West. . .
From EF—
I’ve had “Thunder Road” and “Fast Car” playing in rotation in my ears. They’ve set me to thinking about our own “Outta Here” times. Both of the biggies were heading west for California, in 1963 and again in 1999.
We latched onto each other in 1960, did the legal marriage thing in 1961, and took off for Stanford in 1963. The two school years of 61/62 and 62/63 were a parade of deadlines, demands, and the endless papers required for CB’s B.S. and M.A. I was working front desk in a dentist’s office and managing our household on a very thin dime. In those years CB produced Brecht’s “Baal,” an edgy disturbing piece that we co-translated, and then “Prometheus Bound,” for which I wrote my first-ever musical score. (In the years to come, there were more than fifty more.)
We were so young. When we married, I was 21 and Conrad, being 19, needed parental permission. We were living in a dismal basement apartment, often seeing each other for only a few fast hugs each day. The bands of constraint were crushing—managing to live on little money, hitting the deadlines for CB’s degrees, and finding what would come next. When Stanford accepted him for a Ph.D. and offered generous financial support, lightning had struck. We knew, at last, what would come next.
The Midwest was all we’d known. California was another world. But it would be thousands of miles away from my mother, and it would be a fresh start. We researched the movers, signed on the dotted line, packed the cartons and climbed into the VW bug, headed west. It was a revolutionary act. I was leaving behind a painful trail of deceit, having presented myself as an education student with a baroque skein of lies, and starting fresh. Whatever we did now, we were doing it together, from a clean slate.
There’s something about driving west. It takes a long time, and takes you through the flat corn-lands where you can hear the wind sing, and across the surreal white sands of Utah, and up and around the merciless mountain roads that killed so many. And then, there you are. You’re at the peak, night has just fallen, and before you is a bowlful of glowing jewels—the lights of the Bay cities. That’s where you’re going.
We did that, and built from there. We made 36 years of theatre as a producing/writing/performing duo, arriving in the 90’s in Philly with two earlier theatre renovations under our belt, and settling into a vivid urban theatre scene. When it became clear that we couldn’t sustain the new expected theatre season of four new shows a year, having cut our teeth on keeping new work in a long-term touring repertory, we had to face a hard choice. We would have to break and run again, leaving behind all our hard-won grant support and our comfortable life. We loved Philly, and it wasn’t an easy decision, but it was brutally clear. If we were ever going to go back to California, it had to be now.
When we moved from Lancaster into our Philly space, we spent our first night in the middle of an immense empty room, 32 x 120, on a sleeping bag with a single candle for light. We made magic in that space for seven years, and once we’d packed for our move west, our last night was just the same: on our sleeping bag in a huge space, with one sweet candle.
So what’s the road ahead now? This time, it won’t be geography. It will be a challenge to see Thunder Road, to get into the fast car toward what age brings. OK. Bring it on.
###
Change. . .
—From CB—
Mostly, I check Facebook every day. It’s different, and the people are mostly alive. I miss humans, but I’m shy. And then last night I had a dream.
No throbbing adventures or righteous assassinations, just a changed POV. For many years, I’ve kept a journal: sometimes including a startlement, like getting invited to dinner or finishing a book, sometimes just “Usual,” or “Gym and coffee, writing, etc.” When I get behind, forgetfulness kicks in. I recall the practice of Louis XVI, who felt the duty to keep a kingly journal but tended toward the minimal: the day the Bastille fell, he wrote “Rien.” Nothing.
That has changed for me. Or it’s about to change. Or we’ll see if it does.
The old phrase, Book of Shadows, occurred to me in my sleep. I’ve always heard that as a Wiccan cliche, some compendium containing some fruity verse to make the weather behave. But now I saw it as something more.
All my books are books of shadows, including the ones I haven’t written. They don’t clear up the weather or make it rain. But each day writes its words on the wall, including misspellings, and forgetting the day means to be like never having lived it. If my job were dropping atomic bombs, I’d remember, like it or not. But that hasn’t been on the worklist lately. Probably, finishing “Chemo” is all that’s there.
Until they tuck me away from the sun, I’ll cast my shadow. No question I’m fading. I’m losing balance, groping for names, forgetting to signal a turn. But still I stand in the sun until it’s time, and write my book of shadows.
