Conrad Bishop's Blog, page 2

The Heart. . .

—From EF—

What’s at the heart?

I took a photo of a big soft silvery bushy plant at our favorite coffee place, Hardcore Espresso. Molly has a wild collection of things growing in everything from old phone booths to half-bathtubs, a fertile profusion as wild and generous as her amazing heart. There is a big spiny thing at the center of this soft, furry silver mass, and I have not idea how it got there but there it is.

How did such a generous concept as our United States of America get such a harsh, spiny heart, and why do we only see it plainly now? Granted, our schools do not teach what happened to the people who were here before the celebrated ancestors arrived, or how very old the tolerance of an oligarchy is. Slaveholding is not a comfortable subject, especially when examining how the wealth of the South impacted our politics in Lincoln’s time. It’s said that poisonous guilt can enter the DNA and be passed down. Well, we have enough guilt and then some.

I couldn’t watch the Republican convention live, but I saw clips and thought, “Omigod, this is a drag show produced by World Wrestling Entertainment. I’ve understood that rage and power are central to MAGA, but I’d never before seen how they’d crossed the borderline into Burlesque. Now we appear to be in danger of handing the management of our lives into the hands of burlesque artists.

Conrad and I depend on our Social Security checks, and our miscellaneous medical emergencies have had their very costly bills paid by Medicare. Will we spend the rest of our elder years stripped of all resources by a new kind of governing? What can we lose? And if lost, how will we manage?

History has told, time and again, the tale of normal communities converted to sadistic mobs. I’ve gotten the finger for driving the speed limit, many times, and so has Conrad. Being visibly old is a badge of vulnerability and a magnet for anger. Being a woman is no longer worthy of respect or protection. Those blasts of anger are random and infrequent now. What about when they become the banner of belonging to the cult?

I look at my photo and love the contrast, but I must confess that I am afraid of being thrown face-down into that spiny heart.

Gender. . .

—From CB—

There have been a series of posts promoting a “rule by women.” Despite the sad track record of many past & present female politicians, I think there might be a positive change … for a while.

But to presume that any person, no matter what sex, sexual preference, race, economic background, etc. is invulnerable to the effects of systemic corruption is an idiotic leap of faith. Power is power, compromise is compromise in an incredibly complex culture, and I believe in a woman’s capacity to be as destructive and foolish and opportunistic as any man.

By “systemic corruption” I mean the capacity of systems to shape the souls devoted to them. We expect that. Above all, we vote for the President who’ll protect us: “Policy” is way down the list. “Confidence” and “Strength” are at the top. “I want a strong leader” is the mantra on the football field, the voting booth, even in the election for homeroom President, who does nothing.

To assume that the patriarchy will be breached by the introduction of ovaries is a misunderstanding what the patriarchy is. I grant that women, like Blacks, have too long been passed over for leadership positions, and that it’s a good idea to change that and to not go backward. But selecting Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall —or Amy Coney Barrett to stand in for Ruth Bader Ginsburg—was IMHO not a march forward.

How to define “the patriarchy?” I freely admit I’m a man, highly suspect as such, and I’m old. I’m well acquainted with the role of gender in history. But it’s not improved by substituting Phyllis Diller joking about her husband for a Catskill comic joking about his wife. In my mind, “Patriarchy” consists of three things: bias, power, and trust.

“Bias” means assuming that your belonging to a specific team makes you special, gives you added validity to be alive: we have horses, guns, and penises, so we’re the best people, whereas you’re scum or kiddies at best.

“Power” is what derives from teamwork—which too often relies on bias—and image, which does leave women at a disadvantage. We’re learning, though, that the illusion of power can derive from saying outrageous things or absolute lies that leave your opponent speechless.

“Trust” is like trying to catch a fish with your fingers: very elusive. “He projects confidence,” “The New Yorker says it’s good,” “She’s nobody’s fool…” We rely on others’ judgments that we won’t get blown up, that we’ll not waste our time, that our team will win. But we want Daddy or Mommy to assure us.

