Analect 2.524x

3 July 2009. Gray morning, mild...

Mother and daughter across the way, hand and hand for just a few steps, then turning to cross the street. The normal accoutrements--her toussled hair, mild face, the child's hands one upon the other, as with an acolyte in a Taoist shrine somewhere in the Heng Shan. Everything balanced on tall red poles, tucked unevenly into face of yellow cliff. Jutting roofs with ashen blue-gray tiles. Two small figures make the ascent, their hands on a narrow parapet. Only one looks back...

Analect 2.523x

2 July 2009. White blotch on dark rubber tread, marked in long sweeping blow with a ball-ended stick--the most attentive meter maid. Her rickety vehicle--primarily white, toned-down--a kind of glorious tri-cycle with financial intent--the goal here is revenue. Be glad for a job...

A field with cows--an entire plain, that is. A sea of cattle, all descended from a few 16th century Spanish strays. Vacas criollas. In the early roundups the Argentine countrymen would use the term repuntar--the moment when the tide begins to rise or fall--to describe this vast flow...

Unending gathering...

Analect 2.522x

1 July 2009. Again gray. Solitary figure at edge of pool.

Leumann on the word pago--homeplace--and how in Argentina it took on a new meaning: "Y al fin cuando se hubo fijado la duradera fisonomía característica de nuestras llanuras, con postas, pulpería, puestos de estancia y vecidario ralo en amplitud de leguas, debió prevalecer en el contenido de pago la idea de lugar campestre nativo, con una, dos o más viviendas, y donde el paisano tenía mujer, hijos, amigos, vecinos distantes y aparceros."

"And in the end, when the ongoing physiognomy so characteristic of our open plains became set, with posts for changing horses, pulpería, the ranches, and an occasional neighbor some leagues away, there had to prevail in this new meaning of pago the idea of a native country place, with one or two dwellings, and where the paisano had his wife, his children, his friends, neighbors and ranch hands." (Alberto Carlos Leumann, La literatura gauchesca y la poesía gaucha, Buenos Aires, 1953)

Arreando vacas en San Carlos...

Analecxt 2.521x

30 June 2009. Gray sky...

Young couple, the dance--el triunfo--moving from a world of smiles and friends and dedications into a kind of enchantment--an unending awareness...and then return...


Triunfo de la llanura

He cambiado la rosa,
rosa precisa,
y me queda la vida,
la palomita,
la vida de la gente
que necesita
lo torcacita.

Me llegó la llanura
con horizonte,
desde el pie a la cintura
y todo el monte.
Los nidos me crecieron, las leñateras,
la vida entera.

Yo soy aquel que sufre
con la madera
los surcos, los inviernos,
la primavera.
Caramba con el triunfo
que no me deja
decir que siento mucho
que yo me muera,
la primavera.

La ternura me crece
país por medio,
este rulo de aire
que bailo y quedo,
que quedo y no me quedo
y si no puedo
es que me muero.

La paciencia es un arbol,
la casaurina,
es un té curativo,
un sapo al viento.
Caramba con la suerte
la rosa antigua
y que yo viva.


* * *


I have exchanged the rose
the very rose
and still I live on
little dove
the life of the people
that so need
the small dove.

The open plains have reached me
the horizon
from my feet to my waist
and all the open country.
The nests have flourished, the wood gatherers
all of life.

I am the one who suffers
with the wood
the furrows, the winters
the spring.
Caramba for the triunfo
that doesn't let me
say that I regret so much
that I may die,
the spring.

My affection increases
all across the land
this roll of air
that I dance and pause
pausing and moving again
and if I'm not able
it's that I die.

Patience is a tree
the casaurina,
a tea that cures
a country frog facing the breeze.
Caramba for this luck
this ancient rose
and that I live.

(Triunfo of the Open Plains, a song by Hamlet Lima Quintana)

Analect 2.520x

29 June 2009. El Cerrito pool, blue green in morning light, sliver swimmer shadows, shoulders, arms…

A line of fine wires, drawn along the parapet. Bird discouragement—towards what end? Protection of the newly shingled roof—or a human sensibility. Javed’s place, at dawn, with the bags of stale bread and cakes, scattering them all across the pavement. 7-eleven in its better days…

Toda la noche despierto
Tan grande pena lloré.
Toma esta rosa,
Dame un clavel.

All through the night, awake
Such a great sadness I wept
Here, take this rose,
And give me a carnation in return…

(A gaucho copla, quoted from Carlos Alberto Leumann in El Poeta Creador.)

Analect 2.519x

26 June 2009. Sun breaking through...

The singer is Liliana Herrero, in the Casa de Gobierno in Buenos Aires. The song from a poem by José Goytisolo, Palabras para Julia...

Tú no puedes volver atrás
porque la vida ya te empuja
como un aullido interminable.

Hija mía es mejor vivir
con la alegría de los hombres
que llorar ante el muro ciego.

Te sentirás acorralada
te sentirás perdida o sola
tal vez querrás no haber nacido.

Yo sé muy bien que te dirán
que la vida no tiene objeto
que es un asunto desgraciado.

Entonces siempre acuérdate
de lo que un día yo escribí
pensando en ti como ahora pienso.

La vida es bella, ya verás
como a pesar de los pesares
tendrás amigos, tendrás amor.

Un hombre solo, una mujer
así tomados, de uno en uno
son como polvo, no son nada.

Pero yo cuando te hablo a ti
cuando te escribo estas palabras
pienso también en otra gente.

Tu destino está en los demás
tu futuro es tu propia vida
tu dignidad es la de todos.

Otros esperan que resistas
que les ayude tu alegría
tu canción entre sus canciones.

Entonces siempre acuérdate
de lo que un día yo escribí
pensando en ti como ahora pienso.

Nunca te entregues ni te apartes
junto al camino, nunca digas
no puedo más y aquí me quedo.

La vida es bella, ya verás
como a pesar de los pesares
tendrás amigos, tendrás amor.

Por lo demás no hay elección
y este mundo tal como es
será todo tu patrimonio.

Perdóname no sé decirte
nada más pero tú comprende
que yo aún estoy en el camino.

Y siempre siempre acuérdate
de lo que un día yo escribí
pensando en ti como ahora pienso.

***

Words for Julia

You cannot turn back
because life pushes you along
like an interminable howl.

My daughter, it is better to live
with the joys of mankind
than to weep before a blind wall.

You'll feel hemmed in
you'll feel lost or alone
maybe you'll wish not to have been born.

I know well what they'll tell you
that life has no point
that it's a wretched affair.

Then always remember
what I wrote you one day
thinking of you as I think of you now.

Life is beautiful, soon you'll see
how in spite of the troubles
you'll have friends, you'll have love.

A man alone, a woman
Taken alone, one by one
they are dust, they are nothing.

But when I speak to you
when I write you these words
I'm thinking of other people as well.

You destiny will be with the others
your future is your own life
your dignity is that of all.

Others hope you will resist
that your joy may help them
your song among their songs.

And then always remember
that which I wrote you one day
thinking of you as I do now.

Never give in nor set yourself apart
joined to the road, never say
I can no more and here I'll stay.

Life is beautiful, soon you'll see
how in spite of the troubles
you'll have friends, you'll have a love.

As for the rest there's no choice
and this world, just a it is
will be all of your patrimony.

Forgive me I know not what to tell you
nothing more but you, understand
that I am still on the road.

And always always remember
that which one day I wrote you
thinking of you as I think of you now.


(Liliana Herrero sings a version by Paco Ibañez, which differs slightly from the original poem.)

Analect 2.518x

25 June 2009. Morning gray...

From Leumann again, on dejo (accent):

"Los idiomas heredados atan, traban el juego de la expression popular, que quisiera ser libre. Pueblos y a veces razas enteras se subordinan de esta suerte a moldes vocales impuestos por un destino histórico. En cambio, el dejo lleva un indeterminado contenido de intención y sentimiento, que no encuentra estorbos, y sube a la superficie del habla. Por siertas tonalidades un pueblo suelta algo de su intimidad inenarrable y traduce su alma como con la música melódica. Importancia mayor que palabras argentinas, formadas casi siempre con raíces europeas, tiene sin duda el dejo gaucho, con sus hondas pausas, con su serenidad de campo y cielo."


