Conrad Bishop's Blog, page 23

Certainty . . .

—From CB—

Facebook is fun. Apart from its many flaws, you learn things about your friends you’d never know. In the current crisis, I’ve learned this:

The virus is real, it’s a global threat, the only hope is strict isolation.
It’s no worse than seasonal flu.
It’s a plot by Big Pharma to push a costly vaccine when there’s already a cure that’s cheap.
The cheap cure is no cure.
It’s a plot by China to undermine our economy.
We paid them to do it.
It doesn’t exist.
It’s a plot by Big Pharma.
If we let it alone, take no measures, and die, we’ll all become immune.
It’s worse than anyone thinks it is.
It’s a scheme by Bill Gates to force vaccination, implanting microchips in the world population to establish a totalitarian state under Agenda 21.

  And so on, with variations. In a sense, I’m pleased that I have such variety among my friends. I haven’t yet heard that it’s caused by the aliens living in the bowels of Mt. Shasta to thin the human population so they can find a parking space in San Francisco—I fully expect to hear that tomorrow.

  But this is not a post to belittle anyone’s theory. What I find noteworthy is the certainty.

  I see it in this issue, in the primaries, in just about every issue on the face of my iMac screen. There are few doubts, few maybes, few on-the-other-hands, but there’s a buffalo stampede of rock-solid, absolute, butt-naked CERTAINTIES. It seems as if you don’t have that certainty, you might as well be going out the door without your pants.

  I’ve seen almost no examples of an opinion being changed. Even if a hundred people tell you your mustache looks silly, damned if you’re gonna shave it off.

  I would have been a good dentist. Not that I mistrust my notions, but I probe for the cavities. I want to make sure that damn tooth is going to do its job as long as I need it. I’ve always been more critical of experimental theatre than mainstream because I have a greater stake in it. I’ve been more critical of progressive political rhetoric than reactionary drivel because I want it to succeed. The best scientists are those who forgo the easy headline and do everything possible to disprove what they most hope to prove.

  In all the thoughts outlined above in regard to Covid-19, the simple fact (IMHO) is this: nobody knows. Granted, predictions have consequences, and people, states, nations, have to make decisions based on probabilities, whereas all I have to do is to decide if I’ll wear a mask (which I do) and vote in November. I can express an opinion on whether there’s a sentient God, but my opinion is only an identity-construct, with little effect on the Universe.

  So why the certainty?

  I guess we need it. Apart from practical decision-making, I think most of us are addicted to predicting the future. Even those who’ve grown up in poverty in America have lived a privileged life. We haven’t suffered carpet-bombing. We haven’t had armed squads come into town and line us up—in this century anyway. Even in epidemics, we haven’t had carts through the streets to bring out our dead. We have hunger, but we haven’t had mass starvation, and our mass murders have been in the dozens, not in the hundreds of thousands. We haven’t had civil war for a hundred and fifty years. We have racial strife, but not on the scale of Rwanda. We’re really babes in the woods when it comes to suffering as experienced in the world.

  So I’m not preaching a let’s-wait-and-see on any vital issue, only that we probe and prod our own firmly-held opinions and work hard to define the difference between “I think” and “I know.”

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Mother’s Day

—From EF—

It’s Mother’s Day, but which mother? I had a mother; three of them, in fact. I have a son and a daughter, so I am also a mother. The mother who gave me life could not keep me. The mother who raised me was childless. The person who gave me a mother’s unconditional love was not my mother. It’s complicated.

The mother who adopted me gave up her career on the stage to marry the man who became the heart center of the rest of her life; it was a loving marriage, but childless. She’d had a turbulent and painful childhood, then went on to study theatre in New York. After the 1917-18 flu epidemic upended her efforts on the dramatic stage, she turned to a career as a vaudeville comedienne and did very well. Leaving theatre to live as a country wife was life-changing.

The mother who bore me grew up with a divorced single mother, and she spent most of her time away from home in private schools: 7 years near her Wisconsin home, 2 years in New England, a high school graduate at age 15. She was a beautiful young woman with a love for music and theatre, and the man who shared those loves probably never knew he’d made a baby. I interrupted her study at UW/Madison, and afterward she returned, completed her degree, married a good man, and had a son.