If female leadership results in greater empathy, greater collaboration, a less violent world, I’m all for it, and I don’t think I’m the only one. But I wouldn’t vote for a woman because she’s a woman; to me, that’s like the football coach thanking God for the touchdown.

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Learning from Shadow. . .

—From EF—

I have two cats, brother littermates: Garfunkel (known as Garfy), and Shadow. Garfy is a big burly shorthair who loves to be squeezed and has a purr you could hear in Cotati. Shadow is a smaller longhair with delicate bones, incredibly soft fur, and a purr you can feel but not hear. The vet calls them “smoke black tabbies,” which I think is both accurate and charmingly poetic. Their temperaments are diametrically opposite. Garfy is even-tempered and comfy, Shadow is high-strung and weird. I love them both, and they are both bonded to each other and to me. Shadow’s name came from his cloudy black color, but became literal as he grew to be uniquely attached to me everywhere I went.

However, he periodically demands to be in his special place by himself: the downstairs closet shelves where I store everything from luggage up top to unused blankets and winter clothing items at floor level. He sits in the hallway near the closet door and begins a chorus of a particular meow: “Closet door, please.” So I go and let him in for as long as he wants. Garfy never joins him; he sits in there in the soft semi-dark until he wants to come out.

I myself was terrified of the dark until my early twenties. In my high school senior year I was given the use of our old Chevy station wagon to drive the nine miles to my high school and back, and in the winter months it would be full dark by the time I got home. The cars were garaged in what had been a barn, a goodly distance away from the house. It took many minutes of clenching my muscles and revving myself up to run as fast as I could from the barn to the house, arriving in panic with my heart banging.

Many decades later, I realized after a series of woodland pagan retreats and celebrations that I was not only no longer afraid of the dark, it had become my friend. I reveled in walking the wooded paths without turning my flashlight on—I was barefoot on the still-warm sandy soil and my eyes added to my confidence. I even called it “night-vision,” and recognized it from Suzanne Vega’s song. 

Now I find myself drawn to the dark, to my version of Shadow’s closet. My life is ever-more challenging on both the personal and political levels. A genetic heritage of depression asserts itself in blurts, and I can careen from comfortable capability to utter despair on a dime. But I am realizing that I can benefit from Shadow’s retreats to the closet, to a warm soft darkness. I never thought of darkness as a mother—my initial terror probably came from being shut in a dark cabinet by my mother as a punishment—but my pagan woodlands gave me a different response. The dark can mother me.

I don’t need to sit by a door and meow, I need to find safe times and places to let all the guard-rails down and say, “Hold me.”    

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Marriage. . .

—From CB—

The question came up on Facebook of “What makes for a successful marriage?”

Most replies were jokes, of course: “A quick divorce,” “Saying ‘Yes dear,’ to everything,” “Lots of booze,” etc. In general, marriage has a pretty bad reputation, yet for something so foul, it’s still popular. Maybe like beer.

In the writing of fiction, if it ends in marriage it qualifies as “romance;” if it doesn’t it’s “literary.” In the present-day theatre, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF is much more popular than THE FOURPOSTER.

I was moved to respond, having been in a marriage for 63 years, clearly “till death do us part,” but I restrained myself. Partly because it’s a hopelessly complex thing to answer, partly because “successful” is so subject to interpretation, and partly because an answer is instantly converted to advice.

Yet given all that, I’m moved to try. Please understand: this comes solely from my experience, not from a heavenly messenger or a best-selling how-to. And everyone’s different

1) A business partnership is based on a common goal: usually to make money. Few partnerships are simply “I wanna work with you doing something.” Our marriage has worked partly because we’ve worked together from the start, no different than my relatives, all farmers in lifelong marriages: when the pigs needed tending, you break off the fight and tend to the pigs. For us, it’s when rehearsal is scheduled to start or the grant application has to get in the mail. A goal can be many things, ours to make theatre. Other possible goals: to make money, to make a career, to serve God, to keep up with the Jones’s, etc. My impression is that most of us enter the partnership without the foggiest notion, except perhaps an impulse to get close or to have an idyllic life, as they do in the movie we saw.

