Rugs & Bones

Circular Happiness

2011-02-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

A shorter version of this can be found at Where I Work

http://whereuwork.blogspot.com/2011/02/poets-circular-retreat.html

Overhead, the Fire Hole

Perfectly round path of light

Rafters descending, rays of pine

Blue sky above, infinite puff of clouds

Coast raven in old walnut tree calls

Morning enters the place and the ribs

Of the big top breathe with joy

It’s a long way from Kazakhstan, where, so many years ago, I first stepped into a yurt. The Kazakhis called it a “ger,” the Mongolian word for this welcoming, highly portable structure. Round, covered in a tent top with a fire hole at the apex, it was lined with heavy rugs and hung with musical instruments and wolf skulls, a backdrop for a state-sponsored cultural exchange. I was there on the high plains of a place I had never imagined with a U.S. delegation that included a U.S. senator’s wife and many others. I went as a journalist. The USSR had yet to break apart; we were officially the guests of a desperate government of a failing federation.

After a week of vodka fueled state dinners in colorless Moscow, we set out for Kazakhstan, the home of Polygon, the Soviet nuclear test site. Four hours by Aeroflot air bus, and another four by a creaking old bus, my first impression of Kazakhstan was desolation, a high desert swept by winds that carried dusty air off the forbidding mountain tops of the Dzungarian Alatau— the range dividing the Xinjiang area of China and eastern Kazakhstan. Once the high clouds lifted, you could see the Dzungarian Gate, the pass that served invaders from Central Asia for many centuries as they attempted to take China for their own.

There, on a distant plain, with dirt devils and low-growing weeds rose a colony of gum drop-shaped yurts. It was like a dream. To this day, I have the same sensation when I step into my own yurt, which I named “Gert,” slightly after my first ger.

A ger at night, aglow.

My yurt is modern—no yak hair, buttered with unspeakable lards—and no wolf skulls and rugs decorating the interior, although I wouldn’t mind it. It has a Gortex exterior, insulated with something that looks a bit like bubble wrap, and a thinner, interior wall that hangs on a cross-hatch called a “baby gate” for the way it looks once unwound from the packaging. I ordered it online, after touring a smaller yurt in a neighboring county. And to be honest, the idea of a yurt wasn’t my first concept of a special place to write. I wanted a little writer’s cottage that could be landscaped to look like something out of the French countryside.

But, we live on the remnants of a primordial swamp, a marsh. On the back property, where I wanted to put my space, the water table is about a foot under the soil. The county simply would not allow us to place a permanent structure there. Our home and property once belonged to my parents. It resides in a semi-rural village between two cities in the fabled Valley of the Moon where literary giants like Jack London, MFK Fisher and Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote. It is at once stunning and natural and cabled with huge expanse of vineyard and tourists.

I had my eye on the back of our acre for a long time. My father had a number of interesting little projects there at any given time. He first devised a “park” there for my daughters when they were very small. He laid in sod and roses and irises around an old walnut tree, where they swung on funky swings and sang silly little songs to the neighborhood wildlife—deer, foxes, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, and bullfrogs. After the girls grew up and my mother died, he cut down the walnut tree and refashioned the area into a meditation garden with a bench, a crude Torii gate (we lived in Japan when I was a child) and yellow roses in memory of my mother. At the center was a three-foot high Kwan Yin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, to whom he would tell his troubles.

He grew increasingly frail, unable to go to his space to meditate. Dad suggested we might want to build my study out there, an idea I loved. As our search for acceptable structures grew more frustrating, a short article was published in This Old House magazine about the beauty of a modern yurt. We researched county codes and could find nothing to prohibit the raising of a temporary structure. My idea was born in February. By March, the wheels were in motion and I had settled on Pacific Yurts as the company to make my yurt.

There were many custom options. Modern yurts no longer have fire holes, but they do have an option for a crank-open acrylic dome. Ventilation and beauty! The yurt kit contains other options which I ordered—windows with matching Gortex covers applied with Velcro, which allows some shade and certainly protects against the cold. I chose a double set of double doors with windows, also for beauty and air circulation. Where my yurt is situated, there is scant shade, so this was essential. And the colors! I lingered over a deep green, a sand brown, and a terra cotta earth color. With our adobe dirt, it seemed that terra cotta was the only choice.

I took pictures and fabric samples around to the neighbors, who had left their yards open to ours for a good view of the woods. One was divided by a cyclone fence, another by a low, split level fence. After we had buy-in (or so we thought), we ordered the yurt kit and called friends to join us in a yurt raising. By October, we had already put in a platform for the deck, knowing how easily the area flooded. A couple of weeks later, about a half dozen folks showed up; without them, there would be no yurt! It was a fascinating and simple process, which quickly became complex, given the eccentric nature of our friends.

