12.9.15 But it was magic.

     Sometimes on weekends, the place would be short staffed, really noone at all in the Main Building all dark and closed down. Just the dorm heads, ensconced in their own lives, nestled down by their own tvs. Or Mrs. Ferguson, off across the street, behind the thick stand of trees lining the stream, busy with her kids and husband and weekend relief.

     Sometimes before we snuck into the art building at night, we'd just stand in the driveway out front, and check out how visible Ferguson's house lights were, to me a sign of how visible the Art Building's lights would be to her, should she notice. We'd clamber up the stairs as quietly as we could, and turn the lights on ablaze, our boots and coats stacked by the back door and outdoor stairs, in the event that we were found out, and had to flee quickly and not get caught.

     We'd light up and wander around, deciding what medium to work in, and then it would begin. No music, because after all, this was in the night, on the sly, in a girl's boarding school.

     But it was magic. Everyone's freed up ideas about sculpture and painting and pen and ink and all, except it wasn't theory as much as it was the reality of what these pastel colors does to this night. What your work on the cheek of that huge stone sculpture does to turn within you. Those were the observations and the questions we asked, while working away, undisturbed.

     Other times, we'd inform our guy friends at the Gunnery, a boy’s boarding school, who would sloop quietly through the darkness of the long country roads, or maybe tromp through the wooded paths, ready to leap for cover if a car puttered by.

     They'd show up on the back steps, stealthy, and knock to be let in. And then the deliciousness of the art was rapidly replaced by the avid delight in the laughter and the joking and the unrelegated fun.