Friday, March 28, 2008

Analect 2.252x



28 Marzo 2008. Pajaro de silencio, volando. Nubbly morning pink cloudlets hold their own again vast shelf of blue--cerulean--sun pouring over the hills, pitcher of gold... Like Sammy's Roumanian, on Christie Street--the pitcher, that is--illicit bounty, enjoyable down to the...

Larry's voice, absent now, departed for the brown truck, after swatches and swatches of Michelle Lopez (no, Wie, no Robin...) All the kinds of thoughts one works so hard to abandon. A conspiracy theory of trash--where (instead) the breath might be focused, the mind alighted... A seventh inning stretch of the spirit...

Sound of Tibetan monk's voice--disguised for his own protection--on radio at dawn. Our lives, creyendo...

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Analect 2.251x



27 March 2008. Long slow flight home--Oakland--the blue Pacific giving way to valley gold. Misty northern light---a layer of abrogated cloud, sun in patches, warm and insistent. Chilly breeze... All innocence.

Rajnit at the wheel, his turban an inverted whirl--Amenhotep returns as Frank Gehry. The way things are, a kind of seeming...

Tuesday night, at the Calypso. Launching into into "Careless Love," a reckless start at half-tempo--more like a dirge--but with a cowhand's wave they pick it up to a loping country four-beat...

"Once I wore my apron low..."

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Analect 2.250x On-the-Road



27 March 2008. Gray skies, ocean air. Sound of waves at night, played against march of inland road. Green wooden bird feeder, rustic, with pitched roof, tiny hole in back, on spider-webby metal pole, surrounded by dense leaves of the staghorn fern, just visible through screen. Pitch of eucalyptus, beyond, climbing skyward, delicate branches arced and tracing.

Last night: Jack and company, tucked into their Calypso corner. Bonne hommie all around. Henri at the back table with French friends , surf board and scallop shell decor. Early Calypso (as in Belafonte) as opposed to that of Titan's daughter on Ogygia's shores. She promised eternal life--if only he would stay--but Odysseus built a small boat, set sail, Ithaca bound...

Friday, March 21, 2008

Analect 2.249x



21 March 2008. Sun, à la Bonnard, just short and to the point. All thoughts saved for that tender blizzard of color hugging his one well-used plate. A palette, of sorts--alimentation, of the eye, where each precise new tone emerges in its flurry of ambiguity...until...

Yesterday: wandering the De Young. Metal expanse of meaninglessness, grates and grills, carapace of the armadillo--but where is the creature, the physical being, the twist of arm and torso geared to a knowing? All vanished in a hyperbole of innocent, insistent geometry. Will replacing would...

Then: a single Colima dog, dark red-brown clay, asleep now for 2300 years, paws tucked under chin, tail wrapped down around legs, just so--the characteristic open O, all life becoming, the handle of a cup, the lift of a glass...

A blessing, perhaps, or simply something everyday...

Purim...

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Analect 2.248x



20 March 2008. Pale yellow gold sky--more resolute from up close. Tiny birds work at scattered leaves near edge of curb. Searchers. Hopping with their shadows in the raking light.

Georges, last night, describing Ozu. "An everyday story." Narrow patch of light falling on a man's cheek. The appearances. As with Benjamin: A Short History of Photography: people's faces in those first few years, before they knew they were being pictured. An openness, incommensurate...

Unmeasureable--one's unbounded space, known in such masterful detail. A personal history of the senses, worked up in relation to all else--lifeboats, lines from Kant, trolley problems, Chip and Joe. All fading away--or merging, rather--into one intimately vast sweep of conocimiento.

Not so much yo sé as yo conozco...

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Analect 2.247x



18 March 2008. Short beeps of waiting bus, hidden from view--driver leaning into wheel as she veers to the left. A summer's day in spring. Radio sound of Barak Obama's voice--on race. What Simone called "America's great wound." Kennedy, Jakarta, Kenya. Kansas, too. An unwound web of interstices--taut and alert, juxtaposed with the snapshot of his mother, a seeker--her curiosity--meeting the world on its own terms... Another kind of vision--in the joining. Can this be ours too?

Yesterday's green, an Indonesian courtyard, children in the simplest of clothes, faces turned upwards, smiling...

Last night: gathered around a song. Jose Pedroni's poem, "Carcel." Voice of Orlando Vera Cruz. ""Los Borrachos de Diego Velásquez..." As with Garcia Lorca--each noun, weighted, an earthy presence, and at the same time, algo más. El origen de los símbolos... "Luna, paloma y trigo."

His voice--con todo cariño, "Eso..."