"The inherited languages bind, hobble the play of popular expression, that would wish to be free. Peoples and at times even entire races are subordinated in this manner to vocal modes imposed by an historical destiny. By contrast, accent carries an indeterminant content of intention and sentiment, one that finds no impediment, and rises to the surface of speech. Through certain tonalities a people frees something of its ineffable intimacy and translates its soul with the music of melody. It is of prime importance that Argentine words, formed almost always from European roots, have without doubt the gaucho accent, with its deep pauses, its serenity of countryside and sky."

Carlos Alberto Leumann, La literatura gauchesca y la poesía gaucha, Buenos Ares, 1953.

Analect 2.517x

24 June 2009. Even gray skies...

Martín Fierro dice, acerca de cómo educan los indios al caballo:

El animal yeguarizo
(perdonenme esta advertencia)
es de mucho conocencia
y tiene mucho sentido;
es animal consentido,
lo cautiva la paciencia...

* * *

(The gaucho) Martín Fierro says, speaking of how the Indians tame a horse:

The animal of the horse clan
(forgive me this observation)
is of much conciousness
and has great understanding;
it is a creature of tolerance,
what wins it over is patience...

(quoted from Carlos Alberto Leumann, La Literatura Gauchesca y La Poesía Gaucha, Buenos Aires, 1953)

Analect 2.516x

23 June 2009. Juan Ortiz...

YO ADORO...

Yo adoro una mujer de aire.
La sentíamos bastante como el aire,
brillante o secreta esencia, ah, de lo que nos tocaba;
alma del tiempo, sí, más allá de las formas,
sin forma siempre como el aire?

Cuando la mujer de aire se va,
no, no me digáis que las flores son flores y que la luz es luz,
que la colina sube hacia la nubes y que la tarde baja hasta las aguas
y que el anochecer viene de espejos por las lejanas islas, por las islas...
Ni menos me digáis, oh, no me digáis, que la luna de julio se ha entibiado entre las ramas...

No, no me digáis nada, que cuando la mujer de aire se va
el aire, el aire?, es una asfixia oscura,
y hay manos, muchas manos, tendidas hacia nosotros desde otras sombras como raíces invertidas...

Pero verdad que la mujer de aire siempre vuelve?
—Siempre regresa, sí, pero no basta adorarla porque ella es la libertad.


I ADORE...

I adore a woman of air.
We have felt her much like the air itself,
brilliant or secret essence, ah, of that which has touched us;
spirit of time, yes, there beyond the forms,
without form always as the air?

When the woman of air departs,
no, don't tell me that the flowers are flowers, and that the light is light,
that the hill rises towards the clouds and that dusk comes down to the waters
and that nightfall arrives mirrored in the distant islands, in the islands...
Nor less tell me, oh, don't tell me, that the moon of July has turned mild amidst the branches...

No, don't tell me anything, that when the woman of air departs
the air, the air?, is a dark choking,
and there are hands, many hands, stretched out towards us from other shadows like roots inverted...

But is it true that the woman of air always returns?
--Always returns, yes, but it is not enough to adore her because she is freedom.

Juan L. Ortiz

Analect 2.515x

22 June 2009. Pleno verano, light air...

Tarde

El mundo es un pensamiento
realizado de la luz.
Un pensamiento dichoso.
De la beatitud, el mundo
ha brotado. Ha salido
del éxtasis, de la dicha,
llenos de sí, esta tarde,
infinita, infinita,
con árboles y con pájaros
de infancia ¿de qué infancia?
¿de qué sueño de infancia?


Afternoon

The world is a thought
made real out of light.
A joyful thought.
Out of beatitude, the world
has emerged. It has come forth
from ecstasy, from felicity,
full in themselves, this afternoon,
infinite, infinite,
with trees, with birds
of infancy--of what infancy?
of what dream of infancy?

Juan L. Ortiz


Note: The Spanish word dicha carries both the meaning of happiness and of luck, or good fortune, in the sense of fate--from the popular belief in pagan times that individual fortune followed from the words pronounced by the gods at the moment a child was born.

Analect 2.514x

19 June 2009. Summer skies... lo de verano...

Analect 2.513x

13 June 2009. Even gray sky, pulsed with light...

Saer again--his evocative description of Juan L. Ortiz--Juanele--a poet from Entre Ríos, whose narrow face, narrow arms, wash of high wavey hair, sitting with a book, or a cat--or both at the same time--on long and narrow bench, mate with bombilla, also narrrow. A natural motif, as if to understand the spread of waters, the river--el Río Paraná--"Father of the Sea"...

Analect 2.512x

12 June 2009. To the north, clouds, heavy and rolling, while above, intermittent puffs...

Nostalgias Santiagueñas... Adolfo Ábalos y su hermanos. "Pago donde nací / es la mejor querencia / Y más me lo recuerdo / me larga ausencia ay, ay, ay, sí, sí..." A beautifully lyrical line of melody, almost impossible to sing--because of the way each phrase falls away into a kind of reverie. Adolfo born in Buenos Aires--on the same block as Aníbal Troillo, the illustrious tango bandoneón master--but the family returned to Santiago when he was just a year old. A child of both worlds...

Here Vitillo, one of the younger brothers...bailando con Elvirita,

Tu sombra de mistol he'i buscar
cuando ya cansao de tanto andar,
Vuelva de nuevo al pago
a mi Santiago, ay ay ay, sí sí

* * *

The shade of your mistol tree I'll have to look for
when tired of so much roaming,
I return again to my home place
to my Santiago, ay, ay, ay, sí, sí...

Analect 2.511x

11 June 2009. Gray skies.

Herb this morning, his white longshoreman's cap, yellowing at the edges, holding in both hands an inscribed photo from Harry Bridges, young guy behind ship's wheel, 1920's, barefoot, the Oakland docks...

Or yesterday afternoon, with Chuck--aboard Russkii Vek, the Russian Age, home port Leningrad, a red Soviet-era racing sloop, also worn, Sugar Wharf, Richmond... Oil tanks and grebes...

Other worlds. La Atamisqueña--Domingo Aguirre, the blind harp player with Andrés Chazarreta. Their first appearances in Buenos Aires, legendary. But now, in a highschool rec room, somewhere in the north--Chile rather than Argentina, dances from the same source. Chacarera y remedios. Without pretension...

Analect 2.510x

10 June 2009.

Hilda Herrera and Andrés Pilar, seated together at the piano, on a concert stage in Rosario, Argentina... She his teacher. Where the handing down becomes a kind of sharing--a love, if only in the most figurative sense. Affection, certainly, and the infinite recognition of the presence of another being. Nostalgias Santiagueñas, Adolfo Ábalos and his brothers...

"Todo empezó por Gardel. No nos gustó cómo cantaba un gato. Nos pareció que no llevaba ni el ritmo ni la melodía del verdadero gato, y pensamos que sería bueno hacerlo conocer a los porteños." (Adolfo Ábalos)

(It all began with Carlos Gardel. We didn't like the way he would sing a gato. It seemed to us that he carried neither the rhythm nor the melody of an authentic gato, and we thought it would good to make one known to the Porteños.)

Analect 2.509x

5 June 2009. Big clouds against runs of blue, interspersed, raked edges...

Gombrowicz in Buenos Aires, Ferdydurke. Saer: "...y Gombrowicz ha sostenido que, si no podían entenderse, era porque a Borges le interesaba la literatura y a él, Gombrowicz, únicamente la vida..."

Gombrowicz: "¿cúales eran mis oportunidades para entenderme con una Argentina intelectual al mismo tiempo que esteticista y filosofadora? Lo que me fascinaba en ese país eran los bajops fondos, pues allí me recibía por la alta sociedad. Yo estaba embrujado por la noche del Retiro, ellos por la CiudadLuz, París."

Ay, ay ay ay vi'a di'r parando
soy un criollo nada más
no vengo a buscar su aplauso
sólo quiero tu humandad.

Orlando Vera Cruz, Pilchas Gauchas

* * *

"...and Gombrowicz has maintained that, if the two of them were unable to understand one another--he and Borges--it was because Borges was interested in literature, and he, Gombrowicz, uniquely in life itself...."

"What were my opportunities to get along with an intellectual Argentina which was at the same time aesthete and philosophizer? What fascinated me in that country were the lower depths, for there I was received by high society. I was bewitched by the nighttime of Retiro, they by the City of Light, Paris."

Ay, ay ay ay let me tell you, coming to a close
I'm a criollo, nothing more
I'm not here to look for applause
I only want your brotherhood.