The mother who embraced me with full-hearted love was abandoned when she gave birth to the child who would become my life-mate. Her husband wanted no competition. As a single mom, she struggled for survival, always rejoiced in her son, and opened her arms to me when I entered the family. Her love was milk to me.

I honor them all. These women: amazing women, vital, fierce, loving, and totally different. Life threw them curves, and they all had to struggle. But all three gave me gifts worthy of fairy godmothers. My birth-mother chose to give me life, and she gifted me with her music and theatre and love of languages, as well as her wonderful bone structure. My adoptive mother gave me great pain, but she also showed me what a committed marriage can be and how performing can light up your life. And my borrowed mother gave me a warm nest, honored me by blessing my union with her only beloved, and called us both her kids.

Three mothers: I celebrate them. And I celebrate me too, a mother who nursed two kids on the road, changed diapers in the Dodge van, managed years of home-schooling, and let go when the time came.

And today I also lavish love on the mother of us all. She has been abused and is hurting, and we would all do well to become warriors in her defense. One way or the other, all my mothers did that for me. It’s only right to give back. Happy Mother’s Day.

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Lost Love?

—From CB—  

Hearing a country ballad about lost love, I say no, that’s you, that’s not me. I respect your tears and your wailing heart, but I’ve lived a different light.

I’ve lived with one woman, losing and losing, finding and finding again.

We found love in the cold wind of Chicago coming off the lake, back seat of a Chrysler that could barely crawl north.

We found love in a borrowed apartment, though the owner pounded on the door. “I need to check the pot roast!”

We found love winding the hills to the beach at San Gregorio and teriyaki chicken.

We found love despite early morning grits at the border of South Carolina, and roaches the size of frogs, and the craziest days.

We found love after wild successes and debacles in Milwaukee.

And in a basement apartment dodging the steam pipes, cleaning babyshit, surviving the tumor, surviving the bleak tomorrow.

And on I-80 and I-94 and I-15 and the miles between gigs and telling the kids to shut the fuck up and hugging them, the endless all-nighters, the shows, the almost-successes, the flops, the next mornings, the newfound friends.

We found love coming home from the arms of others.

We found love in new ways as our bodies aged.

In giddy oneness.

In grisly boredom.

In laughter and in the bitterest of tears.

Ongoing love is a perpetual finding. You pick it up, it’s warm in your hands, then it dissolves. Nothing sustains.

But it’s ever there for the finding.

 

 

Beltane . . .

—From EF—

In a week, Beltane is coming, whether we like it or not. The sap of spring is running full, the blossoms are bursting, the bees are busy (thank you!) and the weeds are at eye level. We are sheltering in place, but Gaia is relentless in connecting us all.

What is Beltane? It’s one of the old celebrations, one of the cross-quarters that come between the stately equinoxes and solstices. The others are Lammas, the harvest feast, the thanksgiving for the year’s tilling; Samhain, the time when the ancestors are honored; Imbolg, Brigid’s feast, the time to acknowledge what you are pregnant with; and now Beltane, the time when everything calls for connection. Sexual, yes, but way beyond that.

And now we must not touch, other than those to whom we are already committed. Conrad and I are embracing more than ever, and this is good, but when a dear friend comes over for a backyard six-foot visit, I feel keenly the embrace that cannot happen. And with Beltane imminent I am reminded of the power I have felt in group celebration, what happens when people focus their energies, raise them to peak, and open them to those in their circle.

You don’t have to be a neopagan to know this. You feel it when the church choir rips off a good one, when the concert generates a mosh pit you can’t resist, when the home team makes the final score, or now, when you go outside at 8 pm and howl. It’s why people weep for joy at weddings. Humans need to open wide and share the current, and Zoom doesn’t quite do it.

For a time we were part of a really good Moon circle. We came from different traditions, but we were all adults and knew how to raise energy together. Our focus was mostly on healing, and we did some remarkable things. I miss it keenly, most of all because it had given me a way to contribute something communally.

And that’s what I also grieve deeply for: no longer being able to perform for an audience, the deep current that was my sustaining power for most of my life. It may come again or it may not—change happens—but it was my most powerful way of giving. When you are in the presence of a group of people who become in an instant connected and whole, when everyone is breathing together and feels that brush of light, that is nectar.

We must invent new ways until our old ways can return. Think ahead to Beltane. Prepare. Bring to mind those who have helped you feel most alive, most connected. Prepare a time when you can sit quiet and bring those thoughts together. If you could write a thank-you note to everyone you ever loved, what would it say? In these times of rage and division, let your love run free, let its lavish waters burst the banks, and celebrate connection.    