Friday, March 14, 2008

Analect 2.246x



14 March 2008. Warm yellow light on gleaming cars, pockets of wet dot the street, sun. All in the angle--of incidence, of repose. Girl in milky pink sweats, ambling past, just a touch roly-poly, drink in hand, gabbing with the figure alongside--also in sweats--her mom. But here I'm guessing. Two visitors from afar--a Belgian princess and her dowager aunt, discussing the succession. Or perhaps the stars in some unknown docudrama on the lives of women in Siberia--or...or...

...good Baucis and Philemon, that mysterious history of inadvertencies. Ovid's tender recycling of a story from the gods--Jove and Mercury come to earth, two simple travellers, spurned by all, but welcomed by these generous elders...who layer their table--olives and farmer's cheese, radish, endive, egg... Cornel-cherries, and all manner of nuts--honey, figs dates, plums, grapes... An apple, sliced, and then the wine, poured in what proves to be an un-ending stream...

It's this first part of the telling--where modest Philemon wipes her board with a sprig of mint, tucking a bit of pottery shard under one leg to steady it; or Baucis, reaching into the rafters with a long pole, pulling down their best smoked ham...

Worlds generous and intact, no moral here (at least at first), only the sharing...


(for Mauricio)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Analect 2.245x



13 March 2008. White Rogers Trucking slanted against gray sky, figure hidden behind, crumpled trousers and the lower stripes of a nondescript brown and orange shirt. Tailgate. Small digitized turning lights, high-key pastels, yellowish, blinking away. Pair of work boots approach cab from opposite side...

Nathaniel West, the San Berdoo Arms. Homer Simpson, his one hand carrying its mate to the sink, bathing it ... Reading this at fourteen--amazed by the presence--the feel of something authentic, if slightly unpleasant... That was it, a reduction. To argue with, as if heroism could find no place amidst the snaking wires and pasteboard backlots. World not so much of ruin as of displacement. Dollar trains to paradise, the seedy beachfront villas, crumpled winter skies, half-finished drinks in linoleum casters, pinkish blankets, longing...

And yet...

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Analect 2.244x



11 March 2008. Blurry birds of the morning, white sky, sun from the east. Inti, the Arauacan, cuerdó, Quilmes, Leubucó. Words in the middle of the night, debajo de las cubiertas. I offer them myself: to bless, for example--or to hide. Escondido, tucked away, blanket pulled high into a kind of tent--to shelter the light. Saturdays in Oceanside--very early. Something on the radio, Big John, Sparky. Lo chispeante. Chusma, potro, chiripá. Meanderings back and forth, always the anticipation--possibility of beginnings. A habit of sorts, an eagerness for the unknown...less danger, though, than delight. Glee. Or maybe simply deseo.

A welcoming...

Friday, March 07, 2008

Analect 2.243x



7 March 2008. Gray with sun with gray. Indecision--who needs it. Again, voices, insistent voices. The public realm. Birds calling out in the morning, a dove, for example. Tucked in under the neighbors' eaves. The talk meanders on. "I took it to the biggest libel expert in San Francisco." "You need to retract this..." "But they didn't even answer."

Jerusalem, a dozen-plus years back. Small window onto narrow courtyard, just enough for morning light, sometime before dawn... Those same calls, unmistakable, even when heard for the first time. Was it a welcoming? A moment of on-goingness? Or are the two the same...?

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Analect 2.242x



6 March 2008. Milky sun, quiet voices. Blue van edge in corner of window, man with toolbox crossing street, his other arm swinging in time. Two girls in 7-eleven lot, also just a flash. Wavy dark hair, shower, scrumpled t-shirt bit just below jacket hem. In front, matronly woman with stern face, power brow, reading invisible book, mouth slightly ajar. Her hair soft but wiry. Patient black shoes, untrimmed. School person appears, pinkish backpack slumped with books, no two places the same, leaning against bus post, vans a-dangle, checking her phone...

Last night, late: Miguelito. Refuge among the Ranqueles. "Ni un cautivo ni..."

His own kind of freedom...

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Analect 2.241x



4 March 3008. Later morning, sun. Lurching FedEx truck, white plus emblems, squeezed onto 7-eleven slot. An older person, gray, worn gold wedding band, seated at window, leaning towards monitor as she types. Pleasant tapping sounds. Glasses tilted forward on the bridge of her nose, intent, pausing to scratch her head for a moment. Silently sighing.

Susurrar, suspiro. Lo que se oye casi sin pensar-- algo del pasado, de los días de ayer. Un barco en el río, navigando, donde hay que nadar. "Pero no tenemos substantivo." Substantivo, de que no hay en el río, donde todo se mueve. Todo se mueve. "La sombra de un caballo..."

(para Berta)