Orlando Vera Cruz, Gaucho Clothes)

Analect 2.508x

4 June 2009. Damp air, summer...

Reading Saer, late. Meaning of Patagonia. "...y según ciertos autores el nombre aludiría de manera más verosímil, a la pobreza de los indios, derivándole del término patacón, originariamente moneda portuguesa de poco valor, término empleado corrientemente en el río de la Plata hasta el siglo pasado y que subsiste todavía como vocablo popular para designar, por arquaísmo irónico, el dinero..."

José Larralde: "pa qué juntar patacones si el saco tiene un aujero".

***

("...and according to certain authors the name (Patagonia) alludes most accurately to the poverty of the Indians, derived from the term patacón, originially a Portuguese coin of little value, and a term currently employed in the region of the Río de La Plata into the last century and one that still subsists as a popular word to designate, through an ironic archaism, the notion of money..."

José Larralde: "and why put together your patacones if the sack itself has a hole..."

Analect 2.507x

3 June 2009. Early morning rain, pouring through birch leaves...

Mendoza y San Juan. Fiesta familiar. Cast iron pot, tended over outdoor fire. Puchero--a country stew. Man in white, reversed cap, moustache. Fragment of car amidst dusty trees, bicycle leaning in the shade. Racima de uvas. The usual, a documentary--except that these folks are not actors. Woman's face, older, high cheekbones, narrowed mouth over absent teeth. Calm in white, birdlike for a moment, smoking. Voices in the background, story of the gathering gradually brought forth, country accents, music always just behind. Una tonada...

"Y no pueden cantar cueca, aún menos tonada... con la garganta seca, era tragito el único que faltaba..."

* * *

(One certainly can't sing a cueca, much less a tonada, when the throat is dry...so, a little drink, that's all that was lacking...)

Analect 2.506x

2 June 2007. Gray morning, rain on sloping glass. Damp street...

Sommer, dunkelgrau. In Berlin with Omar Dubrosky, Magdeburg, at the Kaffehaus Köhler. An orpheus figure, reborn in Rosario, Argentinien. "...de los de gacho ladeado," the slouch hat, or was it "gaucho judío"--Gerchunoff's tribe, transplanted to Entre Ríos...surcos y bueyes, trigo, pantanal...

Rerouted to Berlin, already 20 years, guitar intact, the tangos and the milongas now twice removed--a gauzy white curtain, summer light, singing of plain blond woman with forthright glasses just to his side. Adaptations, wafts of Brecht, power of the will...

Analect 2.505x

1 June 2005. Begins June...gray, lovely...

"Si me voy de mayo a junio, si vuelvo de junio a mayo no me cabe en los dos puños toda la furia que traigo..." (If I go from May to June, if I return from June to May, even in my two fists I can't carry all my fury...)

Armando Tejada Gómez, an enchanted figure in a dark suit, declaiming his "Oration to the Flag,"

Quédate en el cielo, amor,
no bajes.
Aquí abajo, los grises
son tan grises
que, de algún modo gris,
van a ultrajarte.

Y sos tan linda allá,
tan nomeolvides,
-simple ademán de madre
por el aire-
que si caes, amor,
con la ternura
conque caen las hojas
de los árboles;
si llegas a caer,
acaso nunca
vuelvas a ser tan cielo
ni tan madre.

Déjanos a nosotros,
los humildes,
los que nunca te usamos
ni abusamos de tu inmenso
silencio planetario,
que cuidemos la altura
donde habitas,
celestemente hermosa,
como el aire.

Déjanos a nosotros.
De los otros,
es piadoso no hablarte.

Buenos Aires, 1977 Armando Tejada Gómez, Oración a la bandera


* * *

Oration to the Flag

(Stay up there in the sky, my love
don't come down.
Here below, the grays
are so very gray
that, in some gray way,
they will mistreat you.

And you are so beautiful up there,
so don't-forget-me,
the simple gesture of a mother
in the air--
for if you fall, my love
with the tenderness
with which fall the leaves
of the trees;
if you come to fall,
perhaps never
will you return to be such a sky
nor such a mother.

Leave it to us,
the humble ones,
those, we, who never use you
nor abuse your immense
planetary silence,
that we might guard the heights
that you inhabit,
celestially beautiful,
like the air.

Leave it to us.
Of the others,
to you it is pious not to speak.

Buenos Aires, 1977, Armando Tejada Gómez)

Analect 2.504x

29 May 2009. Slight movement of the leaves. Black truck passing. Girl in blue...

And scenes that fail--or is it only in their beginnings? Jana Purita--singing on a rooftop somewhere in Buenos Aires, with Fierro Chifle and two others. Or perhaps it should be Rosita Quiroga, then a girl from La Boca, seated now, leaning forward over her guitar, impossibly long eyelashes-- "Pero ché, me estás bromeando, soy más vieja que la biblia...." Certain and sardonic--like the stridently Italiante phrase endings--an upward lilt putting a point on each gesture. Provisional, everlasting...

Analect 2.503x

28 May 2009. Satin gray clouds. Figure reaching into back seat of bluish-gray Mercedes, emerges holding white plastic bag. Life of the 7-eleven. A 300E. Stack of small mass-produced wine barrels, plastic spigots and printed wood trim. Imitations of imitations...

A civilization of numbers--that's what she taught me. La Plata, 1961, lesson's in castellano with Gustavo's aunt--the sister of Lea. Description of oceanliner, passengered by Americans. Every act a number...

Or puro campo. Omar Moreno Palacios, togther with Julia Josefa Palacios Moreno, el 9 de julio de 1971...

Analect 2.502x

27 May 2009. Cool and sunny, here in Berkeley. All those k's and hard b's...

Cuti y Roberto Carabajal cantando una zamba de Carlos Carabajal... La de Olvido.

Difícil será poder olvidar
Tus ojos que tanto amé
Y mientras la noche se vá
Solo sé que ya nunca más ha de volver

Dichoso de aquel que pueda besar
Tu boca llena de amor
Jardín que me diera la flor
Y por el frío de olvido marchitó...


Tus ojos de luna son
Miel en tus labios hay
agüita que corre y se va, ya se va
Y tal vez ya nunca he de alcanzar...

Analect 2.501x

26 May 2009. Sunny, with a touch of warm.

Un gatito--as danced on a midnight-blue stage by Santiago Ayala, El Chúcaro--"el bailarín de la noche"... Fragments of the ideal, partial knowledge, all the way--given focus and reconstruction...

"...así también después de su desaparición (de los indios argentinos) los que han prevalecido siguen, de un modo involuntario, perpetuándolos en el idioma mismo que hablan, no únicamente a causa de la toponimia o de ciertas incorporaciones léxicas, sino también de gestos, de imágenes y de interjecciones intransferibles y vivaces..." (Juan José Saer, El río sin orillas)

("...and so it was that after their disappearance (of the Argentine Indians), those who have prevailed continue, in an involuntary way, to perpetuate them in the very language they speak, not only on account of place names or certain lexical incorporations, but also in their gestures, their images and their interjections at once indelible and alive...") (Juan José Saer, The Boundless River)

Analect2.500

22 May 2009. Even grays.

Lee with small knit hat, perched on edge of recyling bin, eyes alert. Three strangers, waiting for the G. One with watch cap and all-black clothes, hunched, head shifting from side to side, looking up momentarly. Another, her glasses, resolute, electronic device unseen. Then, the sidekick--lip earing, punched out goattee, t-shirt reading "Obey." Jams his bike up onto back wheel, a gesture of authority--within this tiny framework of defiance...

Visitors all...

Analect 2.499x

21 May 2009. Gray, almost with some sun. Paciencia...

Wagon on long road, tilted back on two truck wheels, single driver, Santiago del Estero. Coya. Early morning, from the shadows--or that's how it feels. Layer of trees in the distance, merged in the haze.

Unintentional autobiographies. Wheat, barley, rye, spelt and oats...

Analect 2.498X

20 May 2009. Morning sun, crossing Solano on the diagonal, chilly wind...Dylan song...

Carlos Castellanos, a man of courtesy, from Guatemala, working patiently on the corner PC. Where moments before, the image of two dancers, in traditional dress, together in what appears to be an Argentine schoolroom, silhouetted by the white board/black board just behind, dark linoleum floor, and to the side, a pair of girls at long study table, each with her head propped on one arm, watching in mild interest... Impossible, to recreate the past...

Somewhere in Santa Fe.

Brooke...