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Conspiracy . . .

—From CB—

Not intending the following to deprecate all conspiracy theories—only the Total Absolute Certainty with which so many of those are stated. You may be dead right, but in my humble opinion, hours of googling videos on the Web does not constitute “research.” That said, apologies to any who take this amiss. From our play SURVIVAL:

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Conspiracy. Everything’s a conspiracy, they say. Like, what do they really do in the VIP Lounge? Are those VIPs in there just … lounging?

But, well, here, my friends, are the facts:

Yesterday’s destruction of all transport systems in New York City, with the estimated loss of 42,000 lives, was the conspiracy of ISIS, ISIL, DAESH.

Surprise? Well, they never report the real news. Okay, so—

ISIS is a conspiracy of the CIA and the current Administration to justify the creation of a police state in America and conquer the world.

This Administration is the front for a plot linking radical environmentalists, Black Nationalists, and international resurgent Communism to destroy Capitalism by letting it disgrace itself.

Communism itself was a conspiracy by proto-Nazis to induce world chaos leading to forced attendance at the operas of Richard Wagner.

Nazism was funded by—sorry, this is pretty offensive—Nazism was funded by a cabal of Jewish extremists to produce the Holocaust, thus justifying establishment of the Zionist state.

Zionism! Zionism is a plot by the Illuminati to foment world war between the monotheistic religions and pave the way for an enlightened humanistic utopia ruled by philosopher kings.

The Roman Catholic Church founded the Illuminati as the Antichrist they’re saving us from.

God, in His wisdom, created the Roman Catholic Church.

And God’s mother told Him—He was about two years old when He did this—told Him He was a Bad Boy and made Him go stand in a black hole. God didn’t create the universe, they just gave it to Him for His birthday.

But it was all the fault of the Mother Goddess, who did not read the package label for age-appropriate toys.

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But so what?

If there is a conspiracy, are we better off being hip to the conspiracy, or just stay dumb? Maybe get a job with it, like catering lunches?

But whatever they’re doing, we get through the day, no matter what. Drunk drivers, practical jokes, genocides, lay-offs and labor pains … and whatever comes next.

We might ought to get our own conspiracy going.

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The Salt of Sorrow . . .

—From EF—

I came in from my eight o’clock howl feeling, as usual, connected and purged. It’s a ritual not often honored in our contemporary lifestyle, to throw back your head and let pure sound come out, and the experience of hearing fellow humans from miles away joining the ululation is, well, special. It seems to be catching on around here.

John Prine died at the full moon, and that evening’s howl had powerful weight for me: celebration and grief. Tonight’s howl was just a howl until I came inside.

I got shaky and asked Conrad to come lie down on the couch with me for a bit; I needed full contact. And then the gate opened and the sobbing began. I had no idea why, the grief was just there. And we lay there, his face above me and his arms around me, and I just let it go. It felt familiar.

“It’s like being in labor.” I remembered the endless process, thirty-six hours before the OB realized that he hadn’t done pelvic measurements. “This baby’s not gonna get thru there, prep for C Section.” But until then, Conrad’s face was close to mine, riding the rapids with me.

These tears came from as deep a place. Our world is in labor, and we need a doula. The birthing is difficult, and the outcome is not guaranteed. I wiped my tears and tasted the salt. Earlier in the day, I’d wiped the blood from a shallow scratch and tasted the salt. If I’d tasted the fluid when my water broke I’d have tasted the salt.

We need salt. It’s in everything essential: tears, blood, pee, sweat, and amniotic fluid. Maybe our wild craving for Cheetos and potato chips is a signal that we’re missing a more essential salt: the salt of sorrow. We’re told that everything is normal, we just need to tend to business and all will be well. But we crave salt.

I think we crave connection with sorrow. Sorrow implies a connection with something that might be lost, an affirmation that it has value. This is not an old man on his last legs, that’s our grandpa. So let the tears flow, taste the salt, honor their source, and let it shape tomorrow.

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Who’s Responsible?

—From CB—

A friend posed a serious Facebook question: Is God involved with suffering? My friend is an atheist, I’m a Neopagan/Unitarian/Quaker/Atheist with a statue of Dionysus on my altar—though neither of us being intrinsically anti-Christian. He asked for serious answers, though it’s a bit of a Zen koan: Is a God I don’t believe in responsible for anything?

