Analect 2.656x (масленица)

9 February 2010. Misty light over early pool. Glow of yellow timer light, its pronounced opposition to indeterminancy...

From Izaly, yesterday--the announcement of maslenitsa--pagan roots, a celebration of the sun at winter's peak--butter, eggs, milk--flat cakes and farmer's cheese...

A straw figure burned in effigy...

Visits and stories...

Analect 2.654х

8 February 2010. Proschai, proschai, podruga dorogaya...

A gypsy song, in the Russian style. "Farewell, farewell, my dear friend, God knows, will I see you ever again..." A sequence of farеwells, each one heartfelt--each one with lifted voice...

Hotel Europejski, Warszawa... 1968. Elegant, with old plumbing. A round enamel soap dish tucked in at angle to wall, square white tiles, shower fixture--flexible metal and white, wrapped around faucet head. White mat over white tile edge. Przedwojenny...from before the War...

A band of gypsies, two women approach, hands extended. Their narrow wrists, narrow fingers on narrow dark arms, full dresses, in the old manner, skirts with folds, and old faces as well--not in age, but in the possibility of a past...

Rings and bracelets, a disguise--narrow eyes...

Carmen Ledesma, dancing in Nimes. Por seguirías? Steve's photo, sent just yesterday--her full posture, thrust forward, ample arms, eyes on some ancient thing...

Analect 2.653x

5 February 2010. Golden light in blue-green pool--morning's sun after evening rain.

A Russian man with Russian face, Victor Toporov, b. 1946, his full gray beard with moments of black, lank hair, heavy brows--like two winter runways in Chelyabinsk--a fortress town just east of the Urals, snow, snow, and more... The Trans-Siberian route--a mountain of gold and mass graves. "Tankograd" in Stalin's time--the arms works shifted east--S.M. Kirov Factory no. 185. This kind of detail, as if a glass, held close, could again reveal the trail of wolf, or fox, or winter crow...

Analect 2.652x

4 February 2010. Dark clouds to the west, impending storm... Emory's face on pool deck, heavy gray wool watch cap, emphatic swoon to his voice, "It'll be pouring by five..."

Vera Zasulich(1849-1919), youngest daughter in a family of impoverished minor nobility, from Mikhailov Gzhatsk , Smolenskaya Guberniya. (Dad's voice here.) She became a clerk--then a teacher, bringing reading and writing to the Petersburg factory workers. Influence of Nechaev, then Bakunin. Narodnaya Volya--the People's Will. Her partner, Lev Deitch, writes of "...the extraordinary sincerity and unaffectedness of her relations with others."

Trepov affair--a Russian colonel who ordered the flogging of political prisoner Mikhail Bogolyubov for refusing to doff his cap. Cause celebre among the early revolutionists and Russian intellectuals. It was Vera's decision to take Trepov's life--a deed she brought to bear with the assistance of a well-constructed British Bulldog Revolver. Aquitted nonetheless by a sympathetic jury in a trial whose focus was in fact Trepov himself, she later opposed the campaign of terror that led eventually to the assasination of Alexander II.

Following the trial, she took exile in Switzerland. Described by her friend, Leon Trotsky, in his book on Lenin: " Zasulich was a curious person and a curiously attractive one. She wrote very slowly and suffered actual tortures of creation.... 'Vera Ivanovna does not write, she puts mosaics together, Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) said to me at that time,' and in fact she put down each sentence separately, walked up and down the room slowly, shuffled about in her slippers, smoked constantly handmade cigarettes and threw the stubbs and half-smoked cigarettes in every direction on all the window seats and tables, and scattered ashes over her jacket, hands, manuscripts, tea in the glass, and incidentally her visitor. She remained to the end an old radical intellectual on whom fate grafted Marxism. But the moral political foundations of the Russian radicals of the '70s remained untouched in her until her death."

Narodnaya Volya--the People's Will.

Analect 2.651x

3 February 2010. Quiet street, low sky, shallow bowl of peanuts balanced on hot coffee glass. Preparations...

As with Nestor Makhno, in a desultory moment, the year being 1919. Neglamurnyj--that's what the Russian says. But who's looking for glamour in this legendary, charismatic Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerilla leader... Mounted on horseback, inventor of the tachanka (lightening fast horse-drawn machine-gun carriage)...and known as Batko ("father") to his 15,000 devoted followers...

Makhno's anarchist forces--the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine--allied with the Bolsheviks at the outset, and anti-nationalist to the core, but finally in favor of no state whatsoever, resulting in his defeat and exile... Romania, Poland, Danzig, Berlin and ultimately Paris, "...where he worked as a carpenter, a stage-hand at the Paris Opera, at film studios, and at the Renault factory."

"Free communities as the highest form of social justice..." 

Hopes and depredations...

Analect 2.650x

2 February 2010. Hint of sun through white curtains at dawn...

While the two dudes converse--that's Stalin and Voroshilov, of course, their military collars and heavy hand... One white pinky extending downwards, the other, relaxed, in an embrace of fate... Not without planning, however. The pyatiletka, Five-Year plan, sounding almost tender in the Russian--a sly diminutive, as with a rabbit, or a child...

The solo bird on half-misplaced ring, a shepherd with staff. To guide the sheep, to find them even. Open fields...

Analect 2.649x

1 February 2010. Grey clouds and blue, a subtle tumble...

Корреспондент газеты <Крассной Кавалерист> Лютов... At your service, sir. No, not the right way to put it. More, "Ready...!" As in the man with a plan. Image of Jack Lelane, his shoulders shrouded in bay mist, a dark cold-water swimmer's cap pulled low, towing two, three, four or more life boats across the rough channel... Alcatraz...

My father, Byelorussia in 1921. Bullets whirling. The Chinese Bolshevik fighter alongside, kneeling with rifle raised, urging him to do the same. Later, standing before a committee of commisars, each one known, "Osher, how can you leave us, what we are building here..."

Choices, articulate and unknown. As in the shape of a sparrow, or the flaired stroke of a white-bristle filbert... Bonnard--each touch his own...

Analect 2.648x

29 January 2009. Pearl clouds on gray, be sunny or sad...

A Russian sailor and his girl, with watching bird. Story from Gauguin--that he carried with him to Tahiti prints of classical Indian sculpture from the Louvre--Greek as well. As an overlay to inspiration in an unfound world--an imagined wilderness of feeling, with shoulder and breast open to the air--a young woman holding a bowl of crimson-orange fruit, or night-time god waking from eternal sleep. His question--what was it, really, those endlessly sinuous lines, revealing youth--played against the knowledge of age...

A guide...

Analect 2.647x (Эй, моряк)

28 January 2010. Sun, pool returns to blue... sky and gull...

Moryak. The Russian sailor. A type, with all attendent folklore (especially in a continent-sized nation that went to war to find a port.) Black Sea or Leningrad (shown here)--the telnyashka, cut with narrow stripes--and a mariner's neck... Sailor's song...

Becomes an R&B knockoff, a la Bill Haley, sometime in Putin's gilded age. As with all else, a television platform, with wide-eyed blond and her sailor guy--a rather effiminate penguin-in-wetsuit fellow with floppy fins. None of this makes much sense, but then, neither does the song...

Нам бы, нам бы, нам бы, нам бы всем на дно.
Там бы, там бы, там бы, там бы пить вино.
Там под океаном
Мы трезвы или пьяны -
Не видно все равно.

Let's a, let's a, let's a, let's a head for the bottom
Drink some wine down there
Down under the sea
Whether we're sober or drunk--
It's not at all clear, and it's all the same...

(Whereas Rock Around the Clock, of course remains a model of cultural probity...)

A descent, yes, but of another sort... Brecht, whirling in a watery grave...

* * *

(Note: A search under "песня матрос" got us here--which, on second try, has disappeared, or there'd be a link. Okay then, все равно... "It's all the same..." )

Analect 2.646x (Гармошка)

27 January 2010. Garmoshka and guitarra. Staraya Smolenskaya... A curving earthen road in autumn, stand of narrow trees, forest floor. Two white birches, rising at an angle from common root, luminous. Conifers--larch and pine, darker below, then thinning in a scatter of light against gray sky. Subtle reds, burning, more felt than observed, colors falling...

The artist, or wanderer, in Babel's terms. Two white mice tucked beneath his shirt--a replenishing of brushes...key to the painter's trade...

