One recent Saturday, we had quite a day! Why do I feel compelled to post this here? Because it was such a great, unusual day. Because I recommend combining a significant anniversary with another significant family event, like a wedding, or a proposal of marriage. Because, in my old age, I feel like shouting out to the world about something great.
At 12 noon, one son married a young, vivacious Spanish-American woman. Then finger-foods and other great delicacies.
After the marriage ceremony, my wife and I were toasted on our fifty golden years. I responded with this, finished in the last second before we had to leave to go to the doings:
[Quote:]
50½ years ago, the stream of my life
merged with the stream of her life,
where we encountered a small dam of attraction.
And there it was!! There she was!! Dam!!
We began to build a higher dam
to pool my rising delight.
We put in store our burgeoning friendship,
filling our lake with companionship,
and then it became a sea of partnership,
and, as the dam rose, an ocean of respect.
And playfulness, in games of wit and smiles and laughter.
And the play of eyes in short glances, too hot.
And hands entwined in strange, electrifying touch.
And a jumping joy in being there with—
her.
And knowing, wordless inexpressibles.
Love is a reservoir, holding everything that binds two together
in a lasting relationship.
Love is an impoundment of admiration, fidelity, loyalty, and humor.
Love can be weighty,
but our dam was equal to the task.
For some the dam will break and a torrent released.
The threat will always be there.
But not this dam.
There might be the algae of conflict clouding the waters.
But seldom for us.
There is the dense weedy bottom of the vicissitudes of everyday business and labor, obligations and duties, financial fortune and mis-fortune, physical misfortune and mishap.
Then small fry appear in the pool, demanding vigilant care.
But after a half century,
five percent of a millennium,
five decades,
fifty years,
six hundred months,
eighteen thousand days,
four hundred thirty-two thousand hours,
twenty-five million nine hundred twenty thousand minutes,
of sleeping and waking time together, discounted a bit for being apart at times,
I must conclude that being married to her is the longest I have ever held one job.
The dam that had to contain a sea of symmetries
and then an ocean of obligations,
was built over time and can never be overbuilt,
(like my engineer friend, Fred, once told me the Hoover Dam was overbuilt.)
Love is a reservoir filled with respect and devotion over many years,
against the time when the drought will come.
[Unquote]
Then another son arose and made a proposal of marriage (finally!!) to his lady friend of many, many years. She said yes. He gave her the engagement ring that my wife’s mother was given by my wife’s father sometime between 90 and 100 hundred years ago. No date has been set yet for the emplacement of the final ring.
Ah, the dancing!
There was the bride in her wedding dress, dancing solo in her fiery flamencan style of the Andalusian gypsies. Then pairs, the children taking fire from the adults. (There was no fire in our ritual dance; my knees, you know.) Then a large group flung themselves into something called the YMCA, among other crowd steps I could not follow.
We had on display fifty years of Xmas cards on an easle, and a portrait in chalk of my wife in her wedding veil, created by our dear friend (now dec.) 50 years ago as a wedding present. But the artist’s daughter came from Portland, OR, to be with us. The son who proposed created a beautiful montage of photos covering the family years.
One other thing. The wedding march played on a boom box was a CD made from the reel-to-reel taped recording that we made of our wedding. Perfect!
I am so fortunate that Fred’s wife introduced me to her sorority sister. My first glimpse of my wife came when this lady sat down in a seat one row behind me and over a bit toward the wall at the back of the old Opera House where I sat one fall night, directing a rehearsal of a Theatre Guild production of a play, “Stalag 17”, in which Fred had a part (Hoffy). Later, Fred and his wife invited me over as a fourth for bridge. The first hand I picked up was all spades except one card. I smelled a rat. Fred said nothing.
I proposed on our first date. We married six months later.
And we have had a history.
As I write, it is Nov 9. The full moon will bathe us in her creamy light on Nov 12, and the next day my man and I will celebrate our 48th anniversary (just a tad behind you, John). All this is made more savoury by the events of Nov 4. Thanksgiving got an early start this year.
Proposing on a first date. Ah, yes. I remember well our own first date, of the going-out-to-a-movie kind, an escalation from the dalliances in the afternoon coffee shop. We hopped on the El (from Northwestern U) and went down to the Clark Theatre, where you could see a double feature, changed daily, for fifty cents. An actor’s dream, because the Clark stayed open long enough for us to be able to catch the showings after a rehearsal.