Like a koan, its answer can only be found in a seismic shock to your definitions—in this case of “God” and “belief.” Certainly I believe those are words in the English language, but like many words—such as “love”—they’re slippery, wormy things with as many meanings as there are tongues to waggle.

For me, “God” is what is. You might call that pantheism, but for me that’s always conjured the image of little rocks with neuroses. The Gaia Hypothesis posits that Earth is a conscious organic being, with a vast interplay of forces promoting its life. Yet again, as soon as we say “conscious,” we’re drawn into another shell game. Our puny consciousness is our model of all we define as consciousness.

And we have an instinctive urge to project our own experience of consciousness onto the outside world, whether it’s “God loves me” or “my computer hates me.” No problem with that as long as we don’t live too rigidly by the metaphor or try to pound it into another’s head like a railroad spike.

I believe there are commandments, though no voice to utter them. The law of gravity is a big one: even if my dream takes me flying, my head stays firmly on the pillow and my butt in place. “Entropy” sounds pretty bad, as does “Death,” but it’s part of the deal. Is there conscious will behind these, or behind ebola, AIDS, Covid-19, or bubonic plague, or are those just Nature’s way of culling the burgeoning herd?

Some would seek to propitiate the god of the volcanic eruption by sacrificing a goat; I’d just run like hell. That’s the ultimate test of belief.

To my mind, the greatest disservice that monotheisms have rendered us (among many arguable gifts) is that they’ve perpetuated a primitive image of a humanoid god with a high IQ and lots of fire-power, when—to me—an unknowable Universe very slowly becoming known is immeasurably more awe-inspiring. Scientists with their methodology and artists with theirs are groping toward it, though like snails on I-80 aspiring to reach New York.

Like it or not, we all live within it. And yes, it’s created some range of behaviors called “Love,” at least among the higher Earth vertebrates, though it may extend to slugs or fishes who just piss on the other fish’s eggs. But if a rock falls on your head, that’s God too.

Call it God, call it Nature, call it the All, or just say “Wow!”

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Touch . . .

—From EF—

Stay connected. Stay six feet apart. Stay at home. But stay connected.

Say what?!!!

I don’t think we have ever before, within my 80 years of memory, needed the solace of touch more. I get up earlier, Conrad somewhat after, but for years and years the first thing that happens when we greet the morning together is a long full-frontal embrace, the kind that makes your knees wobble. It’s not just a good way to start the day, it’s essential soul-food.

So yes, the two of us can still embrace each other in our shelter. I rejoice in that more keenly every day. We talk on the phone as often as we can with our son Eli and with our daughter Johanna. And when will the day come when we can safely hug them again? Our children? The gorgeous people who long ago drank my milk?

In our long years when we toured Dessie all over this country as our part of combatting child abuse, we spoke to each audience after the harrowing performance to suggest what might happen in their community to keep young parents from falling into Dessie’s abyss. One part of this was knowing what all children need, including the hidden wounded children inside the abusive parents. One documented form of abuse is termed “failure to thrive.” Children deprived of loving touch do not thrive.

Can touch happen without physical contact? Conrad and I have explored this over the years. For more than forty years we have celebrated the full moon and the dark moon with our own personal ritual, without fail, whether together or apart. If I am in France and he is in Sebastopol, we agree on a mutual time and do our best to achieve touch. You’d be surprised.

As I write, we are losing beloveds, as we all do over and over. I lost my mother before I even knew who she was, but I wear the beautiful silver ring she wore, and when I touch it, I touch her. I loved two powerful actresses who both set sail from our shores in recent times, but I can still embrace each of them.

There’s a gospel song whose refrain is “This may be the last time, it may be the last time, I don’t know.” Last time to sing together, to love each other, to see each other . . . none of us knows. In the last years, every time I visit the stones in Carnac I sing this to myself as I walk. What comforts me is that ever since I bonded with that place, it has been so clear in my heart’s memory that I can close my eyes and be there, really be there. I can walk the half-hour’s path from the village to the hostel, seeing every foot of the path, smelling the pines, hearing the ocean.