"You have a predilection for familiar faces, my dear Pan Apolek..."

Natalie's face, in parking lot dark. And Chris, yesterday morning, across the bright table--a Pennsylvania childhood, reappearing...

Analect 2.645x

25 January 2010. Morning rain on dark glass, night pools...

Pasternak reborn on a farm in Tennessee...Bonnaroo, the name from Ninth Ward slang, via Dr. John, as in bon and rue--the best on the street. Street. Poka, words of spring--a black torrent's rush, after black ink of winter. Fevral', self-annihilating absorption of cold... Regina Spektor, "Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood..." Inherit, not steal--more destiny than crime...

"Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls..."

Vesná...

* * *

(Note: Regina Spektor's song, Après Moi, includes a verse from the Pasternak poem, Fevral' (February). In 2007 she performed a live version at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, whose name has New Orleans' roots. She herself was born in Moscow in 1980.
Vesná is Russian for spring--but as a name, it comes from the old Slavic ve + sna--"(awoken) from sleep". The ancient Slavic goddess of spring...a messenger...)

Analect 2.644x (Voix Ukrainiennes)

22 January 2010. Cold morning, light rain. Slush of streetside leaves, steamy auto glass, dampness...

A row of Ukrainian girls, on an eastern church dais--les Princesses Tsarivny. From forest to footwear--their modelled voices, black and red shoes... The latter not so much discordant as unexpected... As opposed to lapti--the old kind--woven from the bast of the linden tree--or birch bark. "A kind of basket fit to the shape of the foot...," the wooden blocks employed in their manufacture apparently found in even in neolithic excavations...

The past. To dig into the earth--one possible route. Or a chain of flowers, embroidered in greens and reds, violets, blue, sparkling on white blouse. Worn in the hair as well, on the left side, over the ear. Black skirts with more muted motif--one vertical row, set slightly to the left. Their faces--the impossibly high cheekbones, slavic eyes... And to sing...

A world of young beings, from there...

Analect 2.643x (страстное желание)

21 January 2010. Gray and rain, and rain...

El niño, bendecido... the boy child, blessed. And a Russian woman with a guitar. Tradition of the bard (old Celtic bardos--poet, singer--from a posited Indo-European gwer--to lift up the voice, praise). Here Veronika Dolina, Beznadezhnoe moë delo... It would be sad to translate such a phrase that makes sense only in the telling. The English "without hope" so starkly definitive--whereas the Russian all internally shaped with muted o's and zh's... Mournful sounds, yet filled with possibility--if only in the telling...

Srastnoye dyelaniye... A passionate longing...

Analect 2.642x (Никого не будет в доме)

20 January 2010. Dozhd' idyot--rain is falling, all throught the night, and into a dark morning. Ruthless handful of swimmers in their shared oblivion. Sharp drops on surface of pool. Dozhd' idyot...

Or Pasternak, and the snow. As sung by Sergei Nikitin, with his Russian seven-string guitar, a voice at once gentle and sure. Becomes a film--a tale of two cities, Soviet-style, for the new year--and a nest of contradictions (as every nest needs must be). The inadvertant apartment, a singer, unseen. A beautiful Polish girl playing her Russian counterpart, and the mother--in a telling moment of wry understanding--whose quiet presence informs all. A poem, a song, ongoing, and a story of love that might never have been...

Two birds in the snow...


* * *

(The film is Ironiya Sud'by--The Irony of Fate)

Analect 2.641x

19 January 2010. Sound of rain all through the night, waves wash up against the house, intermittent drips on all the sills...

The old cyrillic--Cyril and Methodious, those wandering Byzantines--two brothers, Apostles to the Slavs. The glagolitic text, Old Church Slavonic, with slashes and angles as appropriate to the the east. (Some say.) Pannonia and Upper Moravia, the names refigured in each generation. Town of Brno, with its dark arches--and a hilltop near Austerlitz. Bronze plate at the top, announcing a great battle--vista of all the surrounding lands. Napoleon, 1812...

Tatiana and Sergey--Kharkov--an inheritance...

Analect 2.640x

18 January 2010. Rain from a bucket, black sky.

A game with gifts, each wrapped for the Russian New Year, hand-written numbers on paper strips attached. I was 12. Cyrillic shapes revealed in the long serif, the small loop on the two. Klara's hand. Sergey on the couch, holding forth--his alert eyebrow eye catches all--on which a subtle but explosive disquisition-- the theory of the evolutionary structure of the human vertabrae (elaborate back scratcher with wooden rollers), or the Japanese-ness of a Japanese tea (small bag with gen-ma chai)--not a circle, but a picture of father, mother, child. "A different structure within the brain." He unfolds the melody of "Vo pole beryoza stoyala" into a round--hands moving to guide--and soon all the room is singing. Sasha, high wide Russian eyes, his lady Masha, small and charming, with dark curls close to her head, like my mother. Vadim, eyes round with questions, and Natasha, alongside her daughter Ira, all inward, eyes upcast. Young Dara, in the corner, with many questions. And Marianna's delighted but shivery response to a small mechanical frog. Zoya, too, perched attentively in her private high-armed chair...smiling, listening.

Jack: "Like the evenings when I was a boy, with my parents and their friends, all of them sitting together, speaking Russian..."

***

(Drawing: Isaac Babel, and then his daughter, seventy years later, in California... The bird is a Russian starling...)

Analect 2.639x

15 January 2010. The birthday of Alice. Looking up from pool--an egret, wings spread wide, heading west...

To see a bird, in flight--we were somewhere near Warszawa on the day of Boże Ciało--Corpus Christi--the body of Christ. 1969. Driving west, on the road to Łowicz, with Robert and Gabryela and Blanka--who catches sight of a bird in the sky above. "A good sign, flying in our direction..."

Layers of belief, embedded in each perception. Attached by fine silver wire--almost invisible--the maker unknown. Like the story from Shelley Winters, about Brecht, in Hollywood, in the years during the war. "I'd brought him home to dinner, with my mother, who sometime later asked me about that 'jeweler' who'd paid us a visit. 'Jeweler? I don't remember any jeweler...' 'Well, when you were out of the room, I asked the fellow what he did, and he told me that he made jewels for poor people..."

***

(A note on the drawing. The two men on the left, Russians, from a city somewhere in the south. The one on the right a seminarian(the coat, the leggings, the shape of his shoes). Heavy lock of hair flopped over his forehead, giving him an even more intense visage. Standing alongside, a companion--maybe from the university--the small mouth, pale face, bow tie. Group to the right--a family from the Caucasus--the mother with folded hands, eyes downturned (strength and severity of inwardness). Her daughter close alongside, leaning in--hands held very much like her mother's. Feet turned inward slightly as well--in some way a repetition of that gesture. The father, with high black Caucasian wool hat, dark face, and a full black beard hiding his mouth. Patient but not resigned. The pockets of his closely buttoned shirt at a precise angle--as with a line of shells. On his waist, a dagger at the ready, just under his left arm. Above--a Budionnovka--the felt hat worn by Budyonny's cavalry. Something right out of Babel...

"You must know everything...")

Analect 2.638x

14 January 2010. Vapors rising from pool, ships in the night...

Soviet era songs, their bright instrumentation, touch of the Hebraic, American jazz (muted trumpets, wiggly clarinets) and a subtle marshall undertone thoughout--an obligato to difficult times. Gray upon gray--as in Deborah's description of Kabul--the dust in the summer, winter mud...three or four paved streets, rocks and potholes everywhere--narry a tree in sight--cut down for firewood, or blasted... Port-au-Prince...

Utesov. Song in honor of an armored train--from memory as well. A strange name--strannoe nazvanie--and strange the cities on its route: Irkutsk, Lvov, Krakow, Warszawa... Destinations of the mind, vapors rising from a pool...

Analect 2.637x (да ребята прощайте)‏

13 January 2010. Bright sun on backlit gray, gleaming gold, all surfaces...

A Russian gathering, by Lev Shestov. His arched nose and sliding brow--the summer cap, and a table, outside, amidst the dacha's trees. Women in careful blouses, short to the waist, with long Russian skirts. A tiny broach worn just at the neck, in black stone. Vera Petrovna, reading to us from Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich--her favored son--words from this world...