Analect 2.497x

18 May 2009. Cooler and gray, an even light.

The good doctor, quoting Daniel Boone, had he ever been lost in the woods? "No, no, I was never lost...but I was once bewildered for three or four days..."

Bewildered, condition of wilderness, as in Amaicha of old...Valle del Tafí. Historias Andantes, and the travelers themselves--Chugo, Héctor Roberto Chavero, Axel y Roslie...

Lo posible...

Analect 2.496x

15 May 2009. Peaceful gray morning, touches of blue just under far edges of the clouds...

Early swimmers, butterfly and crawl, Emery on the high stand, as ever. Ripples of light on pool-green water. Vigorous figures just below.

Highland peoples. La Puna--in the range of 14,000 feet... Valleys of the Calchaquí...

"Entonces, ahí está el asunto: ¿como devolver el canto a la selva? ¿cómo hacer para que vuelva el ¡ay! de la paloma?, el zorzal que huyó, el pechito colorado que no volverá nunca aterrorizado por el ¡Tac! de cada hachazo. Buena preocupación para nosotros músicos que se dicen compositores y tocan lindo el piano, el violín, el charango y la quena. No trabajando en la ciudad para llegar al disco; cantando al campesino, haciendo música con sabor del lugar; quién sabe si esa no es una manera simbólica de pedir perdón a la selva y devolverle un pedazo de su canto..." (Atahualpa Yupanqui)

* * *

"Then here we have the matter: how to return song to the open country? how to regain the "ay" of the dove, the thrush that has fled, the red breast that will never come back, terrorized by the "chok" of the axe blow. A worthwhile preoccupation for our musicians, who are spoken of as composers and who play beautifully the piano, the violin, the charango the quena flute. Not by working in the city to arrive at a recording, but by singing to the country people, making music with the flavor of place; who knows if this might not be a symbolic way of asking pardon of the open land, of giving back to it a fragment of its own song..." (Atahualpa Yupanqui)

Analect 2.495x

13 May 2009. Early crows, sometime around dawn...

First memories, always in question. A glass partition facing the bay, California Street, overlooking Convair plant, or the red-brick kelp works--was it that? Cervezería...

Addictions to the present as well. Carlos Santana in the Argentine grade schooler's essay on Don Atahaulpa Yupanqui, where knowledge is power. The Coyas--or Kollas--or Qolla... "Desde la Puna Qolla de Abra Pampa..." A territory called Argentina...

Names and picturings. Florencio Molina Campos, his goofy gauchos--by me that is. But hidden within, something true, perhaps? A resonance...

Analect2.494x

13 May 2009. Mild, some sun, somewhat warm...

The challenges of indecision. Especially when guided by the need for conclusiveness. As opposed to simply indecision.

A small round wooden platform, worn red pillow on top. For sitting, next to wide table, also worn--marked and gouged from years of use. Formica, an old acquanitance, worn down in pillows of brown cloud. Rewarding to the touch...

Youree's yes's and no's, slight movement of her head, either up an down, or subtly downward and to the right. Economies of feeling, expressed with gentle concision.

Marks on stone...

Analect 2.493x

12 May 2009. Like yesterday, like tomorrow. Sun, very light breeze.

Three cement contractors at work across the way. Their over-size white truck pulled up close, air-compressor, jack-hammer. Intermittent racket. Hand tools--a pick, a worn shovel and a wide broom (stiff orange polyester fiber). One of them standing now at side of pit, hands shoved in pockets, testing edge of hole with his boot. Dusty faces, white Portland lime.

Wheel barrow with long sloping red handle...

Analect 2.492x

11 May 2009. Mild sun, milky light.

Reading El Canto del Viento, late.

"Un criollo santiagueño, en Salavina, canta con áspera voz su copla. Pero tiene en su auxilio, para lujo de su decir, su paisaje, su jumial, su arena, el aire de su pago, las candelas que los abuelos encendieron en su sangre..." (Atahualpa Yupanqui)

* * *

("A criollo from Santiago del Estero, in Salavina, sings his copla with a rough voice. But he has in his assistance, bringing a kind of luxury to his speech, his landscape, his Jumial, his sandy earth, the air of his home place, and the candles that his grandparents set burning in his blood...")

Analect 2.491x

8 May 2009. Sun, quiet filtered May light...

Late into the evening…or was it night…or was it? Raucous double song—both ends of the table—merging at times into one emphatic wave. “…from redwood forests…" Greg’s clarinet obligatos, musical observations, as of a landscape. Anthony and Steph, side by side, Nicole, smiling. Glimpses of faces, engaged, from so many beginnings. Origins, as in the touch of a pencil on soft paper...

A piece-work quilt, admitting all impossibility. Affections, too, also impossible... Or perhaps not. Gerrel and Mildred, almost dancing. Aimee's shoulders, moving like the hills...

Songs, and Places...

Analect 2.490x

7 May 2009. Sun all of a sudden. Blue sky, one puffy pink-white cloud, tucked in behind new 7-eleven roof.

The claims of the ancient accordeoniste. Or not so ancient, perhaps. Fields of Salta, Jujuy, or somewhere in the litoral. A man in a chair in an open field. Button box with single strap, pushed into closed position. The second figure, Carlos Vega, doyen of Argentine musical folklore, who leans over the chair. Trim and precisely dressed--the starched shirt, flaired bow tie. Shape of his head like that of some particularly curious little boy--now grown, wandering the countryside, the mountains, the fields, in search of song.

Zorzal...

Analect 2.489x

6 May 2009. From salamanca to concert stage, decked out in gaucho gear, inevitably. The music, however, holds... In the tradition of the blind harp player (as with the Ukrainian bandura--from the Greek pandora--the instrument used by ancient Zaparozhian Cossack bards to accompany the dumy, their national epic poems).

"Nostalgia Indígena," one of Chazarreta's pieces--but what precisely is the meaning here?

Atahualpa Yupanqui: La Corpachada--mountain ceremony among the Cuyos, coca, horse mane, bull's hide, threads from a poncho--offerings, early evening, deposited in a pit dug in center of a corral high in the Andean foothills...

Que la Pachamama los reciba,
regalitos de la tierra...
Que la Pacha nos ampare,
que multiplique la hacienda...
Aunque se agrande el corral,
que se güelva cielo y tierra...

* * *

(May the Pachamama receive them,
these little gifts of the earth...
May the Pacha protect us
and multiply the flock...
Even as the corral is made large,
may heaven and earth be returned...)

Analect 2.488x

5 May 2009. Gray dawn, rain in the night. Sound of gulls up on the avenue--Javed's aviary breakfast program.

Or Domingo Aguirre, whose mysterious and beautiful harp illuminates "La Atamisqueña" on an early folkloric recording. A santiagueño, like Andrés Chazarreta-- but received with great enthusiasm in Buenos Aires, where in 1925 a distinguished visitor had occasion to hear Chazarreta's musicians in the Teatro 25 de Mayo:

"Entre los espectadores se destacaba el profesor Albert Einstein, quien se encontraba dictando conferencias en la capital. Este declaró «que la música le produjo una honda impresión por su misticismo, su originalidad y la intensidad de su expresión ... ». Einstein se acercó a saludar al grupo y éste le retribuyó realizando una función en su honor. El cronista de un diario de Buenos Aires reconoció en su columna que ni él ni muchos autorizados en temas artísticos podían explicar a Einstein «el significado mítico» de las obras sin el programa donde daban a conocer lo que se representaba como por ejemplo «Nostalgia indígena», «La Telesita», y la «Cacharpaya»." (fundacióncultural.org, Santiago del Estero)

("Among the spectators there stood out Professor Albert Einstein, who happened to be giving conferences in the capital. According to Einstein, 'the music produced in him a deep impression, because of its mysticism, its originality and the intensity of its expression...' Einstein came up to greet the group (of Chazarreta's musicians), who responded by presenting an event in his honor. A journalist in one of the Buenos Aires newspapers noted in his column that neither he himself nor those authorized on artistic themes were able to explain to Einstein 'the mythic significance' of the musical works without a program that made clear what was being represented, as for example, "Nostalgia indigena," "La Telesita," and "La Carchapaya.")

Analect 2.487x

4 May 2009. Late spring rain, gray skies. Lila in red woolen coat, standing in shadow doorway. Nepal...

Reading late: El Canto del Viento. "Por más que la dicha busco..."

Andrés Chazarreta... Santiagueño...