Trees talk to each other with their roots and help each other when needed. (Really. Look it up.) Mycelium are the Earth’s internet. I think I tuned into that at Carnac, and the Earth is letting me dial up. The moon let Conrad and me use her high-speed channels. Check out our primal roots and see what they can do for you.

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Leadership . . .

—From the Damned Fool—

As part of its economic stimulus package in addressing COVID-19, the Administration is reported to be including an additional trillion dollars to arm the U.S. population.

It would underwrite the mandatory purchase of a handgun, rifle, or semi-automatic weapon for each American over the age of six. It would accompany an executive order defining all use of such federally-subsidized weapons as “self-defense.”

The spokesman, who declined to be named, explained that the plan would protect otherwise vulnerable Americans from contamination by anyone coming within six feet of the shooter, including family members. It would prop up a vital industry, saving millions of jobs, “perhaps billions,” he said, as well as reducing unemployment statistics. It would cull the population of potentially infectious individuals and reduce the strain on Medicare, Social Security, and the overall health care system.  

In response to gun control advocates, he claimed that guidelines would be very strict and that anyone involved in a fatal shooting would have to fill out a form.

The spokesman denied rumors that the program targeted direct population reduction, especially in large-city Democratic strongholds. “Culling would be strictly nonpartisan,” he assured, “though no question it would have positive side effects for the environment.”

Might this not spur an increase in accidental deaths? “No death is accidental. It’s a consequence of predictable circumstances. We put our trust in the good will of the American people. No one wants to kill without purpose.”

In reply to the question of whether this might survive a court challenge, he expressed confidence. “We feel we’ve got the courts pretty well in hand.”

Addressing where the additional trillion would come from, a concern raised in regard to social programs, he replied, “The more debt we pile up, the greater the restraint on future Administrations in proposing vast wasteful spending programs.We are the party of restraint.”

[For more laughter from the belly of the beast, check out REALISTS, our novel of dystopian optimism, at https://damnedfool.com/books/realists/.]

Realists . . .

—From EF—

Is laughter is the only sane response? I’m seeing heartfelt pleas for sanity in the face of the virus from officials who know, and from people in Europe who know, and from patients in US hospitals who know. And then I see the stuff spewing out of Fox and on Facebook and wonder, are we all in the same universe? And I see that effective distancing is six feet minimum and then see the photos from O’Hare and Dallas airports with hundreds of unhappy souls jammed up shoulder to shoulder for six, eight, ten hours because of Administrative actions, having come from European locations well-supplied with the virus, and I think how many hot spots are going to start all over the country as a result. It’s as if our nation is made up of a number of bumper cars with no ability to communicate.

REALISTS. I’m sorry, but we wrote this sucker in 2001, and it’s actually funny, though terrifying. We inagined that there was an election, not many people voted, and an incompetent fascist was elected, then re-elected. Bud Pert, his name was, and his slogan was “Get Real.” Later it was “Give it to ’em. Hard.” The party was called the Realists, and that was the name of our novel. The Realists, in league with Big Pharma, declared dreaming illegal and mandated universal dosing with dream-suppressants (except for the elites), administered through the public water supply. Pee tests were required regularly. Of course people went nuts. Reality fragmented into sub-units and nobody could communicate with somebody who wasn’t part of their own sub-unit. Does this sound familiar?

A group of unrelated folks, designated as terrorists by the feds, are lured into a high-rise office by the promise of tax rebates. As they attempt to flee in an elevator, the encircling CIA and FBI shoot, severing the elevator cable, and everybody’s gonna die. Except for this: the predictions of a military physicist are right, that if you confine dream-deprived people into a tight space and subject them to stress, the fabric of reality splits. The group doesn’t hit bottom, they ricochet onto a westbound tour bus called the Blue Terrapin (inspired by the actual Green Tortoise). From that point they’re on their own, and it’s up to them to evade the black helicopters.

Well, yes, this is ridiculous, but then look at your daily news feed. Our hapless passengers succeed in creating community, banding together for survival, and discover that magic is possible. Can you imagine the terrified group stranded on a Badlands mesa called Stronghold, about to be blown away by massed military aircraft, and suddenly herds of ghost buffalo appear and wipe the airborne goons out?

If you don’t have enough suitable entertainment for your self-quarantine days, Realists is available for $2.99 on Smashwords or through our DamnedFool website for a hard copy, and no mattter how cracked it sounds, it’s funny. I may even start reading it again myself.

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