2) Mutual respect. How to measure that? I have no idea, We tend toward giving respect to others who have the strongest resemblance to us—logic, talent, politics, etc.—and that may be a marker. We hit it off by working on a scene for stage-directing class, I directing, she acting, both of us making the translation. To go from that to an incredibly complex relationship with ourselves and the outside world was a strange hopscotch, but though radically different in temperament, I think we’ve never lost respect for one another’s strengths and basic humanity.

3) Of course true communication is needed, but “truth” can be a sharing or a club. A friend once quoted what’s proven to be useful. A threefold evaluation of any communication: (a) Is it true? (b) Is it kind? (c) Is it necessary? If two of the three are yes, then say it. We’ve used a process, though rarely, that we call “heartshare.” If I’m seriously disturbed about something, I may ask for a heartshare. The only rule is that I have to be honest, I can’t exaggerate, and my mate can only listen and not respond, except to ask questions that are truly to understand, not to rebut. We trust that the other person hears us.

4) Change happens. Few couples pose for the wedding portrait and are able to hold that pose for 50 years. We’ve made radical changes—from an academic career to freelance weirdos, from Midwest to West, to the Pacific, to South, back to the Midwest, to the East, and back to the Pacific; from monogamy to polyamory to aged monogamy; from parents to distant parents; from dog to cats; from theatre to writing fiction—and I don’t think we’re abnormal in the necessity of change and acceptance of trust.

5) Ceremony. For some it may be going to Mass or other religious celebrations. For us it’s been a regular practice of celebrating a Sabbath (20+ years), Horned Moon and Full Moon (40+ years), and going to the ocean on Sundays (20 years). And about once a month, we each take a solo day. Our cats value some element of predictability. As do we.

6) Responsibility. My father deserted my mother when I was two, so I’ve always had an almost pathological sense of loyalty. Elizabeth was raised by a mother with a serious alcohol problem; the father forced himself to be blind to it, so loyal he was to her. For us both, “responsibility” has been a major issue. We can’t say that others should stay in abusive or inadequate relationships, of course, only that the responsibility of both is for change.

I believe in marriage. I don’t believe in the hype either for or against. I don’t believe it’s either a bridge to happiness or an obstacle to it. I sorta wish that people entered into it like a business partnership, but that’s not quite relevant when you touch her lips. Perhaps gay marriage will redeem the institution, at least in literature, though I tend to look on the dark side.

I welcome others to comment on this. It’s important, I think.

                                                                        

Sparks Fly Upward…

—From EF—

The Book of Job said it: “ Yet man is born unto trouble, As the sparks fly upward .” This might sound like evasion, for there was already a plan in place to run Job through the wringer. Best to say it was his predestined heritage.

In a recent therapy session I had been reaching out to a very fragile memory: a hungry baby crying and crying and denied because the schedule didn’t allow a bottle yet. I was scared, alone, and helpless. As a toddler I was told I that was I no good, defective, and somehow that connected with being hungry. A part of me I call The Guardian sensed my fear: if I’m not good enough I’m going to starve, so grab food if I can get it.

I think this is linked to a compulsion in my present life. When I am confronted with a job where I fear I will fail, the ghost of that that baby’s hunger makes me run to grab something to eat. The Guardian who was created so long ago is still giving orders, in a time when the need is long gone. Confronted with piles of scattered papers on my desk, instead of starting a sorting process (not one of my native skills) I run to the kitchen to grab a handful of peanuts. The worse the mess, the more severe the compulsion.

The Guardian is still protecting that little one. My present self needs to reach out to that hungry, frightened, criticized little being, and help her release that fear. By now I have skills in using ritual. How? Through fire, through water, through air, into earth? My instinct said, Fire. And as soon as that thought formed, an image came.

My friend Steve Fowler had provided his community with many Solstice bonfires, and they were magnificent. Steve knew how to craft a vigorous bonfire that was not a danger to the humans encircling it. Lots of wood, some from deadfall, some from household stuff that wanted to Go Away. A central core, surrounded by four low arched passageways, one for each of the four directions, packed with tinder. When the time was right, four people brought torches to the mouths of the four tunnels. The fire began with a mighty whoosh, and went on for a long time as I watched a seemingly-endless rush of glorious sparks fly up and up into the blue-velvet sky.  