The men lugged the heavy stuff (after a single Fed Ex delivery woman got the behemoth crates of material off the back of her semi.) One of my friends, a stickler for detail, quickly became the reader of the manual.

St Peter in the halo of Gert the Yurt

And so it went. The yurt went up quickly, and we spent the next couple of weeks tightening cables and bolts that installed a “semi-storm rafter system” of timbers that has saved it from blowing over in wind storms.

By this time, our formerly agreeable neighbors were calling to express, variously, “the invasive nature of that thing,” or my personal favorite, “it looks like the circus has come to town.” One neighbor instantly put up a badly built pre-fab fence with lattice extensions. But nothing would hide Gert. Eventually, everyone came to accept the yurt, once they were able to accept that it wasn’t built as a platform to invade their privacy or as a tent where fortunes might be told. These days, I can best describe their emotional reactions as yurt envy.

None of that matters now that I’ve spent four years writing in this sacred space. I’ve only allowed my daughter, her husband and their kids to sleep in it once. I prefer to separate the dreams of others from my own. As a creative writer, I need all the flights of my own imagination that my sub-consciousness can hold.

When I first wrote in the yurt, I had not retired yet. I worked for a loan corporation and conducted conference calls and wrote products in the yurt. Once I retired, I still took freelance assignments for private foundations for a year or two, investigating proposals and grant seekers from my “tent in the woods.” Finally, came the time for me to write solely for myself. What great abandon I have in this structure, this round house of spirit and space!

The experience of writing poetry in a yurt is mystical. One of my first big projects was in collaboration with the painter Mario Uribe—a Buddhist tea master who paints the Zen circular symbol called an ensô. Mario brought 24 paintings he had created in 24 hours and asked me to write on them. I was sure I would be sent to hell for such a thing! I kept them quite a while, laying them out in a circle, meditating on them, arranging them as I saw fit. As time went on, I started to whittle down the bloated poetry (which had grown to over 30 pages by that point) to 24 lines, one for each painting. The simplicity of this exercise was cleansing, beautiful, intelligent.

Working in circles of art, writing circular poetry.

Ensô

Blossoms snow

on shoulder mountain

Spring sputters

Songbird surrenders

A song for a nest

Ceremonious

Thunder clouds

Rattle their foil

Perfume of dry grass

Summer rhyme

In the looking glass

Clatter of waters

Wash board of autumn

A new green apple

For a freckled hand

This racket of late joy

A cello in maple woods

Heavy black ink

A rock thrown

Into a deep well

Quiet charcoal on white

A hand lies down

Winter comes now

After 24 weeks, I returned the paintings with the lines written on them in my clumsy hand. They were exhibited, photographed for prints, and we were approached a Chinese art book publisher about a book. The book took almost two years to come to life—about 24 months. Finally, it arrived and debuted on June 24. After this experience, I knew I was meant to write out my days in the quiet and grace of this structure.
I wrote another book of poetry in the yurt before the Ensô book, a compilation of epistolary poems I had been writing for years, Letters to Pablo Neruda. This was also a winnowing experience. I chose 50 favorites from 500 poems. Both books have a pleasing and graceful look, all born in my magical space. From my desk, a semi-circular, I look into the woods behind us. Some mornings, quail perch on the Hopi statue in the garden. From spring to fall, the garden spreads to my left, the leafy, small vineyard my father left on both sides.

Writing in a yurt is decidedly different than living in a yurt. The county codes forbid plumbing, although it is wired for electricity and Internet. It’s a long walk to the house. As I get older, I tell my husband that, if he loves me, he would give me a composting toilet!

The yurt is not always hospitable. It can be very cold in the winter (I once slipped and fell, hard, on the icy deck) and it can be hellishly hot in the height of summer. When it’s that hot, I change my writing hours to the evening or early morning hours.

And the yurt has a life of its own. In wind storms, I open the skylight slightly so that it can breathe—which it does noisily. Sometimes, there is the faintest whistle that comes when a breeze drifts by, perhaps the muse bending over me, singing, “write, write, write.”