Words from all worlds--a pigeon's walk, or a toast--proschai--

Analect 2.636x (Песня о Kаxовке)

12 January 2010. Gray billows...rain...

Music of Utesov. Pes'nya o Kachovk'e... Then, images of these generals from the past. A question of which side... Regimental cross... "The 300th Jubilee of the House of Romanov," a basket of medals...sword and epaulette. The verse from the Glinka song--"either by the sword or upon the shield..."

Kooperativnaya Kolybel'naya... A Cooperative Lullaby...

And Deborah's face this morning--I kiss her on each cheek. Ezekiel's Wheel...

Analect 2.635x

11 January 2010. Winter sun, both grackle and crow--their imposing hop. Gathering tidbits off tabletop, in children's lot--a child's dream--or ghost, both present and not...

As with Sebald--his photographs, Austerlitz and Vertigo--also gathered, years before. Stories follow--okra, beet and kale--a European host...

Farther to the east, on Odessa's shore. The ages of man, Soviet-style--that big-chested walk, all above the waist. And a towhead boy, alone on the sand...

Chernomorskaya dal'... Black-Sea distance...

Analect 2.534x (да и скоро будем знать)‏

8 January 2010. Gray and cold, sprinkle of rain, warm within, the seamless rungs of a song...

Leonid Utesov, played by tiny earphone on the docks of San Francisco--the former docks, I should say. Now one vast (yet somehow not intolerable) playland. Maybe the weather--a beautiful overcast day, silver skies disappearing into mist, boats lapping on waters of Vologda wax, faces with verifiable smiles. A man photographs a strutting gull, his ladyfriend just to the side, offering tidbits (off camera). Russian voices everywhere--their high-chested walk--all above the waist--Artur Eisen's progeny, moved now to the west. We turn the last corner to the sound of seals. Sea lions--big ones, wet and brown, huddling in one gemütlich communal pile...

Proshchal'naya Komsomol'skaya...man or gull... We'll know soon.

We'll know soon...

Analect 2.633x

7 January 2009. Floating mists over blue-green pool. "Popyli tumani nad rekoi..."

Words from a song, remembered only in part, as when a Mikhail Brodsky appears in the copyshop aisle--mistaken for a moment for Robin Williams (how can there be that strange resemblance?), but with a stronger and more foreward-looking jaw, vperyod--aged a bit, as needs must, but Soviet still...

Tanya's grandfather--the writer of the song (Katyusha), in another age... now they live just up the block.

Here, Utesov, 1926, in the checkered pants (checkered career), playing a winning tough-guy from the Odessa streets. He pulls a gun--a shpaler--home-made--which on closer inspection turns out to be a dark-toned pear... The job accomplished, he takes a bite and heads off down the road...

Mu-mu... Bremerhaven, Hotel Schneider...long ago...

Analect 2.632x

6 January 2009. Pool girl, shivering, with arms around middle, scooting inside. Emory engages her for a moment's back and forth--but the morning won't allow it--a smile and a continued dash...

Then, suddenly, behind the scenes in the Moscow Opera--three life-size figures in folk costumes--sarafan and veil. The light--northern and low, raking in from what one imagines to be tall narrow windows on the left. Pale white walls, worn, and a high Russian doorway just behind--the elaborate escutcheon, in brass--and, just above, a cursory cast-iron latch-bolt...

The ancient gusli... many presents...

Analect 2.631x

5 January 2010. Krasnaya zara...the Red Dawn... A dark Natasha poised at top of stairs, surveying the hinterland. Last night--through darkened upstairs window, a small face just outside--long nose with pink nostrils, impossibly dark eyes set on angle, fuzzy ears and a brusque furry coat, elongated tail with tiny scales... Opossum...

Or, the Moscow Art Theater, Odessa style--a partisan skit, on the Volkhovsky Front, performed for the troops--soldier and commander. Songs of Leonid Utesov--"Gop So Smykom"--Hop with a Violin Bow.... that's me...

Spirit through all...or at least almost all...

Gop so smykom eto budu ya
Slushayte vnimatelno, druzya
Ryemyeslom ya vybral krazhu
Iz tyurmy ya nye vlyazhu
I tuyrma skutchaet byez menya
No v kakoy tyurmye by nye sidyel
Nie bylo minuty shtob nye pyel
Zalozhu ya ruki v bryuki
I khozhu, poyu so skuki
Shto zhe budyesh dyelat kol zasyel?"

"But whatever prison I may be in
Not a minute passes without me singing
I stick my hands in my pockets
And walk around singing out of boredom
What else can you do when you've been tossed in the clink?

(Version Zygmunt Frankel)

Analect 2.630x (Ах, Одесса Моя)‏

4 January 2010. Early January sun, even earlier than the usual early January sun--and always associated with January 15th, the birthday of my mother, Alice... A warm and beautiful day.

Princess N, by phone: "A Russian year..." Yes, and the voice of Leonid Utesov, holding forth from the Moldavanka. Well, from Leningrad, to be precise. His memories of Odessa--the "ss" pronounced "ts" in the local way. Here as a sailor of middle years, and fitted out raffishly in telnyashka and Red navy cap... Knowing eyes, hint of a smile--a survivor--1895-1982.

The gathering at Klara's. Zoya, now ancient, resting in her small first floor room. Just outside, near the couch, I cue up the songs--Okudzhava, Artur Eisen, Utesov as well... Some of these from the mid-thirties--"Ax, Odessa Moya"--lyrical bounce, but with a certain Jewish plaintiveness...

Zoya, later, to Klara: "I was thinking to myself, where are these songs coming from...?"

Analect 2.629x

31 December 2009. Gray on gray, plus morning chill. Berkeley Monthly, folded in its rain wrap, askew on red cement pathway to house. Two days now...

Tatiana and Sergey, their respective modes. Animation of the storyteller--Nikolai Leskov--hovering at the edge of conciousness. "The most Russian of all Russian writers," as Benjamin might have added. Quality of the telling--an alert kind of patience, the mind on the balls of its feet--relaxed, hands aloft...

"The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."

* * *

(Note: the last line is also a quote from Walter Benjamin.)

Analect 2.628x

30 December 2009. Pale light, winter morning. Rain on studio roof last night--skylight sounds.

The local view. Oystershell clouds raking in from the west, on a low slant over sempiternal 7-eleven roof. Just now: young woman in brown leopardskin slippers with darker brown bows sits down alongside at the middle PC. The middle PC--a political tract of some kind. Goes with her half-finger gloves--the black over-the-wrist variety, reaching up to brush aside sleepy brown hair.

Li Ching at work just behind--wheel-bag, several pockets unzipped, his mild green nylon jacket (with unexpected Harley-Davidson emblems front and back) draped over handle.

Reaching for thumbdrive, her keys in hand, red heels...

Ending Poverty in America...

Analect 2.227x

29 December 2009. Dawn light through white curtains...

Neighbors' cars nose to nose on quiet street--insistent voice of starter motor, engine engaging in bloom of white exhaust...

Or, the Bud Light delivery truck, backed tight against 7-eleven facade. Driver buried in cab, hovering over forms propped on wheel...

A restless morning...young mother in Chamonix baseball cap, pony tail and dark green sweater, waiting for file to download as tiny blond Lita and her older brother explore the interstices of neighborning machines... On to water cooler possibilities across the room...

Greg, in patient voice, "Let's go see mommy..."

Analect 2.626x

28 December 2009. Morning chill, layers of white down, hood...

An evening with Sergey, invigorated and at his best, songs from Glinka, Shubert, Mozart, Brahms--a fragment of Handel on Jack's worthy upright, Sergey's frock-coat form leaning deeply into each note. Image of a bird--ptitsa--Nestor Vasil'yevich Kukol'nik--do I have this right?--a bird on the wing, Sergey in his perfect moment of theater, just before beginning, reaching up with an open hand...

Then after, gathered at two skewed tables, champagne, a toast, platters of Klara's Armenian spinach pie, beet salad vinegret (svyokla), in simple bowl, from Tatyana's mother, who speaks with Roma in her beautifully clear Silver-age diction--studies of language, history, philosophy, science--borders shifting with each decade, with each breath...

Physics, taking flight...