Analect 2.486x

1 May 2009. Light gray sky, wet streets, rain.

Miss Argentina from 1967. A magazine cover, interior with pale green. Bit of desk or side table to the left, stoneware bowl, small furled glass plate, set against pale green wall--a color more insitutional than domestic, but recall, we are in someone else's world. Striped top, gray-gray-bluish-pink, and a robin's egg skirt verging on the mauve. Modest, in some knowing way, the red field above and to the left, announcing...

Gente y la Actualidad...

Analect 2.485x

30 April 2009. Small clouds floating high above, packed close, off the River Plate... El pato anteojillo--speculana specularis--the spectacled duck to us. Pathetic fallacy at work, even here, in Bariloche, the remote foothills of the Andes. Whose range includes southern Chile and west-central Argentina, nesting "by fast flowing rivers...and nearby standing waters..."

Juncos, juncales...

Analect 2.484x

29 April 2009. Sunny pale sky, coldish breeze.

Late at night, Jeszcze Polska nie Zginela... Faces of Polish soccer players in a Berlin sports ring. They stand side by side, with a row of children just in front. Individual movements of their faces, each one's voice...

YouTube screen grab of Oceanside wave. Gray water, gray sky...as always...

This morning, by the big window on Solano, pc earphones tucked under hat, cords twisting to harddrive tower. Voice of Atilio Reynoso... Domingo Pampeano, also a song...

Analect2.483x

28 April 2009. Blue times blue...

Estilo Viejo, as played by Atilio Reynoso. La música de la pampa...

Si usted no conoce el sur
y piensa que es el desierto
no sabe lo que es La Pampa
porque ignora su secreto
La Pampa es un viejo mar
donde navega el silencio...

(La Pampa es un Viejo Mar, Juan Ricardo Nervi)


* * *


(If you are not familiar with the south
and believe it to be a desert
then you don't understand what is Pampa
because you ignore its secret
La Pampa is an ancient sea
and what plies there is silence...

La Pampa Is an Ancient Sea, Juan Ricardo Nervi)

Analect 2.482x

27 April 2009. Gray skies.

La Huella: Santiago del Estero. "Aprendí, como en una universidad salvaje y abierta, silente y misteriosa como una salamanca, las músicas más hermosas y representativas de la región. Muchas las reuerdo aún. Otras han quedado en una zona oscura de mi espíritu, como un secreto que jamás se podrá develar, pero que alienta el pulso de la sangre."

(La Huella: Santiago del Estero: "I learned there, as if in a wild and open university, silent and mysterious as a Salamanca, the most beautiful and representative songs of the region. Many of them I still remember. Others have remained in a dark zone of my spirit, like a secret that never could be revealed, but that nourishes the pulse of the blood.")

Atahualpa Yupanqui, Este Largo Camino



Note: The Salamanca myth has to do with the underworld--in this case, a cave open only to adepts, who are severely tested in its rites. Derives perhaps from Arab brujería (witchcraft) in the caves around Salamanca, Spain--and may be related to the Faust legend. In any case, the name struck a chord with the country people of Santiago del Estero (and elsewhere in the Argentine northwest). The folkloric musicians associated the Salamanca--and its trials--as a (mythical?) source of their musical prowess. Don Atahaulpa clearly connects with this tradition in his final sentence...

Analect 2.481x

24 April 2009. Sharp yellow band of sun on Honda glass...

Cuadros de la Ciudad. Fray Mocho y Cnia, barrios del Sur, Buenos Aires, los años pasados. Un mozo viejito, vida de payaso--o sea payador... Calles sombreadas, de la tarde, otra vez...

A Media Luz...

Analect 2.480x

23 April 2009. Gray morning cloud, cold. Burlap bags on bed of truck, pile of damp brown sand. Two stucco workmen in worn jeans, hands jammed in their pockets, heads thrown back, following the movements of a compatriot on scaffold high above.

New shingles pretty much like the old--minus the variations of time. Guarantees of interestingness, now gone wanting.

As with a song--Atilio Reynoso, his "Estilo Viejo"--much to recommend. Or W.H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago...

Analect 2.479x

22 April 2009. Silhoutte of green ladder against expanse of blue. Small jet slips away to the left. Soft explosive report of roofer's pneumatic nailer... Calls back and forth, Korean voices...

Or others, in turn. The carpincho, for example. Almost unheard. Montes y juncales, siempre cerca del agua. Nose and tiny round ears held just above the surface--the capybara--a Tupi word, Guaraní. The mother with ten nipples, nursing two to eight young...

Analect2.478x

21 April 2009. Naked roof on milky blue sky. Scaffolding and cigarettes, language unknown...

As with the chiripá, or the rama, or the bird... Holding in space against a milky page...

Allá le voy a mostrar
mi mancarrón, mis dos perros,
unas espuelas de fierro,
y un montón de cosas más.
Si es entendido, verá:
un poncho de fina trama,
y el retrato de mi Mama,
que es ande rezo pensando
mientras lo voy adornando
con florecitas de retama.

(milonga)

Analect 2.477x

20 April 2009. Ojalá...

Analect 2.476x

17 April 2009. Without and within... Richard's new book, Great Basin Poems, on earth-colored stock. Working cattle in the 1950s. An opening into a world...

Last night: cowboys and la frontera. Nuevo Lareto, Sinaloa, LA, Sleepy Lagoon. Pachucos and the Repatriation Act. Kat and Mildred take us back through time, down Mexico way--but not quite. The borderlands, rather, and an entire culture so engendered. Braceros--in the lilting and effortless voice of Pedro Infante, while film clips reveal a darker truth... Lydia Mendoza and her sister, their impossibly close harmonies, Freddy Fender, and Lila Downs. Richie Havens, too. Vision from 1958, the gym floor, Oceanside High... "Para bailar la bamba..."

Kat: "She was pregnant when they crossed the border..."

Then: Chalino Sánchez and his son, Adán, both lost. Mildred's mom: "They shouldn't of gone back..." Her own growing up in the Salinas Valley, ancestors all...

La Llorona...always by waters...

Analect 2.475x

16 April 2009. Springtime now. Restored roof in morning sun, tradesmen done.

Argentina, Provincia de Buenos Aires, en la década de 1880. Jacinto Duva (de barba espesa) da un cigarillo a su hermano Mauricio Duva... The founding of San Mauricio...

Zanja Alsina, a kind of of the Wall of China--but carved into the earth...

(Lugar Historico)
ZANJA DE ALSINA (1876-1877)
EXTENSION 374 Km.
Paralelo a la misma se originó, casi una rastrillada mas,
el "Camino de Zanja", el que Ud. está ubicado
catorce eran los fortines en el partido de Rivadavia

Analect 2.474x

15 April 2009. Chill wind, endless blue. Woman in long black wool coat standing alongside light green car with curvy roof. Seen for an an instant...

Then, the good doctor, in queu at 7-eleven with white poly bag of ripe bananas, dark yellow with fine brown lines. Ripple of color on the label... Workcrew continues on roof as well: Jerome Blank's green-rated shingles, installed by veteran tradesman with white hair, in perfect rows. The younger ones attend...

Calle Florida, reseen. Porteños all...

Analect 2.474x

14 April 2009. Blue all the way across. Two workmen high up on Navigator Escrow--now the Jerome Blank Building. New shingles on an old mansard roof. Sound of hammer from a distance--reassuring... Water bottle balanced on wooden batten...

Thoughts of repair. As in a note from across time. "I have been reading Analects for about a year now..." Where we left off--the small house on California Street, upstairs. Melville's Pierre...or, the Ambiguities... The affinities, too... A sailmaker's loft in BC...

"...on Prince Edward Island..."

Analect 2.473x

13 April 2009. Sunny with fluffy clouds to the south, filtered light. As it should be.

Long blue pipes stacked to side of street--heavy PVC with steel tubes at the ends, rusted, to join. Metaphors of emplacement. Runs and flanges...

Late in the night: a discussion of what's been written about the design of parks, following Adrián's Castellano text... Andrew Jackson Downing, Olmsted and all the rest. A move to corral the maximalization of capital--those long New York blocks with street-front galore. Sarmiento's visit--to a cemetary in Brooklyn, the Green-Wood, hyphen likewise rusted, a golden red...

Analects 2.472x

10 April 2009. Yellow push from the east, embroidered pockets of blue... Nicola asleep, curled, just under the piano...a new place...

Conversation out of early Joyce, currently being conducted in copyshop aisle... Ivy Day in the Committee Room...