The Beatitude of Quietude

2010-11-16T22:03:00.000-08:00

O, that Wednesday

when you knocked off early

when we were so tired, so weary

that we fell down on the bed like the dead

Side by side, garden-dirty, the both of us

The soil and air both soft and warm

Our tired feet in their wet sox hanging over the bed

Toes cracking like castanets in the breeze

Too tired to talk, we just laid there, awake

You could hear appliances humming in the kitchen

You could hear the dog and his sloppy drinking

from the blue bowl, and a fly, a screen door somewhere

But neither of us raised a finger, listening

Instead to our beating hearts, those drums of blood

We simply let love wash over us, cleanse us

heal us, peel the fatigue from our lives

Honeyed, loving thoughts were on our tongues

all the more sweet as time passed soundlessly

Those minutes, so mute and beautiful are

somehow younger than the rest of our bodies

Cellular happiness, dwelling, abiding and deep

Photo Genius

2010-11-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Ansel Adams in 1982 for National Public Radio on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The great punk photographer, fStop Fitzgerald came with me and we enjoyed our time together with Ansel and his assistants, Jim and Mary Allindar. Even more rare, I had a chance to talk with Virginia Adams that day. Notoriously camera shy, Virginia's father owned Curry Studios in Yosemite Park, where they met. She told me that he was a pianist then, but soon caught "the fever" which changed their lives--and photography--forever.

When interviewing celebrities, especially artists, I always closed the interview with the question, "Is it possible for artists to be married to each other?" Virginia laughed at that; she had been a promising opera singer and gave up her career, helping Ansel lug his equipment all over the back country. At a certain point, she said, "I finally bought him a mule," which answered my question rather soundly.

I learned many things from this interview and was somewhat humbled to be in his presence. At the time, his images accounted for 50 percent of all photos sold in the world. They may account for more, now. His zone system was the very bible to photographers. He loved fStop's name and called me "Zone V". Looking back, I am reminded of his fragile hands and quick wit. I truly felt that I was in the presence of a great man. I had heard many rumors about him that may or may not be true. I decided to take everything he had to say at face value, and I'm glad I did.

He frequently tested photo gear prototypes, and told us about a new film that would take the place of developing in the dark room--by developing the print in the camera. So close and so far away from digital photography! He also said he admired the photography of Edward Weston, but loathed unnamed "pictorialists" who wanted to tell a story with every photo and titled their work with "a little too much of a flourish."

In answer to my questions on the environment, he had a lot to say. I asked him how California could continue to support so many people and he suggested de-salinisation plants along the coast. It struck me that a battle over natural resources might separate Northern and Southern California and asked him what he thought of that. "Well," he said, quite seriously, "That would mean civil war."

Photo Genius

We followed the trail of your hand

as you spoke, waving to the horizon

where a tiny ship plowed the water

a mere bubble on Earth's curve

"Imagine it," you said, "Imagine

a city of men, all working like dogs

maybe seeing the light bounce off

my window, at least one of them

Is thinking, "Landfall!" you went on

And we followed you, working like dogs

Cameras clicking like old teeth

Motor-driven film and steel bodies

Capturing images of the light, of us

But then it changed suddenly, resolutely

seemed to glower and burn, the sun

finally surged and fell flatly to the sea

"It's like that," you said, and

we all knew what you knew and what you meant

It was all about light crashing

geometrically on the back of a cloud--

jagged shadow, illuminating

the tiny hairs on the shivering cypress

as the wind blew icicles and night

tumbled in, rough and stark, papery

and sour yellow with grays in every range

A ship was coming in, in the dusky half-night--

Inside, a fire threw our long shadows out to sea

Loving Ruth

2010-10-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

Discussing your age is the very temple of boredom.
Ruth Gordon
There's a Million Ways to be, You Know That There Are!
Long before "Harold and Maud", I loved Ruth Gordon. I thought her best role was in the very wicked "Rosemary's Baby", which I saw when I was pregnant! Before that, she played Daisy Clover's mother in the largely misunderstood "Inside Daisy Clover" -- and that made me laugh as I usually did when I watched her savvy performances. Ruth Gordon had a remarkable career. She began as a actress, but soon realized good scripts were hard to come by--so she joined her screenwriter husband, Garson Kanin. Together, they penned many a hit, including "Adam's Rib", which starred Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.Ruth Gordon acted in films from 1915 to her death. She played all sorts of characters, but will probably will be best remembered in her golden years as the wacky, but tough old babe who took no prisoners. She was unique, maybe crazy, in her portrayals. In real life, her husband (younger than Ruth by 15 years) once said her rich personality let him enjoy "all the privileges of polygamy with none of the chaos."She cultivated eccentricity and showed me that individuality was very important when one is an artist of any sort. "Don't be afraid," she seemed to whisper in my young ear, "Just be yourself, no matter how kooky." Thank you for this lesson, Ruth. October 30 is your birthday, and I will be thinking of you, you know that I will.