It was an Ingmar Bergman double feature, but the excitement of that astonishing filmmaking did not account for my behaviour on the ride back to the dorm. I astonished both of us by shaking and shivering in my seat, gripped by uncontrollable sobbing. Not the usual or expected response to a date, I must say. But I was on an adrenaline high and in an altered state and could not say what was happening, nor did I know, at that time.
In retrospect, I believe that the veil lifted for a moment, and I saw down the long hall of years what this joint life was going to be, and at the age of twenty I wasn’t prepared for that. I knew, on that first date. My God, this is the one.
It’s been a long, wonderful ride.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth! You started early. I started late (at the age of JC’s crucifixion–my little joke), but with longevity I did not miss out. I’m seeing my “kids” hit near to middle age. That stuns me. I have one problem: I cannot quit feeling I want to remain relevant to any on-going grand discussions in our global society, and yet remain devoted to A’s happiness.
—- John, don’t quit. Don’t quit the ground of relevance. Look carefully at your (implied) assumption that it will put you at odds with your cherished mate’s happiness. Of course, I don’t know what the history is behind that side-long comment, so please forgive me if I’m off-mark. CB and I have been engaged for these forty-eight years in a mutual dance on that same tightrope, and we’ve always found that, after the dust settles, whatever keeps one partner’s heart’s core energy moving is nourishment for the other. No matter what dues it extracts from either of us.
—- Conrad is, first and foremost, a writer, and that is a solitary road, even within collaboration. But even in our early years, when the times would come that he would rise from our marriage bed and follow lovemaking by going to the typewriter to write what had been brought to shore on the wave; I always felt a rush of appreciation. It was an honor.
—- And in my mad pursuit of a theatrical embodiment of my “internal hockey team”, the tables turned, and he was my goad, my doula, my shaper, and DREAM HOUSE was built on his generosity. (If you’re curious, there’s a clip on the website’s Stage page.)
—- I haven’t yet read everything on this blog, (I will), but I’ve been entranced by the sense of your unquenched questing. There’s almost a fragrance to it, and I recall the Zillertal talks and photos, the greenness of that exuberance. You still have that, the voice is clear.
—- Mates differ. Not all are set alight by their partner’s glow. But from the little I’ve gleaned from your writing, you seem to have a core bonding. Ideally, everyone would taste that, but I think it’s a bit rarer than that. Cherish it, and fly high.
———–Elizabeth
ps — We’re writing a memoir; I’m rummaging through images of strong early influences, and would appreciate a fact-check. Did you produce/direct a production of OUR TOWN at VHS? Creating a circumstance, because there wasn’t any precedent?
Elizabeth–I’m looking up some things . I have old papers I’m going through. Hold on a bit. I’ll answer as soon as I can. I remember Dennis Bond as the stage manager. I hope I’ll have more, later. I remember Burton Conkling putting on plays for assemblies, each kid 10 cents a pop. He was supposedly trained in theatre, but his assembly plays did not show that. He would string out widely his scenery on the gym floor. I do not know where he got his plays, but they were not good plays. I remember one time, a mirror was hanging on the flat wall as a part of the scene. In the midst of the action, a student, who obviously sat just where he had to see himself in the prop mirror, could not resist the temptation. He got up, left the audience on the bleachers and went to the mirror to comb back his ducktailed hair. I think he was given some penalty, but Conkling’s arrangement drew the infraction, if you ask me.
I happened to be the Junior Class sponsor. The Juniors had the responsibility of staging the Jr-Sr prom for the Seniors. As a money raiser they’d have bake and candy sales. I suggested putting on a play. I thought I could do better than Burton. I suppose I was butting in in his bailiwick. I didn’t care. I think we did, in the round, “The Whole Town’s Talking”. The next year we did “Our Town”–it was in the lit text–on the so-called “stage”, “inspired” by the economies of Depression architecture. Had never been used as such. Non-existent lighting, the whole mess. Dennis did a good–no, better than that–job.
When I went to Woodstock Community High School, I found the same architecture, only reversed. The stage was the gym, and the large auditorium had fixed seats (not bleachers). On the elevated gym floor, the length of the basketball court was the length of the curtain and stage. Under those conditions, I staged high school musicals, “Wizard of Oz”, “Oklahoma”, and many more.
I staged “H.M.S. Pinafore” with adults from the community downtown on the square (where “Groundhog Day” was filmed) in the old Woodstock Opera House. The H.S. Thespians helped rescue that place from ruin by cleaning up the dead pigeons and dirt of years of neglect. On that stage, Orson Welles, before his “War of the Worlds”, produced, as a youth, Shakespeare years before–he went to the Todd school in Woodstock. After Orson came the Woodstock Players from the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, as summer stock threatre. Among those who trod the boards of that Old Opera House were these future stars, Paul Newman, Betsy Palmer, Shelley Berman, Tom Bosley, among others. Alice worked for the players in the office. My Thespians started what was to become the rejuvenation of that venue for community events (the whole bit of buying a seat with a donor’s name on it, etc.)