* * *

Sergey Zadvorny, the noted Russian-born basso cantante

Analect 2.625x

22 December 2009. Cold, brrrrr, winter sun. Steam rising from the pool...

King again, pine trees against eastern sky, their companion silhouettes. Shivering on deck while Yassir surveys the lanes. Woman with dark form, vigorous stroke. The tattooed girl from El Cerrito--her thin legs embroidered with Prussian blue flowers. Lin, his street-wise face bundled in life-guard red. Water sweet, a relief from the cold air...

A trailer frame nestled in the tees--random image from the Paraná. It's summer there, along the river's edge. Awning of red and white, metal...a combinatory aesthetic--the ore of an urban world...

Analect 2.624x

21 December 2009. Rainy morning, King Pool. Gray skies with flurries of wet. Low-rider changing rooms, dank and dim, with the same worn green poly-mesh clothes bags hanging from their skewed wires. Empty benches, puddled floor, a gym bag or two, someone's shoes tucked underneath, and the winding hallway to the deck, with snatches of Moroccan sounds en route--and there, the regulars. Yassir, for one, his sculpted beard now a little gray, directing traffic as of old. "Here, you swim in this lane, pointing. Two will be out soon..." Memories of that commanding diction--and the morning, late summer, nine years ago, with word of two buildings in flame. Same room, radio voices--Larry Bensky, coughing in an unexpected way...

I look into his face--the same warm smile, regaining time. "The same good eyes..."

Analect 2.623x

18 December 2009. Warm winter sun, unseasonable delight. Santa hats, t-shirts and smiles...

Weather for the birds, as one can see. A collation of little ones--house sparrow and finch, with the obligatory pidgeon. Cooing strut--city gait. Tiny violin case with miniature Chicago-style submachine gun (Al Capon--a terrible fate--a terrible pun)--while here, simply the partially puffed chest of an everyday egotist. Not so, research tells us--all behavior has a purpose, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, at a very swift clip--round the last turn now, they're neck in neck--it's Fritz by a nose...

Die welträtsel, some would say...

Analect2 2.622x

16 December 2009. Two tigers loose in the house, one curled on a pillow, the other on freshly washed pile of blankets and towels. Winter poses, while outside, the steady rain, a nondescript mist of gray, home to house finch and mouse...

Signs of life along the street--wet camphor leaves, blue-gray light...airbrakes of recycling truck, careening around corner. Two faces behind blurry glass...

Fifth night--a home to all...

Analect 2.621x

15 December 2009. Even gray sky--single disk of gaberdine cloud with illumined edges, high over dark 7-eleven roof, broken arc of white just alongside. Glowing winter sun...

Full stop, then a beginning. As with a sentence--each linked set of words. A party tray--Harry and David, those Oregon gents with their apples and cheeses and pears, sent from afar in heavy boxes, nestled in excelsior. Channukah lights, fourth night...

A menorah of plain wood--from the garage in Oceanside, 2x4 with line of eight roofing nails. One for the shammus candle, too--tapped in a little higher...

The rock dove...

Analect 2.620x

4 December 2009. Sunny winter's morning, red-gold leaves mushed in the rain gutters, faces with smiles...

Zampanò e'arrivato...somewhere around 1954, rolling into town on that ancient motorcycle contraption. A touring show--Gelsomina's trumpet-plaint--and her unforgettable upturned eyes, all innocence and doubt...

Chains around his chest, a blanket for a cape, fiece look but strangely delicate shoulders, Anthony Quinn strides out before the crowd. Townsfolk--riffraff and loungers, children, too--until the sound of a car, just off camera, begins to build, gaining speed, and at the moment it passes--paaaaam--the links are parted...

La Strada...

Analect 2.619x

27 November 2009. Rain on the streets, rolling clouds, gray...

Yesterday: Delta roads, filtered sun. Field of sheep, their gray shapes, grazing. Coyote running along furrows of yellow husks, stopping, looking back, then running again... Sandhill cranes in Mokolumne backwaters--flooded fields of Staten Island. Their projected voices from afar, at first unseen--two sharper sounds, then a rumbly gobble. Same from high above... "They come all the way from Siberia..." I remain skeptical--half way round the globe? "The Bering Sea..." Home waters in Delta fields, winter light...

The killdeer and a piebald grebe...

Analect 2.618x

25 November 2009. Pale sky over dark hills, early. Swimmers in yellow-lit pool, flip turns and splash... Woman's form alongside, breathing, jumping in feet first...

Water bird and ling cod, eel grass in dark green sea. "Rocky, marine sub-tidal areas--in crevices and overhangs..." 

The shape of the guitar--imagined again for its ins and outs--a viguela, tauter at the waist, with six sets of double strings. De los tiempos de la corte de Carlos V...

Trovadores--cormorant and dove...

Analect 2.617x

24 November 2009. Slanting sunlight, east wind from over the hills. Water bird, high above, wings churning...

Borges, in a field of trees. Eyes with a touch of white below each pupil--sanpaku--a question of sight. Into a certain distance, that is--his world of English nouns and Elohist plurals--alternative names for visions of the Divine--distinctions gathered from arcane traditions, rewoven "bajo la luz del Sur..." Also--an impatience with sentiment--with the exception of what might be deemed a determined starkness--as if the world could be summed up in telling bas relief...

Buscando lo criollo...

Analect 2.616x

23 November 2009. Crisp sun, chilly gold ripples on blue pool. Swimmers with arms held in close to their sides, scurrying for the warm showers...

Or, a beach in Santa Monica, 1963. Fred Price (violin) and Roscoe Holcomb, his banjoe at the ready, angular face, perpetual upright stance... Southern mountain hat and stiff gaberdines. Here for their appearance with Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson at the Ashgrove, on Melrose. The old days. Tradition and bohemia in gentle collision, by the edge of an unknown sea...

Analect 2.615x

20 November 2009. Clear to east, high storm cloud wall coming in from the west...

Cold November mornings, closely trimmed head of Eritrean man behind counter in 7-eleven--shades of brown and gray. An immigrant's smile. School kids piling off city bus--arriving from who knows where...

A backyard garden--personal victories of a sort. Rutabega and chard, millet, a few Idaho potatoes. Miniscule harvest in the blowing rain...

Analect 2.614x

14 November 2009. Late fall, red leaves--colors of the earth, worn round the arm... Adam, adamah...

A truth in sadness--the bending bow. Judgments and conclusions of human kind--with all reasons invented after the fact. The world as plan. But no...becoming instead one grand river of delight--moments of challenge, love, tenderness--the feel of a cheek, a mother's breath. Two young birds, side by side, beginning anew...

Ongoing...

Analect 2.613x

18 November 2009. Awakening to clear skies, after yesterday's drizzly rain. A few cold nights in the woods--manzanita and madrone, white pine, fir. Home fires in a black cast iron stove, meandering flame through tempered glass. "Water is more beautiful than fire..." An assertion, even as we sit transfixed by the warmth, the snakey light... Outside--the Leonids, sparse... The Pleiades...

En route--a market in Cloverdale, hidden away on a frontage road. Spanish surname over the door, tall man with awkward teeth standing just in front, conversing with a friend. Their postures--from afar. Music inside--corridos--and a young girl at rotating counter, her shoulders bare, bright eyes...

Leaving for home: wild turkey in brush at side of cabin road--a mother and two offspring--their careful one-after-the-other steps, backward glances, disappearing in the gray rain...

Analect2.612x

12 November 2009. Clear with bright sun. Emery high on his stand, black balaclava pulled snug--an ageing terrorist of the lifeguard line.

Gaucho indumentaria. A history of clothing--but, of course, it's more than that. The tellingness of gesture--la chinita, for instance--homespun skirt at once graceful and plain, wrapped around her strong waist--opposite of stage-attire elegance. Long to the ankles, feet turned out with a hint of charming uncertainty. Flat on the ground--cloth alpargatas--hard to draw in just their plainness. Two braids and maybe a flower...

For the chango--as with the birds. The male plumage. What's downhome here is the hair--more front-to-back than up and down. A kind of connected solidity that belies the fanciness. Also something slightly rumpled as to the hat--worn true.

Cosas así...

Analect 2.611x

11 November 2009. Pale sun against mantle of gray, pushing through.

Choice and resolve. A wandering line, figures emerging as if from two pieces of cloth--held in the hand, released in the air. Their separation a measure of commitment--as if the bekoning were all.