Kanin and Gordon

Sputnik Changes Everything

2010-10-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Fifty-three years ago today, I was 10 years old, holding a ladder for my uncle who was painting the eaves of the barn on Wightman Street in Ashland. We were listening to the radio, some pop music on the local a.m. station. I had a reputation, even then, of being a dreamer. Uncle kept asking me, "Are you still holding on?" In my faraway thoughts, his voice had a tinny quality, almost a tinkle. And yet I know for a fact that his voice was a basso profundo.

"Yeah," I kept saying, thinking about the new school year, my homework (as yet undone) and the thought of dinner, which was always preferrable to holding a ladder. "Uh-huh."

Suddenly, the announcer broke in to say that the Ruskies, the Soviets, had launched a satellite they called Sputnik that was orbiting the earth as we stood there under the eaves. The earth! Ruskies! And what was a Sputnik? Good Lord. Uncle climbed down from the ladder and told me to fetch my father, a wireless pioneer and one of the first electronic engineers. I ran up the path to the big house, past my playhouse--now used to store car parts--and into the warm kitchen to find Dad. He was sitting at the table with my grandfather, tipping back a beer.

I burst in to their conversation, unable to contain my excitement. "What's a satellite? What's an orbit? Is it like an obit?" Dad put down his beer. "Why do you ask, kitty cat?" He asked in his kindly, calm engineer's voice. I excitedly explained that we heard a report on the radio and that something called Sputnik was circling the earth in an orbit.

Dad walked over to the Blauplunct radio sitting on the kitchen counter and switched it on, punching the buttons to scan the airwaves. Sputnik was on every station. I looked at my grandfather, who suddenly looked very old, indeed. He looked up at my Dad, who was listening intently to the reports. Dad sighed. "It's going to change everything," he said. "They're ahead of us, now."

By this time, Uncle had washed up and abandoned the barn eaves entirely. He walked in, slamming the screen door as he went. "What's all this mean, Glen," he asked my father, the acknowledged genius of the bunch. Dad just shook his head and repeated, "Everything is going to change now." That night, we got out our field scope and looked skyward. I saw a shooting star, which seemed to be falling casually onto the horizon. "That's it," Dad said with finality. "That's Sputnik." Sputnik was in orbit for 28 days before it fell to earth. All that's left of it now are a couple of "O" rings enshrined in the Space and Air Museum in Washington, D.C. My father and his amateur radio buddies kept tabs on it as it circumnavigated the space around earth. I sat on my father's workbench and heard the scratchy space sounds with intermittent beeps. We watched it every night as it made its heavenly transit. Dad would always sigh heavily and say, "That's it."

About 20 years ago, I visited Kazakhstan, not far from where Sputnik was launched. It was not at all as I had imagined that day 30 some odd years earlier. It turned out that Kazakhstan was not a shiny amusement park with 50s style chrome rockets; rather, it was a windswept high desert, a bit like Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nothing over a foot tall grew there, near Polygon, the Soviet nuclear test site. Sand was everywhere--in the air, on the makeshift table tops where we ate, under the elaborate hats the Kazakhis wore, sifting out of our notebooks, everywhere.

Polygon reminded me of a horror movie I secretly saw with my cousin at the Varsity Theater when she was supposed to be supervising me. In the movie, no one was really alive, they were zombies who moved jerkily to strange music as they whirled around the dance floor of an abandoned resort that once bustled on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Walking dead, they were, just like these proud and beautiful central Asians who looked remarkably like Native Americans. Some of the Kazakhis had birth defects. Others were afflicted with cancers unknown to this high altitude tribal people who rode sturdy little ponies outfitted with wooden saddles.

But in 1957, my father was the only person in the family who understood what the launch of the first satellite meant. The cold war was about to heat up. Spies were going to use satellites. Broadcast would become dependent on satellites. Sputnik would also accelerate the age of computer communications. Soon after Sputnik's glory, my father taught me the phrase electromagnetic pulse. He said it might be the end of civilization, the way things were going. Decades later, we would be calling on IPhones, e-mailing Europe on laptops, reading books on Kindle. His precious telegraph key would go practically extinct. He sighed wearily. "What's it mean?" he asked rhetorically. "Everything. Everything is about to change."

In the Beginning There Were Rugs & Bones

2010-09-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

They say poetry is a lonely endeavor, but I beg to differ.

I'm thinking, I'm thinking

Years ago, I was sitting in my chair in Berkeley, California, late at night with a pen in hand. The words, "rugs and bones" spilled out on the page in a crooked sprawl. I liked those words, loved them, in fact. Sometimes, words are ready like that, ready to be put to life. Where they came from, I'm not really sure and didn't have a clue for years. They just were there. When I finished, I saw the poem, "Rugs & Bones", had a wild, tribal beat, that it was fun and explosive energy.