That memory came rushing back into my field of vision, and I gasped with the power of it. There it went, the old dead wood of my baby-self’s failure, the rotten straw of denigration. Steve has crossed the veil, but he took my hand and said, “Look. Look at that!”

Steve left our realm on April 11th. His energy was still powerfully present to many, long afterward. I still have a small packet of his ashes, waiting for me to take them to my power spot at the ocean—under the cliff at Portuguese Beach. He gave me a gift, and I will repay it.

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Action News. . .

—From CB—

Writing fiction at least keeps one out of trouble. It takes lots of time, it’s likely that few will read it, and so much accumulates even in the time it takes to read this, that like a fruit-fly life it’s gone before sunset. So why do it instead of more fruitful efforts like weed-whacking?

I suppose, for me, it comes down to a fascination with STORY and how the medium affects it. Most of my work—and all my profitable work—has been for the stage, straight plays in alternation with short sketches, radio drama, puppetry, even two musicals. Over the years I’ve made many excuses for leaving university teaching, but I guess the bottom line is that I just want to do it and do it and do it.

Now I’m not doing it. I’m writing fiction. Most recently, I’ve been adapting some of my short plays and sketches to the page. The latest is ACTION NEWS. It brings back memories.

We staged it in 1986 and toured it briefly. It’s a couple on morning talk-radio celebrating their 25th year on the air as their show is being cancelled. We sit and talk for an hour as WW3 is breaking out, with Russia invading Europe and dropping tons of heavy office furniture on German cities—it’s surreal.

Many memories. Simplest was playing it in a Movement Theatre Festival in Philly. In a festival of clowns, mimes, and dancers, we pitched it as an anti-festival piece—two people sitting at a table, no movement except leaning in to the mikes.

And a showing in Pittsburgh. It was very heavy tech—besides lighting cues, it was phones ringing, taped sequences, news feeds, flashbulbs—all cues for very rapid dialogue. Our techie did fine through the run at home, but in Pittsburgh something went wrong, he lost his place, we never knew what would happen next, and it was a solid hour of pure improvisation. In fact we garnered a pretty good review, though the writer described it as a “throwback to the Sixties.”

We took it to the Midwestern theatre where we got our start in independent work—by that time, we’d redesigned the tech so Elizabeth ran the whole thing from tape decks, push buttons, and foot pedals under the console. One of our dearest friends saw it and expressed his dismay. He felt we were painting the worst possible portrait of ourselves and our marriage.

I realized then that I used autobiographical fragments for a concrete purpose: to make the story real to myself. To say, perhaps, that this could be anyone. I’ve continued to do this. Not that I regard all people as equally corrupt or virtuous, but that I regret the sports-team fandom that’s crept into the public dialogue. However weird the human mind is, there are usually good reasons for whatever crap it comes up with. The Art of War stresses the need for good intelligence; if your spies are spying only on your own tribe, they won’t provide the best data.

I think it makes a good story.

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Reunions. . .

—From EF—

I’m gonna try again. I traveled to my high school reunion—a first for me—last July and didn’t get there. O’Hare was closed to all air traffic by a whopper of a storm, and I spent the night sleeping (?) on the cold tile floor of the St. Louis airport. I missed the next afternoon’s reunion, but did get to spend time with my only high school chum, Marilyn, staying overnight before heading to Milwaukee to see my brother Dan and my lifelong friend Flora. Let’s see if the Multiverse will let me hit the reunion this year.

1957, geez, that’s 67 years ago. I didn’t know much of anybody at Valparaiso High School, having been not only a nerd introvert but also more or less a prisoner of my mother, our house being nine miles from the school. Looking at the yearbook’s senior photos won’t be much help in recognizing people, and I sure as hell don’t look the same. However, I was modestly notorious, having been valedictorian and the school’s first National Merit scholar. There were two of us that year, and Lee Carlson was the other. He was my first-ever date and asked me to the prom. I wish he was still on this planet.

