In the Beginning There Were Rugs & Bones

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

© 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

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