Now with the “High School Musical” craze, I often wonder if any of those “kids” I directed ever have fond memories of the work we did on our H.S. musicals and plays. I’ll bet they do.
My Alice knew Orson, up close and personal. Her father’s drug store was one corner of the square. Orson would come in there and loiter. Alice fixed him sodas. I think they once had to kick him out.
Hello again, after quite a bit of time. We just opened our newest production, RASH ACTS, and it pretty much walled off all the rest of existence. Forty-two puppets, six actors, five short plays, oof. It’s gone well, has two more weeks to run here, then later on a jaunt to Arcata (in the north end of the state). — Yes, Mr. Conkling was very pro forma, but I didn’t know much better then. Rehearsals were in the very early morning, and it was a good excuse for me to get out of the house for a few more hours. As I recall, I played character roles that the cute girls wouldn’t touch. I can’t believe that we did EARNEST, but I have vague memories of Lady Bracknell. And I know we did something called THE BISHOP’S CANDLESTICKS. — When you did OUR TOWN, I think it was the first thing I’d seen that really moved me. (By odd coincidence, the same play opened the world for Conrad — listen on our website to Cherry Blossoms, program 66:
http://www.independenteye.org/episodearchive.html
I’d love to send you some of our work, if you’re willing to reveal a postal address. –Elizabeth/Linda
Very nice letter, Elizabeth!
I want to send you our Xmas card, with pics and address.
I read your web site. What a sight! I was exhausted taking in all that you have done. You and your boyfriend must be quite the celebs around the nation.
I still have an eidetic image of you when. Not blond! I wish I hade seen you in your DCTC appearance. We were season ticket holders, but I (we) gave it up
because of objectionable behavior: letting the actors put on their own stuff not up to snuff. Waste of precious bucks!
I tried to email you more, but I could not get through. Sorry. I was going to tell you what creative work I have underweigh, but this is too public to describe it here.
John
If lizful@independenteye.org doesn’t work (can’t understand why not), try eye@independenteye.org. And double-check that you’re using “org”, not “com”. Please try again, I’d love to hear from you.
Celebs? Far from it. My boyfriend (and spouse since 1960) and I have always been at the outer margins of everything — too skewed for the straights, too normal for the avants, too dowdy for the glitterati, too funky for the polyesters. That’s why things like the website and blogs and POD publication are a comfort: they give the illusion that one’s work might touch a few more people.
We’re running a production right now that’s taken us months and months to prepare, and embarking on another that will see light in September. People talk to us after performances, and are glowing with excitement and praise, but so far, thirty is the biggest house we’ve had. There’s no way on God’s green earth to get any ink from the newspapers, neither the corporate (Santa Rosa’s paper is owned by the NYT, go figure) nor the funky free weekly.
It’s clear, at least at the moment, that we’re not building a following that will put butts in seats. I think we’re more like a lovely trip on acid or Ecstasy, great fun while it’s happening and gone tomorrow. This world of texting and twitter and iPod is nominally hyper-interconnected, but from the outside it looks like a lonely addiction.
However, aside from some periodic whining and moping, we still put one foot in front of another. I get comfort from working the dirt in my garden, and I’m intoxicated with making my accordion sing to me. Conrad writes, and sculpts, and edits the video that will put a few more bits of it all on view. By the way, if you haven’t already, check out the NEWS section of the website — I’m really taken by his descriptions of exploring THE TEMPEST.
Time to plunge into the day, begin planning the sound/music score for TEMPEST, and take concrete steps toward making a music video for YouTube, putting my most personal song (about the mother I never knew) out for the world.
Fondly — Elizabeth
What great fun to talk WITH you through this means. What you are and do and have done and will be amazes me no end. Your life, it’s….it’s…. a beautiful patch-work-quilt of exhausting acts inside and out. Given more remnants for patches you will continue constructing the fabric of your life for all to, literally, see. I am so pleased to have known you when and now again.
Liz–
Haven’t received the materials yet.
John
Engaging page=D Hope to definitely come back soon!!
Great site…keep up the good work.
Excellent site, keep up the good work
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
I love your site.
Love design!!! I just came across your blog and wanted to say that Ive really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. Sign: gwxxa