"I've been very fortunate, I've had the most amazing clients, ever since July..."

"I was that way, I took five jobs..."

"It will turn around..."

Analect 2.471x

9 April 2009. Passover morning, nice spring rain. Gentle and unexpected...

Slowness of the seder, word by word, rabi Eliezer, rabi Tarfon...rabi Elazar ben Azarya... they're back, camped out again in B'nei Brak, holding forth of an evening, long ago...

We rehearse their words--a sequence of questions, really--as to what is true...

And the students arrive, only at dawn...

Analect 2.470x

8 April. Erev pesach...locomotive skies, a rumbly gray with dashes of light. Hamid on front walk of 7-eleven, under the eves, having a smoke...

Compadritos of Parque Patricios, barrio reo, del tiempo anterior... Walk of the porteño, somewhere in the shoulders, slightly raised, a quizzical but definite anticipation. As if a question should follow--something philosophical, but still earthy. The remnants of a Europe lost--Seurat's trees, or those of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot--wirey branches, finely limbed, taut curves with a mind of their own...

Rousseau, Proudhon, Babeuf...

Analect 2.469x

7 April 2009. Fishtail clouds, dark aire, fuming smoke against gray sky... Beeping sound of beer truck backing--Red something-or-other Jamaican lager. Jamaica? Lager? Young man in brown hood pulls up slatted door...

The girls of Quilmes, projected back a bit in time. Colegio Nacional in 1961--when the first handful of visitors from the liceo appeared, in starched white smocks, a tentative presence, distributed evenly amongst 500 boys... Regrouping instantly at every break...

Analect 2.468x

6 April 2008. Butter sky, cool.

Names of birds: chingolo-- zonotrichia, sparrow family. Here with crest. Ycancho en el norte aregntino, cachilo en el este, chuschiú en Córdoba, vichi en Tucumán; marumbé en idioma guaraní...

Peter's birthday...

Analect 2.467x

3 April 2009. Mellow morning. Young girl, tiny hands, riding on her father's shoulders, looking this way and that... His heavy leather coat, brown courderoy trousers, emblems of masculinity...

Or Little Richard, at his baby grand, in the potched-up bathtub seat, holding first a miniature fluff towell, then a bar of soap, and finally, with a quick double squeeze, the pièce de résistance, a small inert yellow rubber ducky...

Leaning in...

Analect 2.466x

2 April 2009. A sunny morning...

Humberto 1º y La Rioja--o si fuera San Ignacio, esquina del café Margot. Libros temática ciudadana--y cositas distintas. Una papusa tomando café, sin duda, con los tipos del barrio. Buenos Aires sur, una fábula de cuentos, de escenas particulares, temblando...de buen humor...

"o tu voz, donde está..."

Analect 2.465x

1 April 2009. Weather master says it's a go. Early morning tv, scratchy noise at dawn, test pattern and a table of booze. The Jim Beam bottle on it's side, bar smells, late night crowd...

But wait, that's Nicola's fine head, with the impossibly soft ears, leaping onto window end of bed, making her way up past calf and thigh and hip, tentatively eager for a caress...

Two otters, side-by-side, their more-than-human hands joined in furry embrace, parted for a few moments--the exigencies of the tide, then regained...

Analect 2.464x

31 March 2009. Sun. Bud Light truck, silver blue on white, verging on gold in the sun, then cooler when turned away...

Time cover: "The end of excess, and why that's good for America." Aimee Semple McPherson in corporate dress, preaching from an orange box stand.

A narrow Asian girl in black and gray, fabrics from afar, with tennish shoes whose heels ride on springs. Cushion ride, like the emblem on the railroad car--goods and services, rolling on...

Analect 2.463x

30 March 2009. Wind at windows, night. Sun in the morning. Genteel young man from Pakistan, behind 7-eleven counter. Announcing change in precise, understated voice. Three Brazilian bolds, including one for Lolita, from copier repair. "A little sugar, a little cream..."

With Mansilla again, onset of dawn...

Analect 2.462x

27 March 2009. Jump start sun, flood of light, as befits spring. Glints and gleams...

Waters of Buenos Aires, un río sin fin. Figure of Quinquela Martín, abandoned as an infant in an immigrants' orphanage, note attesting to his baptism. Adopted at the age of six by Manuel and Justina Molina de Chinchella. At 14 attended "a modest night school of drawing," working by day in the family's coal yard. Stessini Piazetti Conservatory at 17...

The life of La Boca--paintings of the port. Zeneize...

"Vigor," "activity," "roughness"--the characterization. A subject and a treatment, taken almost for granted. The allure of daily life, even when reinvented entirely...

Lo pintoresco...

Analect 2.461x

26 March 2009. Blue to blue, sun. Blurred contrails to the south, low over 7-eleven roof, crossing in shallow X like an ethereal flag of the Confederacy.

Day books and the best of intentions. Row of children's faces, enlarged in grainy black-and-white--Camp Cazadero banner on copyshop floor. Young boy's visage, hint of a smile, next to baroque cello scroll with ebony pegs, stand of trees just above.

Juan José Saer, from the town of Serodino, Santa Fe. La Universidad del Litoral--where he studied philosophy and law. Banks of the river, wide to the point of disappearance. "Sin orillas..."

Analect 2.460x

19 March 2009. Olu Kai sky, here on Solano--pink tinges to the blue, cool wind down from the hills. Stocky woman at teller box, rubbing the back of her head while awaiting digital okay. Then an illegal diagonal in the direction of Starbucks, while I head for Peets--beans--no hard feelings, really, to the gang at El Cerrito--names slipping now, it's been more than a year, my daily trek to java line, with all the locals. Hong Kong gal at neighboring table, chewing the fat with older man in sport coat and tennis shoes...

Photo of Kitaj, appearing suddenly--daunting. En route to the Hammer, in 2007. His mop of hair, pure white, bent forward a little, walking with wooden cane. The cane hardest to fathom. Not the over-sized Vans--an Angelino, after all--but that long straight piece of wood--another contact with the earth.

With the students--his arm outstretched, lying on a Cuban daybed, young woman alongside, her miniscule skirt. An explorer...

Analect 2.459x

18 March 2009. Insistent sun, no other choice, save for petals of pinkish-gray to the west. Sound of small car, old VW, caught in a glance, then a single call from a gull. La gaviota. Now again, also insistent, in her own way.

In her own way, mothering the world, leaning in to take his side--for the banquet meal. Settings arranged, well into the distance, against a wall draped in murky gold. All hotels the same--the porcelain, the heavy glass. A napkin folded just so--signature of the establishment...

Borrowed for an instant, like the breakfasts with Dad, at the Biltmore, before the clothing shows. Finnan haddie and other unexpected offerings, delivered on wide plates or silver trays. Covered, then revealed...

Mornings...

Analect 2.458x

17 March 2009. Pale gray skies. White van bouncing slightly as it pulls out of 7-eleven lot. Quiet moon-faced woman preparing coffee--small blue individual container of artificial cream, then another. Her attitude one of care...

A market in Buenos Aires, somewhere near Constitución. 1961. Cobblestone streets and patches of earth, produce in fulsome array, stacked in wobbly wooden crates, leaves poking through into morning air. Onions and such, remembered only en masse. Hot morning sun illuminating the stones, the occasional dark puddle, pungent market smells, moldering scraps of this and that, returning to the earth in an appealing disarray...

Analect 2.457x

16 March 2009. Drizzle gray rain--mist of white against roan sky...

Buenos Aires. Embankment along a river--El Tigre, or the park above Nuñez, summer. Dark trees, quiet--something out of Antonioni, or old Rome herself. An ancient scene, in black tights and stretch tops--small hand held close to mother's waist, the other free, testing...

Reflections in gold-gray-green...

Analect 2.456x

13 March 2009. Wavering gray clouds, moments of sun, an insistent golden light from the east...

La Tempesta, Giorgione's standing figure, in attendence always, their lives intertwined in some unknowable way...

Her billowing hair, pre-Raphaelite frizz, long fingers, poise.

Oh don't you remember in yonder town
when we were at the tavern
I raised a health to the ladies round,
gave my heart to Barbara Allen...

Analect 2.455x

12 March2009. Milky sky, hint of sun. Woman with wavy gray hair and soft brown leather bag slides into driver's seat of gray-green van. A Previa? But here I'm guessing...