###
Feline Air-Lock. . .
—From EF—
I’m nearly done. It’s been a fascinating process, arguing with myself to take the time to fiddle with the design, to find the problem-points, to make the mistakes and repair them, and to be OK with saying, “No, I’d like it to be this way.” I think I’m going to be happy with the result. But boy, howdy, it’s been a bumpy path.
For starters, I was resistant to the idea. Our house cats want very much to roam around outdoors, and we want very much to prevent them from being roadkill. One of the brothers is a master Houdini and I swear can wiggle through a one-inch door-opening. We have done our best and have repeatedly lost the battle, resulting in a very long span (an hour and a half, once) of waiting for the magic moment of The Catch, all the time cramping with anxiety every time the animal veered toward the road.
The realization that we will get slower and clumsier as time marches on did the trick, and I realized that I needed to resign myself to building an entry-way with its own door, so that if a cat slithered through the major house door it would still be confined and could be caught. The challenge was to build something that looked intentional and comely.
The inspiration was the handrail I’d built at the side of the steps up to the porch, a safety addition made essential by Conrad’s fall and concussion last March. Our daughter Johanna had immediately come to give us two weeks of loving help, and she and I made ourselves into a crackerjack construction team while CB was still in the hospital. I loved the result. The house is painted a nice medium gray with soft green trim, and we built a graceful structure with a green frame and grey pickets. I love it.
Last year we hired a fence-builder to rehab our front deck and do a whole new surrounding fence. The result has been a joy, and I decided to use his design as a model for the lower part of this new structure. I’d bought some graceful decorative metalwork panels as a deer-deterrent fence around our raised-bed garden, and bought more of the same panels to put atop the porch’s wooden fencing, making a light and airy enclosure. That’s the last part for me to finish, modifying it to fit.
The last time I hung a door was thirty years ago in our Philly theatre/apartment, and I have a vivid memory of how important it was to have everything plumb, square, and level. I checked every stage of the process three ways from Sunday and did a good job. The first time I opened and closed it and heard the solid click of the latch was a trip. Then I looked up at the space over the door, not yet closed in, and my heart sank. The top of the door and the wood of its frame were not remotely parallel. The square and the spirit level all said the door was correct, and finally I thought to check the major 4×4 beams of the porch itself. Turns out I built a level door in a hinky house.
After I cried, I laughed, and I’ll add some cosmetic framing that makes the beam’s droop less evident. I can always claim it was intentional. It’s an old tale that a small deliberate error avoids offending the gods—perfection is arrogance. So there.
###
Ageism. . .
—From CB—
In the past I’ve read posts about racism, sexism, etc., and tried to distinguish between folks making rational points and pissed-off folks just ranting. But I’ve not felt personally involved. Now I’m moved to post about “ageism.”
I’m 82, and it strikes home. I’m not directly affected: I don’t seek a job, and some folks even open doors for me. True, I can’t get a literary agent, as no one would make any money from me over the long run, but that was probably true thirty years ago, when I had one—she died.
Nor am I vitally concerned with the “creeping invisibility” factor that hits men at the point when you no longer look like a rapist: I’m used to it. Maybe it’s because I’m shy, or a left-over condition from high school, where I got good grades and consequently didn’t fit in, but it’s been only on stage that I’m visible, because then I’m a more interesting somebody-else.
I’m more concerned with national politics. I see daily headlines about Joe Biden’s “gaffes” but nothing about Trump’s ambling, rambling, utterly demented speeches. That’s not “news,” that shows he says what he thinks. As to Biden’s gaffes: I myself have many moments of not remembering names, and of having to use the thesaurus to find words. That’s a part of aging, and I have no trouble making a choice between “senile” and “long in the tooth,” depending on the context. I certainly admit to being the latter.
At last resort, I should launch into a speech castigating my fourth-grade teacher and all the migrants who’re writing best-sellers. If I do it loud enough and often enough, I’ll be lauded as tough-minded enough to make our enemies cringe.
In the meantime, what’s to be done in more general terms? Senility is a medical condition; it can be diagnosed or ruled out. Other medical conditions give credence to the saw that old age isn’t for wimps. More problematic, for me, are other common cliches of age.
