucky to be able to learn the right way from the start.”
This is how Linda learned she was accepted as a student and was already ahead of people who had studied for years!

My coming to Sherborne had happened in so many bits and pieces that when I finally learned of the school’s existence, it was as if the decision to go had already made. First there was the experience of high school orchestra where 100 people shared the same aim. If you took lessons and made an effort, you were welcome to participate. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise very competitive school. Then there were those months of travel through Europe in ’69 and ’70, making friends on the road and sharing camping skills, hearing the name Gurdjieff mentioned by admired friends at different times, and the trip to England with Aunt Mary the following year that Mom invited me to attend. As we were soaring past Windsor Castle on the way to landing at Heathrow, the dramatic color of dark blue rolling clouds and sunlit hills transported me to a dream I’d had almost nine years before and had never forgotten.

The English landscape is brilliant. Forest and grassy hills spread before me. An orange glow to the rock outcroppings make it seem as if the sun were low in the sky. A disembodied voice is saying, “You can see why the tribe would choose a site like this.” The henges there are like ruins of ancient temples with columns and capitals of a leafy design I’ve not seen before. Nevertheless, they evoke a familiar enchantment. Then, I am standing in a shallow cave listening to a man being interviewed about why he chooses to live there. He says he often drives across the land with its rocky formations rather than take a modern road. I’m thinking such a drive is impossible. He explains that sometimes he does get stuck but the beauty and contact with the natural world is incomparable and worth the trouble. “Besides,” he adds, “If one drives the modern road, there is nothing to see.”

I had awakened from the dream infused with the radiant beauty of the land. This was the kind of dream that the psychoanalyst C. G. Jung called numinous—expressing a spiritual magical intensity.
On the trip it had felt as if Mom, Mary, and I were landing in the landscape of my dream. In addition, when Robin later gave me Sherborne’s prospectus, it seemed to reflect the feeling of the words from that old dream, If one drives the modern road, there is nothing to see.

Inside of everyone is the natural, built-in desire
to be walking the Red Road, or to be
seeking a relationship with the Creator. _Don L. Coyhis

One of my new friends, Ivo, is telling me how he’s come to Sherborne.
“It was unintentional. I picked Toby up when he was hitchhiking on his way here. Everything he told me sounded so intriguing that I decided to hang around to find out more.”
I’ve never heard the name Ivo before. He has the odd charm of a character in an English farce—thin with a substantial graying handlebar mustache. Maybe he doesn’t actually wear khaki Bermuda shorts and a pith helmet but that’s how I always envision him when not actually in his company. Anyone would guess him to be a retired military officer, so close to caricature is the look he’s cultivated.
He says he’s going to stay here for a little while but isn’t yet convinced he’ll join the course. I’m fervent about wanting him to stay because although he must be in his sixties and I’m twenty-nine, like old buddies, we often laugh together about the idiosyncratic nature of the place, its weird mixture of warmth and gloom. But when we discuss his signing on, he looks into my eyes with regret.
“I just can’t stand the desolate atmosphere, the unsmiling reminders of how serious our tasks are. Won’t it only get worse when the course begins?”
Oh, I hadn’t imagined it getting worse.

Flogging will continue until morale improves. _bumper sticker

All in all, the snarling orders and gloom are countered by feeling energized from the newness of the experience, group meditation, and nourishing laughter with certain people like Ivo. I can still suspend judgment. Besides, I can’t imagine leaving when, from across the ocean, the school appeared to be exactly what I’d been looking for. Didn’t I believe Sherborne would provide understanding about the meaning of life and the purpose of human existence? And wouldn’t we learn how to bring that meaning into our daily activities?

The population continues to increase day by day as the beginning of the course draws near, and, with it, a growing tension that juggles my guts. About twelve days before the official opening, I stand in a long line of students at morning tea to collect the cup poured by April, who is on morning service. She’s a tall woman with a big voice and what I think of as a charming accent. Her straight dark hair swings forward as she bends over the teapot, a vessel so large, she needs both hands to lift it. Later, when the level of tea is a good way down, she adds more hot water to top it off. A treat of cookies, which the English called biscuits, is part of the ritual. I’m usually able to pass on them except on special occasions when they serve ones that have a chocolate coating.
The dining room where morning and afternoon tea takes place has high windows along one wall, yet dim lighting and dark wainscoting keeps the room in shadow. Oversize portraits of the Dutton family, Sherborne House’s original owners, still hang on the walls.
It‘s easy to imagine them looking over our shoulders wondering, “Who is this ragtag collection of people?”
I meander toward comfort in the room packed with more new arrivals—a table with a familiar face that creates a calm in me amidst the din. Lucas smiles at me and waves me to an empty chair. He’s a short man, at least a head shorter than I, yet his huge voice can be heard above the ruckus. In an extravagant gesture he brushes his sandy hair away from his eyes. He’s English, theatrical, larger than life, countering any shyness others might have about his height.
Everyone sitting at the table is male, the five of them carrying on a pensive conversation. I am sitting at one end, my attention drifting in and out of what is being said. I keep losing myself in looking at them, all a few years younger than I.
In contrast to a shared cerebral approach to their discussion, by appearance they are as different from each other as the plants in the garden. It is as if the Italian film director Federico Fellini has selected them for a mob scene. Lucas introduces Ronald, the most ordinary looking one of them—neat short brown hair, brown eyes, normal weight, average height, thick black eyeglass frames.
I greet him and then turn my attention to Warren who is tall and puffy. The pasty tone of his skin, his being somewhat overweight, and the gray college sweatshirt and sweatpants all add to a lack of definition. Although young, he wears coke bottle thick glasses. Maybe he has some health issues. Both he and Ronald are American.
In a wheel chair, sits Leo who has dark blond chin-length wavy hair chopped as if from a self-inflicted hashing. Honey-colored skin and blue eyes contrast with sharp horizontal features that gravity seems to be crushing. His cunning observations cause regular outbursts of laughter, yet I can’t stop concerning myself with his sweater. It has three-inch thick red and tan horizontal stripes. It’s as if I already know it is soon to become one of many articles of clothing that appears to live a life of its own. Lucas surreptitiously explains to me that Leo has a terminal bone disease, which explains his unusual appearance.
My buddy Toby is here, too, a spare fellow not much taller than I, with circular gold wire-rimmed glasses and a mop of dark brown curls. He has that English translucent skin and rosy cheeks, that make him look as if he’d just come in from a brisk walk. An avid fan of the zany, he reenacts for me, at a moment’s notice, skits from a popular British comedy show called Monty Python that I’ve never seen. The hijinks of our classmates are always reminding him of them.
As I continue to take in this little batch of new acquaintances, I feel an odd nostalgia toward them as if I were standing in the future looking back, or as if I know them from the distant past. They are so themselves, so distinct, so enchanting. Focusing on this one group sitting at this particular long table among a dozen crowded tables, each decorated with a vase of fresh-cut flowers, quiets me, keeping at a distance the buzz of excitement that only moments before had my innards vibrating.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. _Peter de Vries