Attempting to Initiate a Disaster: Why you need a Tyler

A long afternoon nap, following an all night inventory session at Il Vicino. I had had a bowl of cereal sometime late morning.

We are at UNM, either in the Library or the Fine Arts Center. We have borrowed a giant room, a sort of theater (with a traverse stage or even in the round), an oblong square surrounded on all sides by broad rising stairs or terraced platforms, and that surrounded by columns along the walls, all of a warm, sunset-like color. There are great outcropping platforms on three sides, though the floor of the stage is also set with the basics of a Lodge. I'm vaguely aware that this was built as a massive Lodge Room, but has since been turned over to the school, although we can use it anytime we schedule it.

I am Senior Stewarding, and we are going to confer an EA.

The candidate is a young hippie kid, dumpy and in hemp sandals. So be it. We begin to take him around and I realize that there are cwns & evsdps in the Lodge, seemingly busybody middle aged woman all of them. I excuse myself to clear the room. When I come back, the candidate is no longer hdwkt, he seems busy playing about with some friend of his. I insist that he replace his hdwk but he ignores me. The Master intervenes and we continue. But at every turn he has pulled his own light, I find.

The chaos continues, and I realize that it is his damned mother, of all people, keeping tabs. I usher her out, rather rudely. And it goes back and forth like that. Between him not being serious or cooperative, and these people intruding. My growing feeling is that we have made a mistake in this election, that this is no coincidence. We absolutely cannot allow this idiot to be initiated, nor allow his chaos to infect our Craft.

I finally have it out with these women at a doorway, which leads into an office. A small gaggle of them, all condescending, WASPy types. At least one of them has some embroidery on her denim shirt that mixes (suspiciously, I find: I know your kind, lady) Hebrew and Christian symbols, along with the name of some fundie-sounding organization. I am half pleading, half excoriating. I have no intention of performing the initiation; but I obfuscate, accuse them of destroying this kid's opportunity. They are unmoved, and I offer that they (and particularly the woman in the denim shirt) probably have a personal problem with us as a Society anyhow. I offer that their point of view is fine, that I respect it even if I reject it. But that they have no right to be interfering in a private matter like this. The seeming ring leader begins to suggest that we have over-stayed our scheduled time in the Theater Lodge. I balk, and it is certainly possible, at this late moment, due to their intervention, that we have indeed. I ask her when she is scheduled to use the room. "Yesterday," she says. Which comment is illuminated by her further assertion: "And tomorrow." The room is always hers, when compared to the rights of usage of people like us.

Another woman takes a more professional angle, and actually produces a printed schedule. We have only 13 minutes left. "We can't do this in 13 minutes," I say. I thank this last woman, throw up my hands.

This charade is over.