I’m flying out a day early, leaving time for two other reunions. First I’ll visit the family of John Davies, still at his old family home. It was a fifteen-minute walk down the dusty farm-country road from my house, and his dad and mine worked in the same Chicago office. He was three years younger than me and I knew his older brother better, so I wouldn’t say either was a close friend. But I did stay at their house more than a few times when it was convenient for my parents to be somewhere else.

In 1995 I surprised myself when I was on a solo road trip to join Conrad at a pagan gathering in Wisconsin. I suddenly took the exit from the Indiana Toll Road and drove to my old house. I had a little visit with the current owners, then stopped to visit John. We climbed a few levels up in the frame of his windmill and sat among the grapevines, learning who we were now. After some catch-up chat, he leaned forward and spoke in a low, direct voice: “You know, we all knew what you were going through, but there was no way we could do anything.” I nearly fell off the windmill.

My dad was a senior executive, John’s father was several ranks down, and my parents’ skimpy social world was among the older set. I have no idea how the Davies family knew about the abuse, but they did. I caught my breath: no, it was real, I didn’t make it up. John gave me a priceless gift, nearly thirty year ago, and I look forward to a reunion with him again.

Then I’ll spend the afternoon at my old house and its surrounding woods and fields. I know the house will have been renovated beyond recognition, but in the course of a lot of emails with the current owner, I know that most of the woods are untouched by development, and I will have my reunion with the natural world that kept me alive as a little kid.

I think all this will play a part in another reunion—the scattered inner family members who inhabit Elizabeth. I’ve been sending out “invitations”, guided by a friend who is a skilled therapist, and one by one they’re becoming visible. Each of them was born of necessity, allies in one trauma after another, but most of them so far distant in my childhood memories that they have blended into a diffuse cloud. I think this visit to their birthplace will give us all a better view of who we all are, and how our hearts are one.

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Trees. . .

—From CB—

I’m not a tree-hugger. The notion of spiders or ants crawling into my sleeves or around my collar is a huge turn-off. In fact I don’t like nature much, except to look at. Definitely I don’t like politicians who want to pave it over; it still contains a lot of the soul we’ve lost. And I went on lots of camping trips as a Boy Scout and even more as an adult, but Nature doesn’t like to speak to me, except as mosquito buzz.

I’ve known people who actually hug trees. It’s an honorable thing to do, and harmless: not easy to beat your girlfriend black’n’blue or mangle your husband’s dentures when you’re wrapped around a redwood—you’d have to be double-jointed. Might we lessen the chance of nuclear war if we learned to hug eucalyptus in third grade? It’d be worth a try. Maybe start out with practice on maples.

But I have to admit to a weakness. I do put my hands on trees. Whenever I think of it, and admittedly without asking permission. People, yes, you ask at least with a gesture, although in California, NOT to hug seems to imply the other person is covered with spiders or ants. Do birds or squirrels ask permission to climb or skitter or shit from the top of the top? But I do rest my hands on tree bark.

It rarely has an entirely clear complexion. Once in a while I encounter one without wounds and gouges, stray branches thrusting out, or sap clogged out of an aperture. Most bark is like I imagined my face to be at fifteen—maybe not rife with zits but unattractive in new and different ways.

Most of the time, it occurs to me, the texture reminds me of me. That scar happened when I was five, this one—the really gross one—when I was sixteen, and lots more further up the trunk.

But I put my hands on its strength. Its inevitability. Its intention simply to exist. Somehow it speaks to me. It has no need for belief, for political thought, other than don’t cut down this tree, or for my self-definition as a quasi-tree-hugger. It just gives as much as I choose to take.

How like life.

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You Decide. . .

—From EF—

Joe Hill. World War I. — Tom Joad. World War II. — Paul Robeson at Sydney Opera House. Vietnam War.