The zamacueca, first danced in Lima, in 1824--la liberación, Gral. San Martín. "Su denominación como 'zamba' se aplicaba a las mestizas descendientes de indio y negra (o vice versa). La danza esta diseñada para seducir a las zambas, y de alli su nombre, tanto en Perú como en la Argentina."

Agitando Pañuelos. "...bailando esta zamba repiqueteadita..."

Analect 2.610x

10 November 2009. Half blue sky, bundled guard, change...

La firmeza, danza de galanteo... A dance of courtship, the two figures separate and independent throughout...

Moving through their steps with a poignant sureness, bending bough...

* * *

Coreografía:

1. Cruz
2. Vuelta
3. Giro (de espaldas)
4. Primer paseo: hacia la izquierda de varón
5. Segundo paseo
6. Tercer paseo
7. Cuarto paseo: apoyo de codos
8. Retroceso: con la mano izquierda en el oído
9. Avance y retroceso: con los dedos índice y mayor de la mano derecha en la cabeza
10. Avance y retroceso: en el 2ndo compas, las manos en el hombro
11. Avance y abrazo: el hombre intenta abrazarla a la mujer y ésta se agacha
12. Avance y abrazo: hacen lo mismo; en el 4to compas, el hombre le tira un beso a la mujer
13. Zapateo y zarandeo: el zarandeo se realiza con gestos de negación y de vergúenza
14. Media vuelta
15. Giro final

Analect 2.609x

9 November 2009. Cool November morning, all nines.

Margot and Daniella, a birthday gathering, on a hillside at the edge of a great park. Circle of trees along the ridge line, just behind another circle of gathered flowers and boughs. An offering--heather and rosemary, California sage. Other young people, and a mother with two bright children. Talk of Portland, a French teacher, the rain...

One of the younger women with spoon in hand, carefully ladelling chunky apple sauce into one of the children's bowls. Slow and precise movements of her hands--just so. As if all the care in the world...

Analect 2.608x

6 November 2009. Ying at pool window, notebook of college studies. Elbow arms of swimmers, back and forth, hint of sun...

Story of a puma in the Oregon landscape--Thalia, near the Dalles. "All orchards and fields." Her brothers wouldn't believe her till they saw the size of the tracks. Big smile, both arms in the air, straight up, a contemporary hooray...

Or Christine, telling of musicians in the Austrian country towns--local folk, each person involved. "You don't buy a drum, you go to the man who will make you one; he makes the other instruments, too..."

Carmencita, filmed with el Cachafaz, mysterious bit of footage--unique, from years past. Then, dancing again, at ninety-five...

Derrick and Lisette... Adiós, arrabal...

Analect 2.607x

5 November 2009. To the northeast, island clouds--St. Thomas and St. Lucia...speckled and spotted, mandrake root...

A man alone, heavy wool on an ancient plain, his hands bound in iron, head down, eyes inward--contemplating--no, just first imagining--the long-term history of a noble refusal--in this case his own. To reclaim a kind of justice, yes, great horned owl of the Dakotas, prairie wind, also his own...

(for Leonard Peltier)

Analect 2.606x

4 November 2009. The gray skies...

And Tennessee Ernie Ford, with all his polished eagerness--the closely-trimmed moustache and those artfully wobbly teeth--sitting onstage together with Odetta, her presence, also artful in her own way--singing Woody Guthrie songs--the apple pickers' union in the Garden of Eden. A feigned spontaneity--or something more? Not that it matters, really, when they're so clearly enjoying each other's company... And the chance to do again what they truly love...

Analect 2.605x

3 November 2009. Early pool, blue sky, golden jet sliver on long diagonal, upwards...

The claims of Corot. A woman reading in the landscape, by the side of a modest French pond. Barbizon School... Hand to cheek, book in lap, and in the distance, a boatman, partly hidden by rushes at water's edge. Here made wide, the horizon out of Homer or Inness, perhaps--a seafarer--the Coming Storm...

That expanse, a patrimony...

Analect2.604x

2 November 2009. Gauguin morning, two figures at pool, rounded forms, dipping, smiling...

"Her Name was Vairaumati," and so the question remains--Vairaumati then, Vairaumati now, if only for this glancing moment, in the line of a shoulder, a flower, a young breast. Turned to the side, after the Pharoahs' wives, on dark blue cloth...Prints of flowers--frond and swirl... White petals...

The sea...

Analect2.603x

30 October 2009. Morning sun, clear and bright--not yet that late autumn mist.

Hablando de puchero y calabazas--Victoria arrives a little late, with cloth covered bowl of home-made empanadas--dulce de membrillo, quince jam--and a pitcher of tereré...that hot-summer variant of yerba maté... Nos encuentra cantando, our first pass at Tierra Querida...

And visiting from New York, Heather's grandmother, Edith, who appears with a spry smile at the classroom door...

Then: a black and white photograph of California land--darkly shadowed foreground with rolling hills, two rounded granite boulders, and a scattering of live oaks... where also appearing, mysteriously, at the far right--a small and convincingly incongruous rider on a rearing horse--borrowed, no doubt, from some long-forgotten yerra down Uruguay way...

Face of don Ata--a merging of worlds...

Analects 2.602x

29 October 2009. Face peering up from pool, "This lane's free..." Christina's voice...

Mate pava on office floor--small bright metal kettle with narrow handle, balanced precariously on plug-in hotplate, a little water spilling on brown linoleum, our version of the outdoors. Victoria's grandmother, in the countryside near Luján... Enlaces...

Or Melissa, a few minutes later, sitting with Alice. "Do you think Mansilla (she uses the traditional soft elle, not the raspy Argentine pronunciation) actually lived the way he writes?"

To ask these questions, for the first time...

Analect 2.601x

28 October 2009. Clear and cold, wind raking pool, guards huddled under laters of red. Ying's smile...

Vitello Abalos, bailando una zamba con Elvirita, just two years back. Born in 1922, "estrenando sus primeros 'pantalones largos' como miembro del conjunto de Los Hermanos Ábalos..." who first recorded Nostalgias Santiaguenas in 1939...

Pañuelo de la gracia, corazón de la vida...

Analect 2.600x

27 October 2009. Brisk wind on pool deck, small penants horizontal, cirrus clouds, just a few...

With Chugo again, somewhere in the northwest of Argentina. Breakfast with the locals, a reprise of Cezanne, Fanta-sipping cardplayers at small tables, the non-descript landscape calendar high on tan wall, digital tv monitor on old wooden stand... A single wire providing the horizon...

Evidence of travel--time, space, sympathy...

Analect 2.599x

26 October 2009. Sunlight slicing through blue-green pool. Vigorous types in two-piece suits, flip turns... Swim coach on deck, head down, sorting through cell-phone mail...

The modern age. Le plus sa çhange... Payo Solá, seated, many years ago, somewhere in provincial Salta, his narrow fingers and dark lapels, bandoneón pulled wide across his knees. Flaring hair, also from another age--both wild and controlled, as with Toscha or Cavafy... An island personage, yes, stranded on the coast. Alexandria, perhaps--another backwater town--theodolite of the past...

Analect 2.598x

23 October 2009. Natasha curled in easy chair, lamplight. Early sun through white cotton curtains...

Of people and birds. A white-crowned sparrow, on a narrow branch. Gorrión, chingolo. Rufous-collared, too. A small and lively spirit, building it's nest "round farms and cities."

"...such a good-looking wee bird..."

Analect 2.597x

22 October 2009. Solano before dawn--yellow lamps in the mist.

Atahualpa Yupanqui as a young man, seated, in front of four accompanying musicians, each dressed in white, guitars at the ready. His presence the focus. Early recordings, in 1936, for a company that distributes yerba mate... Recital Indígena por Radio Fenix... Caminito del Indio (Odeon Mangruyo)

Preguntas sin respuesta...

Analect2.596x

21 October 2009. Cool and gray, autumn.

Ying behind the sliding window of pool booth, page of science under incandescent lamp. Lifts her head, smiling.

"I watched you grow up. In a chrysalis, at the old pool...". Open look. "You know, what the butterfly's in before it becomes a butterfly..." Another smile...

Silver light on October waves, reflected on wide low-tide sands. Two figures walking on the beach below, in the distance--one of them in orange. Slight breeze. A woman's weathered face appears at top of stairs--the bather.

Faces and lives...