Economy slides as well, stocks and bonds in their own brown leather, not so creamy smooth. Smell of cash, as when the register slides open and you see all the 20's. Abandoned chart of national expenditure: Pentagon and Iraq, more than half the pie...

Green, apples, as on the hillsides of Tennessee. Mountain City, that is. Worn cabin walls, a set of wooden steps that don't quite meet the ground. Clarence Ashley, bending in the breeze. Doc Watson alongside, young, solid, attentive. Gaither Carlton on fiddle--in his own world...

Analect 2.454x

11 March 2009. Clear with lots of sun. Nicola's curled form at end of bed, head tucked in. 

Next to me now--Luca and his mom, energetic little boy with pale, questioning eyes. Photo prints of a house near the sea, white bench on rippled sand. Long shadows, late afternoon. 

Suchostaw, from an earlier time. Purim spiel, with Bessarabian gowns, their neatly folded sleeves in white, turbans and tunics to match. Elaborate strands of bead around a young girl's neck, bows at her ankles, gathered just so. Reflective pose--folded hands...

Always...

Analect 2.453x

Sun this morning, just won't quit. After long night...

Figure in a field, with trees just behind. Early. Poncho, mate galleta, sombrero santefesino... Blackened kettle on a small fire, boiling. Each element useful, known. Carried and true...

Analect 2.452x

9 March 2009. Cold wind gonna blow, clear morning sky.

Large girl in 7-eleven line, blondish, tailored brown polyester waist, sleepy eyes. Narrow faced man alonside, dark brow, fumbling with lips for coffee straw. Lotto cards and caffeine.

Yesterday, evening: grasses alongside a karst-built lagoon, to the south and east of Buenos Aires. Chascomús. A ring of juncales--marsh reeds--against slow waters, wider plains... Photo of young couple pressed close--their modern faces merged. Wrapped against the cold.

El Ombú...

Analect 2.451x

6 March 2009. Sunny and almost warm. A meteorological change of heart. Or respite, perhaps, storms for now dispersed.

To other climes? Barracas, Boedo, Constitución--where a langorous señora considers the day--the shifting light--a neo-realist swoon, Rosselini del sur (Roma città abierta, or maybe Paisà), the actors unquestionably non-professional--us that is--denizens of sidewalk and café. Pensive, porteños. Where a morning's paper can last well into the afternoon...

Al atardecer...

Analect 2.450x

5 March 2009. Sun and gray, as always lately...

La gaviota--a gull from Armenia, portrayed in a Russian engraving from long ago. The penman's Cyrillic script--narrow and flowing. Long dress, with floral print, increasing in size as each blossom moves down. The boy alongside, also with flowers, in a small vase, held in his right hand. Feet tucked close in oversize shoes... Necessities...

"The Abbot Pafnuty put his hand thereto..."

Analect 2.449x

4 March 2009. Sun peeking around flurries of rain, cold streets won't give up the storm... It's an attitude thing, like Wally Shawn on Brecht--"raw and ribald" says the playbill. His recent translation. "Let's say there's a word in German that is like "dourknop" that sounds like doorknob. Actually, it means betrayal. And it was a beautiful little idea of Brecht's that was trampled on by my mistake..."

Betrayals and mistakes--accidents, inadvertencies. A crow with a piece of bread--the crust, or rind--an orange rind, painted orange, in an act of solidarity--or was it identification? These things happen...

Attempting to get things right--the great hope. As if grace and elision could work their magic always.

Dark afternoon... Maybe just song...

Analect 2.448x

3 March 2009. Lluvia sobre el mar. Lee, in three tones of violet, hood over hood, bending forward over dark green metal bin, crushing red can with booted foot...

Noticings. As with gruff plumber's face, stubble of shave, nodding ever so slightly as he pushes through the 7-eleven door. Or Pearl, with her endlessly picky requests--tone of voice--every question a minor-league challenge...

And so the day, as clouds roll in, sheets of rain, gray sky, white smoke...

Hope...

Analect 2.447x

2 March 2009. Low clouds over East Bay shores--looking down Fairmount into veils of oncoming storm. Gutters brimming, steady sheets at night...

Cangrejal, Güiraldes' vision, the Argentine, bleak lands nearing the sea, their marshy threat, described in full. Read in the middle of the night, rain...

Better Javed's face, over the counter early this morning, lined and tired after those same eight hours. Two coffees--French Vanilla or some such, black, with flimsy black lids--polypropylene, a modern muse.

Move on, move on, to higher ground...

Analect 2.446x

27 February 2009. Morning sun, pouring through corner windows...

Bombachas, mate galleta, y un gorro salteño... Parece este tipo de campo--algo del norte, donde los cerros secos contienen toda manera de recuerdo...

A life made almost possible--the slow byways of Tucumán, cane fields and hills--la chacra, cosecha de caña dulce... La familia Fereira, de raices y ramas... The first letter, from Raúl, "It is hard for me to explain about my being dead...", and the image of Nélida--la más bella de la provincia...

Unvisited, still unknown...

Analect 2.445x

26 February 2009. Rain wet steps, gray clouds. Chill pool air.

Café Strada, the morning crew. Dark haired girl with large eyes, una lenta paciencia, preguntas...

Y los músicos en Corrientes--Puente Pesoa, rasguido doble... Nostalgias de mi litoral... Beginning with the guitar, to set the compás, slow and even, como el río mismo, to be enjoyed. Of three ages, the youngest on bandoneón, sitting quietly, without affect, until the moment of entry.

Muchas veces cantado, sobre los años...

Analect 2.444x

25 February 2009. Unexpected shower, clearing to blue. Seabirds over inland hills...

Chubasco. Rain storm on the pampas, clouds gather at the horizon, first drops...

Como a pesar de la hora temprana sintiéramos calor, fue más bien un goce aquel tamborineo fresco. Algunos empezaron a acomodar sus ponchos; yo esperé.
Mirando el cielo colegimos que aquelo era preludio de algo más serio.
La tierra se había puesto a despedir perfumes intensamente. El pasto y los cardos esperaban con pasíon segura. El campo entero escuchaba...

(Don Segundo Sombra)

Analect 2.443x

24 February 2009. Wet streets, sun. Smiling faces at bus bench await G ride into town. All-weather vehicles, as with PG&E Terex truck across the way--the folded white ladder. For a moment: Deepak's youngest daughter, with her grandmother in sari, climbing carefully into back seat of the family's small gold-bronze SUV...

River life...

Analect 2.442x

23 February 2009. Warm gray sky, hovering rain. Pooled water on 7-eleven lot, yellow curb stripes prominent in the half-light. Glowing morning neon--same day, open, alterations...

The stuff of trade, as with Walters, years ago. Credit Clothiers, Style Center for Men, where $5 a payday guaranteed layaway rights for emblems, knives, forage caps, dress blues. A Marine Corps town, season by season--the Nehru jacket, the short-sleeve suit. Ned Fink, veteran of them all, working the floor from 10 to 10, taking the young men in arm--under his saleman's wing--fitting them out with purple shirts and greenish pants--all manner of the impossible...

Buzz cuts and basic training, use of the M-1, the bayonet. The G string from the guitar--disappearing too quickly--a garrotte. Wooden rifle shanks, shape of the hand, the tree. Full-grained red walnut, steel bolt, lug.

Military lore, Oceanside...

Analect 2.441x

20 February 2009. Late night, early dawn. Natasha's curled heap in white wicker chair, Nicola the sphinx impassive at end of bed...

Girl's figure in pool, flailing--where grace becomes will...

O al revés--as in Spain, again--Federico García Lorca. Los Cuatro Muleros. Sueños de la guitarra--pathways to a kind of truth...

* * *

De los cuatro muleros
que van al campo,
el de la mula torda,
moreno y alto.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al agua,
el de la mula torda
me roba el alma.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al río,
el de la mula torda
es mi marío.

¿A qué buscas la lumbre
la calle arriba,
si de tu cara sale
la brasa viva?

Analec t 2.440x

19 February 2009. Dark dawn, eighteen crows heading east. Ripply blue-green pool, marble walls, wavery line of black... Guard on lone metal stand, orange cloak, her head dipping down...

The plutocrats will out--we live by their largesse. Or call it gen-e-ros-ity. A neo-classical marvel on lowish slope, with urns and columns, long halls, where more windows to the north, factory style, milky glass in hovering light, one clear pane with view to Sather Tower--the Campanile--a touch of Venice reborn on western hills...