Rugs and Bones

Music, William Fuller and dRAW PiNKY

Lyrics, Viola Weinberg

When we were young and overblown

We built a house of rugs and bones

On the street of passion dreams

We made the walls of moans and steam

You played the ham, I rang your bones

On rafts of rugs and floors of stone

I'm the master, you're the slave

We have a child he makes us brave

We knew the moment he was alone

Deep in the wall of rugs and bones

And now we drive on roads of steel

To baseball games, hands on the wheel

Stolen bases, sliding home

With balls of rugs and bats of bone

Colors wept from hues to tones

The shade was made from rugs and bones

Soon we'll be old and full of air

With hair so white or head so bare

We'll weave the rugs from dreamy tales

Of men and girls and empty sails

Late at night, misunderstood

Bones white as light in tangled wood

I'll press my lips against your spine

We'll talk of love and speak of time

Think of all the lovely thrones

Where we stood fast with rugs and bones

The very next morning, I typed it up and sent it to William Fuller III, my long-time cohort and collaborator in music and performance.

William Fuller back in the day - courtesy of Ozzie Archives

Bill certainly knew what to do with it. I have always imagined that, upon receiving such things from me, he puts on a pair of fighting gloves and boxes my flabby words into shape. But this time, I also imagined it wouldn't be hard work. The rhythms were strong, the images were vivid; it was ready to go for collaborative process. Bill is a consummate creator. I've always had faith in him, and in the other members of the ensemble with whom he works. In this case, "rugs and bones" quickly became "Rugs & Bones", the poem, then "Rugs & Bones", the song -- for which I am eternally grateful.

http://www.facebook.com/l/5169aHbalq4Ktbc0mZ2I9OoG-CA;www.drawpinky.com/music/ig09_rugs.mp3

Fast forward a few months. Imagine me, alone in a picturesque cottage a morning stroll away from Puget Sound on Whidbey Island in a writers colony. That's where the tape was delivered to me. I quickly left the calm of the residency, loaded it in my car stereo and set the volume on blast. As I drove around the empty roads of the island on a sparkling day, I felt a real thrill. Somehow, Bill had kept the beat, kept the sheer energy of it, and made it something greater. Jane Kennedy Hastings and Bill vocalized (verbalized?) the piece with every shred of fun possible--the music was hip and wild as a March hare. I thought about it as I drove. The bones of my previous marriages and a couple of fatally flawed long relationships were embedded in Rugs & Bones, along with my words, the rugs that would always keep me steady and warm.

In collaboration, a fountain of unkillable energy erupted and flared, a beautiful thing. Bill and Draw Pinky, their band of the time, made it something greater than it could have been in my lonely cottage. People heard it and loved it when the band performed. The first time I heard the band perform Rugs & Bones, I remember laughing delightedly, pleased that something written in such monastic quiet could possibly be so entertaining and happy. I know I've thanked them all years ago for the joy of it, but I have to say it again, thank you.

I was prompted to write about this by a friend who responded to Rugs & Bones, the blog. She said she liked the pleasure I seem to receive from writing here, but didn't understand it. While I don't quite buy that entirely, I think I know what she's saying. What are Rugs & Bones, anyway? I have called it personal archeology, a place to think and dig ideas, based on deeply embedded intimate concepts that may be born from the distant past of my own development. Sometimes, it's out the the primordial soup, sometimes it's a response to something else that pinched my nerve. Frankly, I hope it's never completely laid bare in the skeletal analysis of literature! There's a bit to enjoy about a mystery. I love my rugs and bones.

Love & Fear

2010-09-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Sculpture by Claudia Cohen

To love a thing is intellectual; to love someone may be emotional; to simply love is human. But how to love without love's homely and protective element of fear? For example, my father lived to be 97, a ripe old age in anyone's book. The last two years, he was crippled by a bad fall that broke three vertebrae and forced him off his cane and onto a walker, then a wheelchair. I loved him very much, we were very much connected "at the hip" as he often said. Why then, did it take me so long to let go of him when he was feeling so poorly?

Even though I was in my late 50s, I felt fear at the thought of life without him. He was a brilliant and homespun genius, a poor farm boy who had done well for himself, becoming one of the first electronic engineers, inventing things and creating awesome systems for our home--automated lightning rods that flipped up when triggered by a humidity index in the rather unlikely event of an electrical storm, for instance.

He could fix anything, install any stereo device in any car, wire anything and dispense frequent advice laced with homey Irish idioms. I shook off the domestic talents of my mother as soon as I was able--rejected her finishing school manners and fashionable home decorating and tailoring and baking lessons in favor of routing around in dusty bins of bolts and wires. Dad worked in radio, I worked in radio. He was an adventurer, a gifted storyteller, I tried to follow suit.