I’m writing this on the cusp of Memorial Day, 2024. A couple of years ago I put up a Memorial Day photo of my father taken in Paris, in a basement during a bombing raid in World War II. He and my mother’d had a lakeside tryst in the early summer of 1939, and I saw the light in February of 1940. He went to war, she went back to college, and I went to an adoptive home as a newborn. I doubt he ever suspected he’d made a baby. In those days, secrets were kept, and discreet arrangements were made. War makes its own arrangements.

This weekend I watched a movie and heard a radio broadcast and some connections snapped together in my head. Saturday night CB and Johanna and I watched the 1940 “Grapes of Wrath,” which ends with Tom Joad’s powerful speech to the mother he will likely never see again:

                    I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.

Sunday morning, driving to our regular ocean picnic, KPFA’s “Across the Great Divide” played John McCutcheon’s story of performing in Sydney, Australia, and having been coerced into singing “Joe Hill.” John’s intro described the man who’d sat in the front row for all three of his concerts, and his final command/request that John sing “Joe Hill.” The man had been an electrician for the years it took to build that opera house, and he was there when Paul Robeson took it upon himself to come to the work-site and sing for the workers—which he did for two hours, in 1960. The man had waited all these years for another American to come to Australia and sing “Joe Hill.” Here’s what had hooked him:

                    “Joe Hill ain’t dead,” he says to me,
                    “Joe Hill ain’t never died.
                    working men are out on strike
                    Joe Hill is at their side,
                    Joe Hill is at their side.”

                    “From San Diego up to Maine,
                    In every mine and mill –
                    working men defend their rights
                    there you’ll find Joe Hill.
                    there you’ll find Joe Hill”.

Joe Hill was executed in 1915 and World War I started not much later. “Grapes of Wrath” was published in 1939, and World War II started not much later. Paul Robeson sang for the workers in 1960, and the Vietnam War was in full swing. Joe Hill and Tom Joad are heroes worthy of Memorial Day. They were ready to lay down their lives in service to the community of humankind, and who is to say that the devastation of corporate profit is less lethal than the machines of war? Read the news.

We appear to be teetering on another brink. We’re being blasted by Fox News and Truth Social, and where are Joe Hill and Tom Joad now, when we need them? Who knows. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s everybody who can get it together to reach out.

You decide.  

 

Armoring. . .

—From CB—

I’ve never had occasion for self-analysis. Not that I haven’t done it: as a writer, both of comedy and otherwise, you’re constantly looking for material. Whether it’s a TV weatherman shopping for a new personality (Song Stories, 1974) or an investment broker taking the first big risk of his life (Tapdancer, 2022), you draw on what you know of yourself. Unconsciously but mercilessly. Even when it’s violent (Full Hookup, 1989), I’m drawing, I know, on the memory of seeing my mother being strangled, as well as having to fire an office worker.

But this is something new. “How are you feeling now?” A simple question, asked simply, at the seashore. But for some reason, it requires an answer besides “Fine.” Perhaps because I’ve written recently about Death; perhaps because I’m taking longer mid-day naps than I did even a year ago; perhaps just because the question seems to swell out of someone’s anxiety.

No easy answer. I’ve long known I was thoroughly armored against feeling. Except when it was useful. Except when it was funny or tragic or both. Except when it related to a character in a play or story. It probably came from the class consciousness of my childhood.

Ever since I remember, I’ve operated on two principles: (a) that I was a superior being, and (b) that no one would ever see it. Not that the first carried privilege—on the contrary, it held me to a higher standard than my fellows—I’m immensely tolerant of flaws in others, though not in myself. Nor did I lack the urge to excel: survival meant doing my damndest to succeed—as me, not as a faker disguised as me.

But I think the result was a vast armoring. I could get a devastating and all-too-personal review in the news, which I’d assimilate both in my eidetic memory and my bank account, and just go on doing whatever’s up next. I was lucky to have a mate who put up with that.

But does that answer the question: How do I feel? Well, I feel old. I feel off balance. I feel freaked at the next election. I feel pretty much the way my mom always felt: I don’t want be a burden. Otherwise, I feel pretty much as I’ve always felt. I just don’t know what that is.

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