Buddha's Hands

LA Farmers Markert 2004

Today, let me be Buddha’s hands­
yellow as the lily, unmanicured and kind
Let me dispose of my pettiness
and reach those who need love most
Let me feel perfectly happy . . . here . . .
without looking down or looking up
to anyone, to anything, let me, be me
Let me be Buddha’s gnarled, gentle hands

On this day, allow my ego to be a crippled boat
that cannot float without heaving the notion of perfection
sad memories, sworn oaths, all bad ballast overboard
Allow my oar to be quiet, letting the river take me
My sail will be forgiveness, full of wind and hope
Let Buddha’s hands reel in the ropes that hold the weight
and tie the lines around a cleat-shaped heart
that is love’s lap, the unfaltering home of love itself

All my life, my hands have been crude fists
Pounding doors, windows, my clamor so loud
“Let me in, let me in,” I seemed to say, “Let me
be first, be best, be the only one,” riled and rampart
Today, and from this day forward, I am Buddha’s hands
content to be myself, not worried who has more
Let me be the hands of Buddha, who holds nothing
and shares everything, hands turned under in a saffron fold

© 2010 Viola Weinberg

Imagination

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Albert Einstein

I've been talking with friends lately about imagination--what it is may never be defined. It is easily confused with other human, but indefinable elements--like the psyche, for instance. I'm a poet, I thrive on imagination, but not all creative people do. Some know they possess it in spades, but are actually afraid of it, fearing that imagination can lead them to "the dark side." I don't fear imagination, nor creativity, which I think are parts of something greater and more complete. Again, it's all very hard to define, and maybe it should be that way.

Albert Einstein's quote on imagination has always shocked me. How can it be that imagination is more important than knowledge? Did he mean that knowledge is subjective and the imagination is pure? I hardly think so. Imagination is influenced by all sorts of world things--religion, politics, poverty, genetics, you name it. But the free flowing state of originality is at the heart of imagination--and that is the jewel in the human crown.

Original thought, which is how I believe Einstein defined imagination, is a precious thing, feared by many. Galileo is a pretty good example--he formulates the concept of the solar system and how Earth revolves around the Sun. The rather severe religious leaders of the historic Roman Catholic Church reviled this thought--and, because they ruled with the government of the day, had him tried and tossed in prison, where he suffered, but could not recant. Imagine how hard the moon shot would have been if we had continued this avenue of thought!

I have a personal experience of this kind of rigid bigotry. I won't go into detail here, but my life was threatened and turned upside down by ideologues. One of them is dead (by his own hand) and the other is in prison for life, I hope. I began to distrust everyone and everything. I especially distrusted every religion, because they did this in the name of god. I almost turned away from the great honor of being selected as the first poet laureate of Sacramento, California. The painter and poet Jose Montoya advised me that it would just be plain wrong to do this. "If you give up, they've won."

These words rang in my ears rather loudly as I stood in the Main Library Galleria with hundreds of well wishers who stood in ovation when I finished reading my poems. I knew that plain clothes police were in the audience. I heard the mayor was not in attendance because of the threat to me. I wasn't sure about everything I heard, but I knew I had to be brave. In the end, it was a happy story. The city celebrated its literary stature, the library was filled with happy, reading people, my family beamed with pride at the many sacrifices they had made to allow my work to flow, and many good things came of my dedication to this appointment. Imagination is worth defending--and I do not say that lightly.

Hunting and Gathering

My friend, Louie, has a lifelong love of the sea. He grew up on a sailboat and when he was grown, worked on boats. Eventually, he became the Captain of the Scripps Oceanic Vessel, quite a job. We visited recently, and thoroughly enjoyed the force of life Louie feels when he is at the helm.

It is safe to say that Louie is a fisherman through and through.He had just returned from one of his many fishing excursions with kids who would never otherwise know how to bait a hook. He arranges free fishing poles for them, and teaches them the simple ins-and-outs of how to fish. Kids who begin by asking when the boat will return to dock are suddenly flush with pride and happiness when they land a fish.

Just a few days ago, he asked me, "What is it about the last vestiges of the hunter-gatherer society? Why is it so important to us?"

I replied that nature's incredible bounty (and our need to gather it) is humanity at its heart. Like many pronouncements, it seemed incomplete. I began to muse that life in this fast world has changed so much that many people only have a vague restlessness and unattached emotion when we think of what is nearly lost. I have it at the Farmers Market, I feel it at the grocery store, and certainly I feel it while working in the garden. It is deeply felt, but not well understood in this age of milk in cartons and corn in cans.

This morning, I woke up to this Rumi poem that helped me frame my feelings. Yes, it is abstract, and yes, I hate gutting fish, but I'm a human being, a hunter-gatherer, even if I do it at the Saturday Farmers Market.

What Opens to a Rose

They are here with us now,
those who saddle a new unbroken colt
every morning and ride the seven levels of sky,

who lay down at night
with the sun and moon for pillows.

Each of these fish has a Jonah inside.
They sweeten the bitter sea.
They shape-shift the mountains,
but with their actions neither bless nor curse.

They are more obvious,
and yet more secret than that.

Mix grains from the ground they walk
with stream water. Put that salve
on your eyes and you will see

what you have despised in yourself
as a thorn opens to a rose.

~Mevlana Rumi

Translation by Coleman Barks

Titles

I am a writer, and most often, a poet. Titles are essential to me, but often, I can't find one. It needs to be catchy, it needs to be profound. It defines what you are about to read or reject reading. It should intrigue the reader
and consequently, make the reader enjoy the piece I've written. Sometimes, titles are stubborn and just won't materialize. At other times, they effortly appear before the writing has commenced and direct the piece by their simple presence.

Why "Rugs & Bones"? It's the title of a song I once wrote with my old writing partner, Bill Fuller, whose band (at the time) turned it into a hipster recitation, complete with insturmental whooshing. "Rugs & Bones" implies a certain anthropology of thought, an archeology of discovery, whether within or in the world. Everyone has rugs and bones in their life, and in their intellect and spirit, too.

This blog will have plenty of rugs and bones. Drawing a few lessons and hopefully many poems from these thoughts. That's right, rugs and bones!