Somehow, it seemed that my world would begin to fade and evaporate without his existence. Then, as he began to slip away, I rose to the occasion and helped him have a good passage.

In time, I came to see that love is not perishable, and in fact, it's transferable. I have tried to take the helm with my own family, now well into middle age with six little grands among them. I feel a bit fake about it, as if they might know I'm still a little kid inside, a "daddy's girl" or a Tomboy whose life has been driven by the love given at such an early age.

Lately, all of Dad's sidekicks and amici here in Kenwood have died -- Angelino Pedroncelli, Al Rossi, Roberto Guffante, Roy Strong, Kenny the deaf mute, all gone. At times, I think I hear them down Laurel Avenue where "The Colonel", Bob Guffante lived in a house he built under a big oak tree where the gentlemen would sit, drinking from an unmarked green glass bottle that Rossi generally brought to sweeten the talk. I even thought I saw Roy riding his bicycle, which he hadn't done for years before he died, holding his wine glass in one hand, circling the village as he visited friends. I miss them all.

Earlier today, I walked down to the Colonel's place, where his daughters and son were having an estate sale. We talked and laughed and espoused just like our fathers.

I bought a few things, mementos, really. Some old prints of soldiers for my daughter, an extravagant shoe horn and a homemade trashcan made from an old olive oil can with a hinged wooden top. They threw in a cup the Colonel made from an old cat food can with a handle soldered on.

At one point, Linda Guffante began to speak feverishly about the first amendment and how important it was to allow everyone a say in the world, even if you don't like what they have to say. I agreed, adding, "Everyone has a story." Then, we were silent. I turned to Linda and said, "You know, you sound like your father." And she turned to me and said, "You sound like your's." We both smiled and felt the warmth of love, love eternal, free and vitally important.

Sculpture by Claudia Cohen

Lovers, union is here,

the meeting we have wanted,

the fire, the joy.

Let sadness and any fear of death

leave the room.

The sun’s glory comes back.

Wind shakes our bells.

We are counters in your hand

passing easily through.

Music begins,

Your silence,

deepen that.

Were you to put words with this

we would not survive the song.

~Maulana Rumi

Translation by Coleman Barks

If Venice Sinks . . .

2010-08-27T14:42:00.001-07:00

Peggy Guggenheim, whose father went down with the Titanic, and who famously "discovered" and schtupped Jackson Pollack in the same afternoon, loved Venice. She was known for her voluptuous appetite for modern art, her palazzo on a canal, her little dogs who literally lived in the lap of luxury, and of course, her wild sunglasses.

In my dreams, I am Peggy Guggenheim, or a type of Peggy Guggenheim, who has the cash and the power to save great art. In the dream, my argumentative rescue dachshund is a frothy little accessory, a four-legged, feather-coated darling, rather than a stubborn little wiener. As long as I am dreaming, I can wear those full-skirted cotton dresses with cinched waists--and be piloted around town in my own gondola. And the sunglasses are mine, all mine.

Within the year, I will finally see Venice, hopefully before it sinks entirely into the water without a trace. I will be among the last of my friends to see this floating spectacle. I have waited a long time for this; missed many opportunities for this. That's what happens when you marry early; you have to wait for the things that others do in their "gap year".

In some ways, it will be better than seeing Venice as a young tootsie in a mini skirt with fishnet nylons and a petrified "Georgy Girl" look on my face. But in some ways--not so much. I am slower these days, still navigating, but still recuperating in many ways from my Achilles tendon fiasco of last year. I tire much more easily after helping three kids through college and a career that was both necessary and riddled with deadline anxiety. But, I know how to read a map and I'm not afraid of strangers. These things take time to develop.

As a "donna di una certa età" exploring Venice--and indeed Italy--for the first time, I'm hoping that it won't disappoint after a 40 year wait-in-line. Plus, I'm going with my own true love, and we will do what we do so well--travel, see, experience and, yes, kiss, talk and laugh. We don't know where else, exactly, we will be going, but the plan now is to land in Paris, visit our buddy Ed Cahill for a day or two, take the train to Lucerne and enjoy the ice cream white feather beds and pristine lakes and the little railway that ratchets up a mountain. Then, at long last, Italia.

So many things are on my list--a result of longing for Italy all these years. "If Venice sinks, wrote Peggy Guggenheim in her will, then the art will be moved." What a contingency plan! Fortunately, her collection still exists in her beautiful home. Luckily,I've kept detailed lists about must-dos and can't misses. I long to see Roman Italy and Grecian Italy, I want to feel the bustle of modern Rome and drink in the beauty of the north with its wheels of hay and clay terra. I want to sleep in Sorrento and eat with my hands in Firenze, recite Shakespeare in Verona and Venezia and roll down the Amalfi Coast in a sports car. I'll see entombed Pompei and Herculeneum and volcanic, sweaty Sicilia and the minty cool Alpino. Eventually, for I think it's not the only time we will go.