Analect 2.595x

16 October 2009. Beautiful sun...

October light, Pacific swell. A summer's morning, I don't know when. Gray at dawn, tucked up in hooded sweatshirt, Schwinn, board under one arm, ocean bound... Down Alberta Street hill, over to Wisconsin, across Hill Street, the tracks... First glimpse of morning's waves--about three feet, breaking glassy, gray-green...

Ojalá...

Analect 2.594x

15 October 2009. Golden float lines on luminous blue, rain mist pool...

Chamamé. And this is what happens when you bring the polka to the Paraná... A close embrace, each bending forward to press cheek and chest, as if everyone in this world were small--in stature perhaps, but grand in spirit. A willingness to attend to the requirements of the dance--a necessity even, each morning, where the brown waters sweep slowly by...

Analect 2.593x

14 October 2009. Gray morning, after the storm, lacy and intermittent hints of blue.

Dance of the stars, as led by Lee, with Safeway cart, winter hat, no-nonsense boots. Her frail form, bending over 7-eleven bin, collecting. A chance for the Reed's Black Cherry to live again...

Clark, portable radio in hand, sidewalk mambo...

* * *

Ramsay's face, bending near, "May I ask a favor?"

Analect 2.592x

13 October 2009. Pouring rain on pool water, drips on drops... Lifeguard hunkered down against damp stucco wall, bent forward in poly hood...

A blaze of chickens, nonetheless. Houdan, Old Hungarian, Wynandote. Golden Montazah, and the lone Araucana... Araucana, from somewhere in the south. El sur, as with Lucio...riding to meet Mariano Rosas and his Ranquel band. Also Araucana, at least in part. Having adopted their ways. Tolderías, tents of wood and hide, cooking fires within, well hidden, ample flocks and herds...

These final moments, when two worlds meet, each one gathered into the next...

Rain...

Analect 2.591x

12 October 2009. Gray clouds piling, oncoming rain...

Lila on sidewalk, her head covered with a muted pink scarf, leaning forward as she pulls aside the large gray German plastic recycling container. Moments later: seated in their new tiny Honda Fit, electric blue... Equivalents (Victor Schrager to me, in 1978: "See them.")

Toscha, as a young man. A student of Mischa Auer: "Heifitz, that angel, Toscha, that devil..." Or so came the family story. As told in San Diego, a Navy town, with its parade of sailors up and down lower Broadway, white caps at a maritime tilt...

Beached there, along with a handful of Russians--Dad, Uncle Howard, Jimmy Toback--Stelly, and Toscha himself. Eddie Janowski and Aunt Mae. Do I remember scampering along the back of the built-in dining table bench--all freedom of movement, everything permitted--with Toscha's irritation mounting...?

"But Professor Auer develops a natural bowing, with an absolutely free wrist, in all his pupils..."

* * *

For the Toscha Seidel references, see Fredrick H. Martens, Violin Mastery: Talks with the Master Violinists and Teachers, available as a Project Gutenberg eBook:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15535/15535-h/15535-h.htm#Page_219

Analect 2.590x

9 October 2009. Low gray clouds, churning...

Talk of colors, adjustments and compensations. A row of oak trees on a Palo Alto Street, removed of a morning...

The history of loss. And the words for longing: añoranza, anhelo, saudade... The latter from Beatriz, sitting with me in the window on Solano, a little more than a year ago. Of Portuguese fishermen, setting out to sea, their wives alone on the beach, some of them weeping, as the boats disappear on the sea...

Succoth, a time of joy, autumn moon...

Analect 2.589x

8 October 2009. "Morning low clouds and fog...," reassuring radio voice, while just outside, morning low clouds and fog. Impatient Saab directly behind, swerves right, then left, then right again, careening past onto narrow side street at high speed...

Where we are going. As in the pueblo of Huanguelen, tucked away in a remote corner of the Province of Buenos Aires. Miles and miles of wheat--dimpled clouds against a late afternoon sky. Community center room, bare, the ubiquitous modern plastic chairs and a single table on one wall, with a bevy of older women at antiquated monitors. Our computer class...

Or a gathering of children, in the public square--this from many years before, in fading black and white, their uniforms and pinafores arranged just so, arms around each others shoulders in a protective way--tiny gestures of dignity and anticipation...

José Larralde--Un día me fuí del pago...

Analect 2.588x

7 October 2009. Gray light over hills at dawn, a single bird...

El Alma del Payador--the soul of the story-singer... Santos Vega, a gaucho from around 1830 who lives on in myth because of a challenge from the Devil in human form--the figure of Juan sin Ropa. "Una sombre triste que vaga por las lagunas de la pampa..." A somber shadow that wanders amidst the lagunas of the pampa... Playing upon any guitar left forgotten nearby a well--aljibe, the old Moorish word. Constantly associated with water, and an invocation of the wind...

José Larralde in the film version of Obligado's classic--half-western, half-Whitman--from 1971...

Bajo un algarrobo...

Analect 2.587x

6 October 2009. Beginning of fall. Cold rounded poolside edge, blue water...

Stories. Named by her father, her mother still calling her Marta. Tucumán, cuna de los sueños. To Mendoza, a marriage and a son, then alone. Her voice--a gift and an impediment. "Para mí cantar era una tristeza..." This as a girl--again, the wishes of he father, but singing left her aislada--alone...

Soledad...y compromiso. Solitude and commitment--interwoven...

The concerts in the Opera, 1982--a sudden opening after the years of darkness. Her grand return...

"Un puente sobre todos los abismos..." Her openness, maybe to a fault--and her crazy friendships. Charly García, for one. Tall, skinny, outrageous. Her own view: "A veces cuando habla es tan inteligente que uno sólo puede admirarlo..." The two of them: De mí

And with the Chalchaleros, en la Rural, Buenos Aires: Zamba por vos...

Analect 2.586x

5 October 2009. Morning darkness, autumn chill. Masters team in changing room, talking laps and times...

That old phrase--chewing the fat. Hearthside, or kitchen table. As in the note on NPR--the nation swept by a sudden interest in craft. Richard Sennett in the lead--with words, that is.

A just shaping. The sense of touch, a feel and a turning. The pine bow, stripped of bark, white wood exposed to winter's air. Bite of the knife, along the grain, each fiber an opening.

Entire worlds...

Analect 2.585x

2 October 2009. Beautiful fall day, damp pool edge...

"Ojos limpios cómo un chingolo..." From José Larralde, La Noche del Peludero. The meaning of the words in a song, given such particular focus by the necessity of their ongoingness... Figure of Victoria's bisabuela--as a young woman, in the dress embroidered with a Mapuche design. Subtle, white on white, a remembering in the cloth itself, as with her beautiful elongated face--the dark eyes...

Reflections on a life.

I play for them La Fernanda, accompanied by Diego, seated upright, alert, just to her side... Attentive to the song--present and past, made one...

Cómo siempre...

Analect 2.584x

1 October 2009. Morning pool light, sun...

Indumentaria--but not simply old clothes. Well, yes, old clothes--but in the sense of very old clothes--those worn a hundred years ago or more. That's old, isn't it? Bombachas, pañuelo, chiripá... The Indian names--Tehuelche, Mapuche, Pampa... Restitched for an immigrant clientele... One sees it on their faces--hard and unsure--like the horizon itself, always at a certain distance--to the west, al poniente del sol...

Unknown...

* * *

Yamhill Market, Portland, 1964-- a pair of beautiful brown woolen trousers, pin-striped, and very long-waisted, with suspender buttons and 1-1/2 inch cuffs. Another life...

Analects 2.583x

30 September 2009. Gray light over hills, how many ways...

Two Polish girls, on the hard side--Hotel Polonia--armed in black, rayon... The pose revealing more than the pose--a kind of tough vulnerability--clutching purses--or maybe not even so tough, the veneer thereof...

And within? Mokotów, Praga, the farms beyond...

Childhood of dreams, ads, enticements--the bounty of the west, crashing down... An unsuspecting populace--muddy fields, Częstochowa, the Pope...

A hidden unity, half-remembered--named in ritual--Body of Christ...

Solidarność...

Analect 2.582x

29 September 2009. Pearl clouds with intermittent sun, wash of grays, whites, pale blues...

Two Indian gentlemen in pool changing room, conversing in the old way, a morning in Delhi, the Jumna, despite all...