Analect 2.439x

18 February 2009. Moments of sunshine follow days of rain...

Rumbling approach through layers of cloud, windows sprayed with diagonals of rain, port channel with gantry cranes and gray water, flooded fields...

Pedro Infante in "Los Pobres," standing forthright, with his señorita, on a street in the perennial Mexico pueblo, this time in the clothes of a young workingman, overalls, snug t-shirt featuring his upper arms. The peacefulness of the camera eye--framed just so--as in the YouTube clip in which he sings Cucurrucucu Paloma, battery of tender mariachi lined up like a Greek chorus in romantic overdrive, his momentarily petulant girl in the casa above, stirred from her bed by this public performance--for her alone--in the street just below...

Analect 2.438x

12 February 2009. Cold, with sun. Damp streets, yellowish cat tucked under nearby car...darting out, runs ahead...

En route from the cancha de fútbol, La Plata, 1961--dusk--a wild parade. Hincha de Boca celebrating victory, rampage through city streets, buses commandeered, figures in sleeveless t-shirts and dungarees, perched on running boards, hanging from open windows, fifty-five gallon drums aflame along the way--all included--something borrowed, misshapen even--from carnaval--a grotesque twist if not the love...

Colectivo...

Analect 2.437x

11 February 2009. Chill at dawn, blankets in a heap, Natasha's pearly curl in wicker chair...

Artifacts of existence. And their parallels. A sleek cell phone, for instance--something nice, from Finland--or was it Malaysia? The Bristish grip, fanning out from Kuala Lumpur...

A leafy park in the spring, Palermo, perhaps. Constructed on the ruins of a tyrant's retreat--a master of bookkeeping who could handle the gaucho tongue. Modismos--figures of speech, moving slowly into town, where the langorous Paso Doble of the estancia assumed a louche slide, witness the arrabal--lugares sueltos, a media luz, opportunities unknown...

Analect 2.436x

10 February 2008. Quiet sun, Nicola pausing at back door...

Images of the Riachuelo--looking again at old book from Buenos Aires, from 1962, creamy yellow stock with small inexpert color plates tipped in... Painters of La Boca, Quinquela Martín and all the others. A blocky picturesqueness...the world simplified, made innocent. As if the local dockworkers and fisherman would be forever at their mild toils, seen against green waters and dappled sun. The bridges of the river likewise--their iron hulks becoming pennants of connection...

Mixed in throughout--the mountains of Salta and Mendoza, a balancing "imaginario..."

Analect 2.435x

9 February 2009. A day's progress, milky sun, cloud or two, with bank of gray to the west...

Adrián Gorelik, from Buenos Aires...the Riachuelo revisited, a social document embedded in the landscape of the past... The Genovese, los zeneizes, playing tonight en la Bonbonera...while Adrián's tall form bends forward over sleek screen in a small Berkeley room high on the eighth floor, each click revealing "una atmósfera de fracaso..." The history a failed dream. Smoky waters in a thousand tones of gray, the forged iron bridges, derelict, set against a weighted sky...

Mataderos, Parque Patricios--the dark remnants of la barbarie, balancing Palermo, the legacy of Rosas to the north. City unfolding, as encouraged by Torquato de Alvear, el turismo, viente por ciento, with the canvasses of Cunsolo and Quinquela Martín... "Lo pintoresco y la modernidad..."

He gets up on a trick knee, stumbling slightly en route to the screen, to point out a detail with his hand--his antiochos, that is--a narrow and well-thought-out pair, held precisely in the scholar's hand--sudden golden orb on white expanse of light....

To show the world. "Siempre podía caminar por alla; ahora no..." Caminar. Must needs change...

Analect 2.434x

6 February 2009. Rain, blue-gray skies, green umbrella passing... Two cars, side by side in forlorn lot--a sedan and van, origins unknown. Girl with pale skin and dark dark hair, bending forward with folded laundry held close, reaching with her other hand to unlock door...

As in a dance. The zamba, perhaps. Una vuelta entera, arresto, medio vuelta. El campo de baile--an arena of meanings...

Analect 2.433x

5 February 2009. Rain in the night--a smattering. Streets damp, whirling gulls. Layers of gray cloud spread wide.

Folclore in the supper club, "Recuredos de Salta," a zamba, filmed in maybe 1962. Louche figures seen at table, from behind, while in the aisle, an impeccably done-up pair of dancers appear, in local dress. Man's hand reaching behind his back to adjust the ceremonial facon--unfelt before, a kind of fumbly prop--while the meal progresses, under ceiling fans. Back of room, leaning against hallway wall, two figures--a man and a woman--kitchen help, pausing to watch...

In some sense real, if only because of time...

Analect 2.432x

4 February 2009. Milky light, sun. Man with with checked coat and widow's peak, walking a sheepdog on long leather leash, just behind pale blue of PG&E truck. Laundry and crows to the rear.

Abysinnia--the good doctor's farewell as he steps through the portal. German folksongs on occasion--when in the mood, or two-part carols, pulled from a bank of sometimes fading lore. All seems to fade--what we take in, what we forget. A vehicle with goods sliding out the back...

But not Alice--her every jot intact. A telephone number from 1932, for instance--ready at the go--or the recipe for fatiman, folded diamonds with the ends tucked back in, dusted in powdered sugar... at Christmastime...

Analect 2.431x

3 February 2009. Sun over low roofs, avenue sounds. Doritos van charging up the hill... Three gulls alert on 7-eleven eve... Everywhere...

Re-reading Mansilla, beyond Aillancó-una parada en route to Leubucó, the place where the horses were stolen. Si perdieron unos caballos? Always the same question--befitting these plains, where a horse is a ship, an eagle, a saving grace. Cloud of darkening gray-brown dust on the horizon, whipping this way and that, now larger, now smaller, re-emerging. The scout: Indios, mi colonel...boleando, guanaco...

"Si no ha perdido caballos..."

Analect 2.430x

2 February 2009. Sudden shadow of green bus, now rumbling off down the street. Yellow sun on faded blue sky...

One creature and another. Encounter and detente. "A young bull elephant," although no elephants are truly young. You can look this up anywhere--absolute age: Pleistocene, as shown in Smithsonian-style gouache, trunk raised in defiance (even then), while a Bert Lahr lion paces angrily just in front. Concocted, of course, the scene--our presence more in the form of a late-model tondeau pickup, or the small copper-brown SUV, oversized off-road tires, in which Lina and her daughter arrive, smiling, smiling, in delicate sari, almost from Nepal...

Analect 2.429x

30 January 30. Beauty day, sun...

And this morning--accident, inadvertancy, mistake. That old conundrum--redressed here in white-on-white--the paper's edge another world, following Bill Midgette-- "a whole other kind of space," where the realm of imagination runs chock-a-block into the contingencies of the ding-an-zich...

Or do I overstate the case? A poorly drawn horse, rather--and a misplaced bird... But can a bird ever find itself misplaced? More perhaps a sense of doubt--the alignment of the host, paralax and lines of sight--getting a bead, the perfect view...

For we don't shoot here, no, long live Ni Tzan...

Analect 2.428x

30 January 2009. Warm wind at night, dry, blue skies, sun...

Choroshie otnosheniya...good relations, entre Indios, digamos--or simpy between each other. And how to begin? An open boat on a narrow sea, the worn wood, each strake bent just so around the forms of ribs, also formed, according to their pattern--the breathing, as it were, where chest and lungs expand to fill with air, holding, releasing, then holding again. Curves will follow, a matter of delight, each one tender, necessary...

As with a hand or an arm--caress...

Analect 2.427x

28 January 2009. White smoke, vapor trail, blue sky. A trifecta of sorts--choosing the first three finishers in just that order. So often in threes--the possibility of choice, a fork in the road, paths not taken...

Late afternoon in the fall, smallish room, high windows. Song from somewhere on the plains, Texarcana to Wyoming, cattle on the trail, and a request...

I ride an old paint...
I lead an old dam
I'm goin' to Montana
Just to throw the houlihan...

Analect 2.426x

27 January 2009. Heliotrope, blue sky, and flash of cyclist's cobalt sleeve, his polycarbonate helmet wedge, streamlined white...

Just before: Beeping bleat of golden bus, empty now, parked askance in 7-eleven lot. Children all in or all out, somewhere along the run, a curving lane in Kensington, uphill slope, redwoods and firs, mockingbird in a crooked branch--or hint of the phainopepla, Leonard's bird, "silky robe", hidden in marsh mist, and diving now for something small and on the wing...