And the wine, oh yes, the wine. I imagine it will be thick and reddest red. I'll have it with every slobbering good meal and laugh a lot. Maybe I'll even learn to sing.

But, if Venice sinks before I get there, I will follow the art and the light wherever it goes. My friend, Victor, is Venetian. He's been to the family palazzo and lingered in St. Mark's Square more hours than he could count. I've never told him that I haven't been. It seemed unworldly to admit. Why do I admit this now? Because I want to prepare everyone for the wallapalooza I will certainly fling after finally leaving my fabled imagination for the real thing. I don't care if it smells bad and is full of tourists. I'm on my way.

Now, about that gondola . . .

It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen. Brigitte Bardot

2010-08-22T10:41:00.001-07:00

I am growing younger by the day. No, not mentally. I can still count my age (in sixes and sevens), and I heed my aches and pains. Nope. I am younger by the day in spirit. A kind of lightness has entered my heart, and that takes years off my on-earth age by the tens.

It's simple. I began to practice forgiveness. Start with your parents, they raised you. Over time, I started to see that the things I really like about myself are things that came from childhood, my direction and love of certain things are comforting because they are familiar. My Irish father's captivating telling of a story, my Azorean mother's wicked sense of humor. It all started to make sense. Yet these were not idyllic times; some of the time, my very person felt repressed and sometimes punished--just for who I was. So, take your pick, don't take it all.

Put down your temper more often, find your patience. Some of the meanest things ever said to me were said by those I loved, deeply. One husband told me I simply wasn't lovable. I thought about that for years; but then, he died young. Being mean suddenly seemed to be a good way to shorten one's life.

Not easy for a hot head, but I am doing it. Once you've forgiven your parents, forgive yourself for the foolish things you did when you were young enough to know everything. It will magically iron the wrinkles on your brow. Painlessly.

Then, let that patience radiate out like spokes from a hub. When someone is bitter and shows their mean streak like a skunk stripe, step back. Let them be furious, but don't allow them to spray you. They have reasons that you can't imagine. Don't let their anger and pettiness rule your life, dust it off.

Find yourself in quietude. Do what needs to be done, but not slavishly; it only builds resentment. Find small things that you love in life, a garden is good for that. A shelter dog, especially one that takes time to train, is very good for that. Take love that is freely offered; love the giver. But don't live for it; that only serves to make you desperate.

I'm still not that good at right living. I can see how easily anger, bitterness and habit get in the way. Sometimes, something fires deep within me and anger bubbles to the top in a trice. I'm always amazed by it. Step back from the wreck, I tell myself. Let it burn itself out. I can do this. As I approach my birthday, I realize it may be my life's greatest accomplishment, to free myself. Maybe someday, I'll get this down--but I'm not counting on being perfect, ever. Just human, just a bit of humility. Life is greater than I am.

Cowboys and Carnies

2010-08-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Cruising through the Santa Rosa Fair Grounds in a short cut to Costco, I came across the underside of the bright and sparkly lights of fair time. Broken down to packable pieces and carefully boxed, the attractions took on a new perspective. Drawn to the gritty beauty of it all, I had to sit in my car and write this.

Early Monday Morning
and the carnies are packing up
gaudy, neon-trimmed rides into
respectable wooden crates, numbered
in orderly sequence that fit nicely into
plywood gypsy wagons with words
like OCTOPUS and FUN and THRILLS
painted on the sides in drippy red flames
artistic little windows daubed on with curtains
a flower box there and more red, geraniums

The Dome of Doom is disassembled
and Spider Island is on its side
with its hummingbird tongue spokes
rising out of the dusty hard pan and weeds
Just last night, all the way to midnight
the greedy hucksters barked and wooed, lurid
The rides winked at rubes and their gals
"Step right up, sucker," and there they did
and quarters flew from every pocket
onto the glass ashtrays in hope of a bear

Moving slowly around the bend, the cowboys
are doing their laundry at the horse barns
old blue shirts and denim dungarees flap
on rope lines, faded, seldom seen in open air
more than one vaquero scrubs the horse blankets
and towels in a bucket to dry alongside the duds
one guy sits in a wheelchair as he pins up
the wet rags that curry a nag's sweaty hide
On the way back, cowboys sit in the sun with a beer
and read the Bible while the carnies pull their rides

