Professor Kaya’s friends and colleagues had taken to calling her by her new name instantly and often without question. “Pat Cluny was a true misnomer,” she said. “It wasn’t trivial, me disliking my name. It simply didn’t fit.”
Brian had to agree. Trevor possessed a gift, recognizing people’s rightful names. How else to explain that the dean and provost and everyone else now called her Kaya without hesitation? He had yet to hear anyone falter. Truly, she was “Kaya” now, not Pat and not Cluny.
Further, he wondered if her being Professor Kaya had not helped persuade the administration to oversee the integrated, experimental arts curriculum she and Brian were putting together. The difference wasn’t sensible, of course. Yet the sound, Kai-ah, struck a subtle, creative chord.
The university had agreed, too, that initiating this project demonstrated brilliant social planning. Brian could deliver an oral presentation next fall, and his dissertation soon after. Kaya said if he preferred a PhD in Arts Administration he could pick that up later. But a doctorate in sociology was his for the asking.
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Meantime, Brian would continue teaching WesternCiv until the school year ended. After that he’d work fulltime for the Black Mountain Consortium, loosely roping in the most forward-looking art, drama, music, and literature teachers.
Choreography and architecture probably would not figure big at first. “Could take two years,” Kaya said. “And too keep the university’s accreditation, the project will be subject to frequent evaluations. And we need accreditation—that’s key.”
It astonished Brian how easily everything took root. He had looked up composers, painters, and various creative performers, assuming he might interest one out of twenty or thirty. They weren’t teachers, but people who made their living practicing art. Not an original idea, engaging those who were independently successful, but it was his contribution.
Marc Swift in San Francisco responded immediately: sign him up. Hollis Clarke in Colorado, raved with such enthusiasm, Brian had to interrupt. Could he phone her again tomorrow? Kaya cut the final list to six names, because no one was found the invitation uninteresting or even inconvenient.
Kaya, Angelina, Brian, Royce, and sometimes Trevor met at Angelina’s house Monday mornings. The carpenters had made great progress. Glass walls opened the cabins to the outdoors but a shared horizon strung them into a circle.
In the evenings, everyone ate at picnic tables surrounding a bonfire that inspired drumming and chanting but made Brian nervous.
“We put it out before going to bed. What are you so worried about?” Angelina asked.
The flames leaped wildly and the wood crackled and the massive energy of ritual burning brought uneasy visions to Brian’s mind. He doubted that bonfires were legal in Black Mountain, and the group’s ganja growing and smoking, to say nothing of Trevor’s delivering it for miles around, were massively illegal.
Possibly, Brian felt spooked because as a child he was beaten for every broken rule, known and unknown. But there was something more: The flickering heat, the shadows, and the intensity of the light dissipating into the night-sky brought on illusions of the earth spinning out of control. On an ordinary day, when no one chanted and swayed, or when the night was dark and silent, Brian concentrated on ordinary tasks and so remained unconcerned, even unaware of the earth spinning. He didn’t worry about Trevor crashing Angelina’s car, or the police busting him for selling marijuana. He didn’t see Carla dancing with Andrew around the fire. He didn’t see fury and burning here and now and in the offing.
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