“Stuck in the past” is an euphemism for “close-minded,” and it’s inarguable that the past plays a role in one’s thinking, starting with my mother’s admonition to look both ways before I cross the street. Yes, there’s the danger of not adapting to new technology—I don’t do texting, both because I type very slowly with my thumb, and because I don’t like a dozen new ways to miss your message.
Other ways of being closed-minded? It’s my observation that younger folks—which includes almost everyone now—are more prone, not less, to adopt the “flavor of the day.” Who else would try bubblegum-flavored ice cream?
I readily admit that people of my generation have problems. I hate to drive at night, Balance uncertainties, sleeplessness, and so on, not to mention other less mentionable details. But assuming that particular people who belong to a demographic have all the characteristics associated with that grouping, I think, is bigoted, plain and simple.
Everyone—any age, any race, any social standing—very easily falls victim to the idea that they’re persecuted, that others are more privileged, lazier, dumber, more something, less other. Is it economic disparity, one of thirty billion ism’s, or just grading on the curve? Maybe we’re back to Jimmy Carter, where great tumult was made of “malaise.” Maybe there’s no one answer, but I feel it’s profound.
Energy. . .
—From EF—
I am a week behind in writing a blog, but I am busy forgiving myself.
It has been an unusual week. I have been massively involved in doing a collection of tasks related to preserving the value of our house, given that at our collective age it’s time to take more care of resale value. I have the unusual advantage of collaborating with a person whose trade skills embrace a wide range, including those of storytelling: we are entertaining ourselves as we go. We have attacked a number of weird needs around the old homestead, including my primary focus of designing and building a front screen-porch addition that will function as a cat air-lock. Age is not improving our ability to keep the escape artists confined to the house, thus evading their destiny as road-kill. With this porch addition, we will have the ability to catch them if they sneak through our major front door.
Given that this is a significant modification, it needs to be something that looks intentional and comely, and I have seized this portion of the various projects as my own. Design is something that comes to me stepwise, and it takes a while. I am finally in the end-game and am pleased with how it will look. The rains make building and painting sketchy and episodic, but the finish line is now in view. I have greatly enjoyed re-entering the realm of sawing, fitting, and screwing
Other energy bursts? Well, I turned eighty-four this week, and I think that’s a powerful number. I rejoiced in the cascade of FB birthday wishes. The Occidental Arts Center scheduled our Frankenstein on their regular play-reading series and we were there to appreciate a very powerful rendition; given that Covid had put an end to our lifetime of having our work shared with audiences, this was a gorgeous reanimation.
And then there was Rite of Spring. This was my birthday gift to myself. The epic score by Stravinsky—so powerful that the Paris premiere audience tore up the seats and rioted—was choreographed by the audacious Pina Bausch into a powerful ballet in 1975. What I just saw was a recreation of her choreography by a company of 38 dancers from 14 African countries, and it pummeled me. I was in tears and shaking.
Her question to her company: How would you dance if you knew you were going to die? This is an enactment of a an ancient fertility ritual to ensure the crops. The entire community gathers to select the maiden who will dance herself to death, a sacrifice for the survival of the whole. In our time, Navalny just surrendered his life, and left a message:
“If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”
Watching this young dancer push through the desperate fear of death to give her life for the community, I could not help making this comparison. Life commands dedication to the energy of existence. I give thanks.
A weekly view of the world we
wake into every morning.
Books and Media by
Bishop & Fuller
A Visit to Life:
micro-fictions
Mica: 25 Flashes
more micro-fictions
Flashes & Floaters:
14 Fictions
Elizabeth: One of Many
(1949-74)
Masks
a historical fantasy
AKEDAH: THE BINDING
a novel of promises broken or kept
Blind Walls
a novel of blue-collar ghosts
Galahad's Fool
a novel of puppets & renewal
Co-Creation:
50 Years in the Making
A Memoir of the Creative Life
Rash Acts
35 Snapshots for the Stage
Realists
A Novel of Dystopian Optimism
Mythic Plays
From Inanna to Frankenstein
DVDs
Stage Performances!