And a violist, whose autumnal sound, deep voiced and calm, soars in middle register, straight to the heart...

We have no word for this. The quality of tan in Taoist thought... "A semblance of impoverishment...should conceal an inner richness, serve as a plain garment which covers the embroidered robe."

Reb Zusia...

Analect 2.581x

25 September 2009. Sun at this moment pouring through gray--early fall.

Wyspianski's Wesele--The Wedding Party--in Wajda's film of 1973. Bronowice, a village near Kraków. The poet who marries a peasant girl, Lucjan and Jadwiga. Rachela. the young Jewish woman who appears unexpectedly at the celebration--"a victim of her own euphoria"--inviting in the chocholy (bound grain sheaves in the fields after the harvest) and thereby an opening to the mysteries of the Polish past.

Wyspianski's painting--figures of grain, in an autumn landscape. Van Gogh's space, Van Gogh's trees... Night, and a sense of distance...

They become real...

Analect 2.580x

24 September 2009. Gray morning, gray gull over pool, glimpsed for an moment...

Marcello Mastroianni, bringing his charming Italian je ne sais quoi to the wintery environs of Torino--the Fiat factory strike, sometime after 1900... Image of the worker as Genovese extra--the café faces, clenched fists, worry and doubt, but a willingness to listen, maybe even follow. His narrow-rimmed university specs--the student--better with Schiller under his arm than Plekhanov or Marx...

François Noël-Babeuf--a society of equals...

Mourant de faim, mourant de froid...

Analect2.579x

23 September 2009. Sun like always...

Scabbard and standard, prepare for battle. Dark woods and dripping stream, Lancelot du'Lac--Bresson's vision, where the knights appear only as a sudden flash amidst the undergrowth--glint of armor and braised cuff... Or, a peasant girl from the east of France--the Maid of Orleans, as in the song...

Limousin, d'Auvergne...

Analect2.578x

22 September 2009. Sun over hills, all promise. Young woman from last week--Sondra--on bus bench with her daughter, Sisiki. "Tiene un nombre indigeno..." Small,wild curls in morning light...

The lute player, musician of the court, M. Charles Mouton, with ever so slight a smile, esconced in winter wig and thick brocade, from 300 years in the past. A draughty hall, inattentive hosts...Couperin...

Glassy waves at dawn, salt ocean air, single gull grazing the crest...

Analect 2.577x

21 September 2008. Mist against hills at dawn, Campenile's ghost. Single runner, turning for an moment, then gone...

Candombe, in the Barrio Sur, Montevideo, a century past. Recorded by Pedro Figari--who began these paintings only in his sixth decade. From childhood memories--the Bakongo Kings and Queens, crowned on new shores, in hidden rooms... Later, drawn from life--in friendship--his skills as a lawyer, marshalled in their defense...

A people's past, revealed in the sweep of the dance. A hand held just so--palm down, in peace, or raised to the brow--a warding off. Incorporated, in the most literal sense. Lives re-lived--remembered and wished for...

Legacy of earth...

Analect 2.576x

18 September 2009. Sun-filled pool, golden and blue, California...

Hills overlooking the bay--San Diego, Convair plant and eucalyptus, Mission Brewery in brick, curve of water towards North Island, Point Loma and the sea... This same time, ten years back--a September morning, Avery and Peter, in a kind of repose... Their two forms, in life and after...

And today: a mother and daughter waiting for the bus, again September, with a gathering of fresh flowers in an open green bag, tucked in between. Their luxurious curls, an ebony ring, Minerva's scroll...

Song...

Analect 2.575x

17 September 2009. Gray skies, gray pool. Gray guard, gray wall. High, to the west, a single line of reddish brick, set side-by-side, in a wave. A motif...

The recurrence of the Baroque-- Age of Watteau, same dress, same song. But no, not at all his age, rather a brilliant kind of pretend--the ruff, the starred rosette, the arched thumb, the flowers and shoes... a kind of seeming...as if...

Where veracity reveals only the truth of longing...

Analect 2.574x

16 September 2009. Sun through morning clouds. Tall and gloomy swim coach, with notepad and pen--a racing form, perchance, or the morning's ve-ge-ta-bles...

As in a play--Twelfth Night, where Malvolio makest sense of things that be, a lady's wish, prediposed o'er parchement gold...a letter, indeed, and all it might reveal...

"By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's. It is, in contempt of question, her hand."

Analect 2.573x

15 September 2009. Sun light in the fall, blue pool waters, silent swimmers seen from afar...

The University in crisis--a forum in 160 Kroeber--my own room, filled to the brim with Berkeley faces--students in the main, eager to hear Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Tim Clark, George Lakoff, Charlie Schwartz and Laura Nader each hold forth with a personal overview of what the institution--at its best--continues to represent. Education as a public good, not a commodity. Producers of doubt--of questions--to broaden our sense of the world. Not the narrow interests of class--a maintenance of privilege--but the dreams and the aspirations of a much broader class--the children of the people of California--more than a million of them, over the years, graduates of this public institution...

The threat: "a warping and closing down of intellectual horizons." (Tim Clark) * Question of "who is going to be educated? Those with the most money--or (pointing to the audience) you?" (George Lakoff) * Thorsten Veblen got it right in 1908: a public good. "Society's conscience." (Laura Nader). * Accountablity to this vision on the part of the administration--and the Regents (Charlie Schwartz).

Whom do we serve?

Analect 2.572x

14 September 2009. Voluminous clouds on blue, remnants of last night's storm. An early fall?

Young woman from Clean Living Cleaners, out in the parking lot with dust pan and broom, her desultory swipes at this and that, scattered across asphalt after yesterday's Stroll. Merchant's holiday, towards an imagined wherewithall.

Prayers for rain...

Analects 2.571x

11 September 2009. Beauty morning.

Even by email, with sun-dappled sidewalks just outside. Right down to a slanted Free Chips sign--and the Come and Get Me iced-coffee banner across the way. "I'm good...," an American response...

Anoche. Smiling and singing--a bird on the branch of a tree--el zorzal criollo, made real in wobbly blue pencil on thin sheets of trace. A nest. Importante. And two narrow footprints, as in Indian classical dance--and just behind, a pair of shoes made entirely from gathered husks of corn--rustic and imposing, "aquí estamos..." Set within a ring of leaves and clay.

To know the earth... Canción de la tierra...

Analect 2.570x

10 September 2009. Foggy streets at dawn, swimmers in the mist, sun pushing through to blue-gold.

Some days like this, as when bevy of high school kids crowd into the Eritrean 7-eleven on Stockton. Get-ups and gear--flowing curly black hair over dark-gray top, hugging one girl's narrow shoulders. Sparkly something-or-others on the straps of her shoes.

Two lonely bottles on the dark-green top of recylcling can. Wrap-around label in transparent blue--a washier version of the sky, now that it's cleared--and a puffy orange lid. The civilization that can produce such--a focus of commercial energies...

Tejon Ranch, high in the Tehachapi's, soon to become Tejon Village. Luxury homes and a pool--the beautiful barren hills...

Analect 2.569x

9 September 2009. Gray becomes gold. That's how it works, sometimes. Girl from distant lands in lane alongside--the emperors Yao and Shun--her skimpy suit slips sideways, and she swims with breast revealed, a mother in churning strokes...

Face at the window of a bus--for an instant, all that can be known...

Analect 2.566x

3 September. Sun pushing up over the hills at dawn, pool figures in blue-green, watery elixir.

Last night --the Maude Fife Room, early evening, poems, anticipation. Each new reader a unique voice--offerings of worlds--plaintive, instructional, insistent. The sky right after--dark Wheeler trees against cobalt blue, a jumble of tender clouds--up, down, sideways--scattered across the heavens. Cell phone shot records the instant--a read on the universe, at that moment, at that point in time and space. Always so. Walking back to Wurster, the grass route up faculty glade--a hill, basically, covered by a field--and then at the top, through the archway, a new full moon in the east, rising, rising...

Cecil--Dayton--his mother and his father...

Analect 2.667x

2 September 2009. Milky fall light--beginning of the season. Clunk and creak of recycling truck--spanning almost the entire street, silhouette of driver, one finger in the air, making a circling motion, urging us to pass...

Custom and accomodation. Jorge Cafrune on horseback, "...de a caballo," somewhere in the countryside of Argentina. That was his want--to encircle the land--la tierra querida, bringing song. A passionate act so outside of time--fuera de su tiempo--a reliving in the being, just as each note...