Early Monday morning, and the carnies drive on to Cottonwood
Later, the horse trainers will follow in their cowboy Cadillacs
pulling Hilton horse trailers with air conditioning
as they sweat inside their trucks, their silver-toed boots
in a special box with a handle for showing, brushes
and hoof trimmers and ropes and bits, all packed
for the next big Okie parade into the next country fair
The strongmen long departed, run off with the
bearded woman, who's having a thing, a fling with a
sharpshooter who sleeps in a tiger's cage down yonder

Swimming in a Night Sea

2010-08-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Wil and I are in love--with the same Agnes Martin painting in the current exhibit of paintings collected by the Fishers (who happen to own The Gap, which happens to own just about everything else.) Winding our way through a Friday afternoon with the ease of old friends who are both absorbed by the imagination was a rare treat.

The Agnes Martin painting, "Night Sea" was the cherry on the cake.

Quietly exhibited with other, more subtle Martins, the luminous blue painting hung on the wall like a brilliant blue eye. After a moment or two, it moved, oceanlike, slowly undulating, a blue hip rolling across the whiteness of the MOMA's pristine wall. Wil and I had been playing a game in every room: which piece would you take home, if you could? He laughed when he saw my eyes widen at "Night Sea", and said it was his "take home" painting. "Well," I said, "you're going to have to fight me for it."

This is what is so exciting about art--the emotional payload. Even if you don't understand all you see, it can be understood at a cellular level. I walked closer to "Night Sea" and saw Martin's excruciating labors, the brickle of separations between the orderly patches of blue--cut, perhaps by a tool? Who knows, hardly matters to me. Equally mysterious, the whole heart, whole gut reaction to great art, when thought is almost unimportant--according to Agnes Martin, thinking just gets in the way of the imagination--and of art. I have had this reaction to art before, and it's like walking into sunlight from a dark cave. Illumination, brilliance that is felt, not necessarily analyzed.

Agnes Martin died in 2003. What a shame, I thought, I had no chance to talk to her, but then, she did the talking in "Night Sea." She lived in Taos, New Mexico, so far from the ocean, yet she swam luxuriously in the night sea of her imagination. Martin once said that "I used to meditate, but my mind was too full. I just told myself, no more of this, empty your mind of thoughts while you work." Unencumbered by ideas, wholly motivated by the heart of her imagination, Agnes Martin moved into her ocean of energy. The result is worth the trip, many trips, to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This was Wil's fourth visit to the show, and I can tell, it won't be his last. Nor mine. I want to take my grand daughter, a young artist I've always called "Apple". My Apple is ripe for this pipeline wave of imagination. Its contagion will likely infect her creativity with an appetite for more--and more making of art. I can't wait.

Still Going Steady

2010-08-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

We were a power couple, each ascending a staircase of accomplishments and recognition--life goals and dearly held desires seemed to be falling into our hands after years and years of hard work. But nothing compared to the "ordinary" love that came after the excitement of our 40s.

We've seen each other through death, loss, floods, and the educations (both scholastic and emotional) of all three of our kids. We've kissed the fuzzy young heads of our newborn grandchildren, helped each other get through great changes in our lives. We saw each other through an exodus from urban life to a retreat in the country. We said good bye to parents, pets, and friends who died too young. We've been together for 15 years now, married for 13. It never gets old.

What is it about this kind of love? This kind of love sneaks up on you, insinuates itself, doesn't swell like young love, but grows all the same. If anyone had ever told me that cancer would be more than a teacher, more than a burden, more than romantic--I don't think I could have believed it. But here we are, one year into his remission, and it just gets bigger by the day.

Life is full of disappointments and regrets, but this love doesn't have regrets. It just is--full of life, humor, patience, patience, and more patience. Still going steady, after all these years. Even on this, the subject of hair.

On the Subject of Hair

"There's many a man with more hair than wit."
Willliam Shakespeare

We called it a high forehead that set your blue eyes
Out like sapphires on a porcelain dish, but then
came the cancer and so much more was lost
Eyebrows, chest hair, other nooks never considered

Even your arms were smooth of their soft fur
Even your lap went naked as a peeled peach
In contemplative moments, I sat beside you
On the bed, counting each stubborn remainder

I thought if the cancer was in the hair, I was glad
To be done with it, I came to look at you as
A warm marble statue that slept in a nautilus curl
I tried to memorize the sitting navy of blue veins

Until they blew the big one and the pic line went in
You insisted on walking out of the hospital that day
Regal as a lion, your unfurnished chest thrown out
Leading with your handsome, hairless chin

How could I ever love you more?

Buddha's Hands

2010-07-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

“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

2010-07-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-24T09:40:00.001-07:00

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!