And it must pass, in strength, in tenderness...in love...

Analect 2.566x

1 September 2009. Another veiled morning--gray skies. Emory bundled up high on the lifeguard stand, red jacket, scarf, stocking cap--a Santa Claus of the waters...

High school kids collecting in front of Stocton 7-eleven, The El Cerrito High contingent--smiling girl with flowing dark hair, gray tights, glancing up quickly at her diffident companion--all times in one.

Or the painter Prilidiano Pueyredon--son of a general from the days of the Independencia--his studies in Europe--the Barbizon School, Corot--returned to the Pampas as a kind of ethnographer from the Rive Gauche... As with Watteau--a vision of one world becomes another...but where Watteau's tenderness, or the grace of loss? Maybe more the figures in Renoir's the Cabaret of Mm. Anthony--the white table cloth, rumpled apron, pinch of tobacco, stack of cups and plates--rough country shoes and a resting dog...

Always the dance...

Analect 2.565x

29 August 2009. All gray, fall. Back to home base: an old car--venerable--moored on the edge of 7-eleven lot. Lee K. in the distance, hood up, decals attached, bending forward over borrowed Safeway cart, picking rapidly through cans and bottles. In one a hand: a white plastic bag. Streetlight stancheon, sans gull, white globe against the sky.

Smile of lifeguard girl, bundled up behind the glass, open book held in both hands--the name Franz in bold, with wide pale surname just behind.

Messages and meanings. They arrive in trust, with an element of hope. Sometimes sad--and we hope again.

Chanan...

Analect 2.564x

28 August 2009. Myrtle sky, white streamers on pale blue, more heat in store...

The Imperial Valley, 115 in the shade, miles and miles of cantelope, honeydue, no one's home. Aunt Sis and the bar in El Centro--a long, dark affair, even at noon, smell of alchohol from the night before, and the night before that. The growers--close up to a cold beer, a Jim Beam, a whiskey sour. Desert drinks--gripped--to break the spell...

Alfredo Zitarrosa--an Uruguayan prince. His commanding articulation, no matter the song. Dark suit, bien gomado, muy formal. He delivers a copla, hands emphasizing each shift in meaning--a definiteness even when the mood remains lighthearted--as if the price of sorrow were a smile...

"...y no pasen los franceses..."

* * *

(gomina--the old-style hair wax used by men in Argentina and Uruguay. "...y pasen los franceses...," a fragment of a line from the song...)

Analect 2.563x

27 August 2009. Mild California morning sun, even the driver of immense 7-up truck (pulled in just across the street) relaxed, texting away, high up in his cab...

The driveway in Oceanside, Fowles Street, ten years past. These same mornings. San Diego light, soft and filtered, raking the jacaranda. No one there but me. My father's garden, below, in the canyon. His trees a kind of testament-- avocado, fuerte and hass, the meyer lemon and bartlett pear... All the names. Wearing his old shorts, tied with a rope, the worn short-sleeved shirt (Walters Mens Wear) and a towell over his shoulder. The monarch butterfly appears--hovering--and he holds up a finger as improvised landing spot, all the time with eyes on their shadows on the ground... A kind of knowledge, material and irreplaceable...

As with Atilio Reynoso--his estilo viejo, from the plains of Argentina...

Sureño...

* * *

(Sureño--of the southland...)

Analect 2.562x

26 August 2009. Filtered sun--another beginning.

Sitting with Lisa and Michael at small table outside--inquisitive conspirators in a late work by Michelangelo Antonioni--filmed on a California afternoon. Students and students and students. Young man with Asian face holding single canoe paddle as he makes his way across Piedmont with a bevy of new friends. Two girls in shorts, smiling at one other. Another with narrow, pensive face, deepset eyes...

Another beginning...

2.561x

25 August 2009. Gray, like fall. Warm face of lifeguard girl, smiling, coffee in covered paper cup and what looks to be a delicious bagle with cream cheese and lox. Luxuries of seven am...

A glance at email. Misplaced personal belongings--as in tenderness, or affection. Indelible commodity, with clumsy fit in the public realm. Acts of pulling back--families become surnames, relatives facebook accounts, friends a set of initials. Not single ones, as in "m." but doubled, in capital letters, instrumental and efficient, inserted at the end in miniaturized act of defiance. Like the wearing of coat and tie--or the armor of a three-piece suit. Impervious...

Bureaus and bureaucracies, things slipped into drawers, the mystery of the paper process, the rotary file, the spell check...

A man and a horse, in a field. "La yegua es la mejor amiga del hombre... ¿Qué duda cabe?

* * *

("A mare is a man's best friend..." What doubt could there be?)

Analect 2.560x

24 August 2009. Cloudy gray, with hint of sun, early fall. Grizzled man in soft orange ski cap, heavy work clothes, clear wrap-around shades, his gloved hand on diagonal truck lever--raising and lowering the toter cans. Humanizing a landscape of industry, if only for an instant...

Then--sudden sound of crash--heads turn up and down the street. A dark American behemoth with silver grill backs full-force into waiting guard rail of the old Navigator Escrow building. An unintentional attack on capitalism at its very root...

People gather, watch, silent, arms at their sides...

Political theory of the pampas. A chestnut colored mare--yegua--muscles taut, coat distinct, racing ahead. Exhilaration of unboundedness.

"...entre los camalotes de la corriente zaina..."

* * *

("...amidst the floating camalote roots of a horse-brown current..., " Jorge Luís Borges, La Fundación Mítica de Buenos Aires)

Analect 2.559x

21 August 2009. Chilly mist at edge of pool, almost fall. Later--sun pushing through gray. Mo with his back turned, behind 7-eleven counter, stacking cartons of smokes. The order of commerce. Yesterday--a basket of figs--dark velvet blacks, tiny gold-red seeds within.

"I want to be a farmer," the girl, Valerie, in produce aisle, El Cerrito Natural Foods. She leads me to the tofu case, smiling--"this one is really good"-- the jalapeño smoked from Tofu Yu. And who could refuse?

The ways of the world, as of old. Two Tahitian maidens, side by side. Their veiled eyes averted--in modesty and dream. Gauguin's carved wooden platter of crimson-orange fruit, a pink bouquet. Single pale earing--a bit of coral.

From the sea, as are we all...

Analect 2.558x

20 August 2009. Chill bay winds, gray skies. Empty lanes in pool as early swimmers scurry to the changing rooms. Ripply black lines along the bottom...

Or another kind of pool--"en la pila del bautismo." Words from songs, taking on renewed meaning each time they're remembered, or in the singing. Atahualpa's version--el canto del viento. Hilachitas--threads of song, picked up by the wind from all over the land--cerros, montes, ríos--carried up into the heavens, then let go again, one by one, to be gathered by those who listen...

Analect 2.557x

19 August 2009. Beautiful gray morning, scant car or two up and down San Pablo, dawn. Studio light, early. Reading of work in the California woods...a set of tools laid out just so on open ground. Sabina. Draw knife, axe, branch cutter, slege--tools for labor of an intensive sort, carried on in solitude. Solitude and sweat, no doubt--the single ladder moved from spot to spot, the domestic squabbles and re-sitings, new layers of granite skirt to accomodate--all in the lived moment, later in thought. Unable to speak for months after, as if to hide--but no, a matter of patient waiting, till all comes pouring forth...

In one sweep, like Gauguin's wave on the Tahitian beach, long ago--lithe figures on horseback, another sort of accomodation--beauty in the fit.

Building...always building...

Analect 2.556x

18 August 2009. Gray morning. Eritrean youth in Stockton Avenue 7-eleven, behind the counter, just before eight. "A small coffee?" His slight smile, and then, after several weeks of visits, a subtle thumbs up as well. "Have a good morning."

Today--desert sands, a camel by request. Taking a close look--this ungainly lass. But the length of bone, and in-pulled hide, back legs splayed wide over padded feet. Narrow ridgebone of back line, wobbly knees. But wait until she walks, or begins to run. Kneeling, even. The essence of a certain kind grace. Forelegs tucked under chest and neck, head up, outstretched in eager gesture. All attentive. Then she rises. Hump up first, forelegs follow, a few gingerly steps. This nimble balancing...

As forever...