Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Analect 2.265x



29 April 2008. Pale blue May sky, puffy touches of cloud over 7-eleven roof. Niebla...morning mist. A horse bathing in the shallows of a river, brown and slow moving. Sueño del río. Wide sweep of low horizons...la tierra, que anda, anda, anda... Figure at night, swimming for the other shore. "Pero hay peligro..." A la gente verdadera...

Necesidád. Channels of words, meanings, options of truth. A stream--the story imagined, shared, retold. Compartir lo más importante... Compartir...

Una pulquería del campo...lejos, distante. Un hombre sale, muy pampeano, de buen estado, algo de borracho. Se monte en su caballo--cabagaldura de la noche--un matungo--y anda pa' su casa. Bien dormido ya, soñiendo de sus compañeros, soniendo, sonriendo...

Friday, April 25, 2008

Analect 2.264x



25 April 2008. Golden light, moving into May...an infused redolence, without explanatin, without excuse. Light through west window, fig trees and olives, zig-zag roofs, trailer parks and RVs, moderato version of the wild west. A truck stop or canteen--or maybe a saloon, as in El Centro, once, where Aunt Sis and Uncle Mac ran their bar--high dark interior light, mahogany counter running forever to your right, last night's drinks still tinting the noon-time air. Thanksgiving day--a family affair, the Pontiac station wagon--a Super Chief Safari (maybe not)--across miles of desert scrub. Borax plants and Brawley, Calexico to the south--a chilled Greyhound, some years later, en route, en route...

Mexicali, Nogales, Benjamín Hill...

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Analect 2.263x



24 April 2008. April sun. White gull on asphalt lot, strutty walk in search of food, or love, or almost anything at all... Last night: the Tractatus, on bedroom shelf, London, 1969 perhaps. The date and place of the publication of books, Walter Benjamin's phrase--our only form of truth. But wait, let's ask the gull--or Sue, perhaps, the largeish type with graying hair, seated on counter stool, somewhere behind me, across the room. Others wander in and out. Distractions, inevitable distractions. Or are they not the point. Gates of hell, gates of perception--Lancaster, a desert shack with hot and cold, the back country behind LA, perfect setting for an English mind. Endless, arid expanse of the metaphysical--borax, topaz, tourmaline...

"All living beings shall soon be free..."

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Analect.2.262x



22 Abril. Poco sol, poco sombra. Mediated clouds, wavery fillets of some unknown fish, banked again on the horizon to the south. Who cares? Some great maker, no doubt. His employ: to fall in love with the world--again, and again, and again--an endless chain of falling, or is it an ascent, into the hummus, the loam...

Last night: argyle and eros. Songs of George Brassens. Mourir pour des idées. But what? A cabaret, at first--relaxed, all attitude...but then the tone darkens, the weight of the beating wings of the past...

Song of Jeanne Planche...

Espíritu del Río, ojalá...

Friday, April 18, 2008

Analect 2.261x



17 April 2008. Warm gray skies, shifts in wind. A newsprint advertising flyer--bright colors--slips from top of green recycling bin. Street life--parade of the cotidienne. Nose of the 2006 at edge of window, AC Transit monster, roaring off now down the avenue. Voices: "I'll turn on the machine and get it done for you." Window again: the elder doctor's lanky walk, heading up the hill. Then: book merchant--Tim--his crinkled black leather coat, wire-rims, noticeable stride...

Zora Neale Hurston: stories from the South--Eatonville--Janie and Tea Cake. An understated sympathy for each of the names, for the inflections, the twists and turns. "Aw, don't make God look so foolish--findin' fault wid everything He made."

Pesach, too...

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Analect 2.260x



16 April 2008. Morning sun, soft blue California light. Avenue activities--memorable or no. Pop of red scooter on uphill run, flash of white as the helmet whizzes by. Same with FedEx truck just behind--melodrama of the everyday. Man in white shirt, brilliant, dark dress trousers, making his way across 7-eleven lot, reaching into back pocket with left hand...wallet, appurtenance of commerce. Clean Living.

Placid, jumbled thoughts. Buenos Aires once--a guitar lesson. Barrio streets, mid-afternoon heat. Horizontal blinds pulled down over windows, Italian-style. A dark interior--húmido, mohoso... Sr. equis--pues no me acuerdo. Un estudiante de alguien famoso--eso. Rotondo, su manera, quizás pesado. Algo de Goncharov. De Oblomov. Me muestra una falseta, de Sevillanas, una vez, una vez mas. Notado. Calor de la tarde. Silencio. Silencio del interior...

Face of Diego, years later, tocando...cada instante, lo vivo...bullerías, soleá...

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Analect 2.259x



15 April 2008. Chinese elm in full bloom, heavy fronds in rustling breeze. Chill sun, spring. Yesterday, late afternoon, winds off the bay, raking ripples across Hearst pool. Arcs of water in a single plane. Evening: three stones, weighted and drawn, strokes like water, like time, spilling onto paper. Anthony: dash of words, lonely piano, grand. Nathaniel: beautiful clumsy pinks, a girl's face, blurred in water--in time. Sabina: moaning sound of barge horn, all distance. Then: a man, whistling, an older woman, telling a story. "Pebbles and flowers..."

Zamba de mi esperanza
amnecida como un querer
sueño, sueño del alma
que a veces muere sin florecer

Friday, April 11, 2008

Analect 2.258x



11 April 2008. Sciencia de Hoy. Maria Lojo, retrasando el viaje de Lucio Victorio Mansilla. Diesiocho jinetes, dos franciscanos, casi sin armas, hasta Tierra Adentro. El desierto espantoso, aguas amargas de lagunas desconocidas, el cielo hecho de nieblas turbidas, tormentosas. Una llanura entera de yerba amarillo, pajaros volando por la luz de la tarde, cantando, cantando una cancion medio-entendida. "Aquí me pongo," eso lo dijo. Pero qué sabemos de la luz, de los colores de la tarde, de la amargura, del amor en sí mismo? Cuando llegue una carreta campesina, tirada por bueyes innocentes... Con ojos dulces. Lo sensato, siempre dicen, lo entendido...

Océano... Paraná...

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Analect 2.257x



10 April 2008. El diez de Avril. Tipo con flores, con flores, flores en la mano, como monje o penitente... Una montaña 'tras de Santa Fe, alto y frío, grupo de gente bajado de un colectivo de escuela, el color amarillo, algo reluciente encima del paisaje de la tarde de invierno... Cruz de Malta, bajo de Truchas...terminos viejos--antiguos--pocos conocidos--como sí habramos poder de hacer sentido. Lo sensato, como dicen--lo entendido. Locura de la vida, todo va pasando...primavera, verano, huertas, sol...

"Dicen. Yo no lo digo..."

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Analect 2.256x



8 April 2008. Milky gray, sparkle. Las mañanitas... Reina de los pajaros, de las flores...vía infinita de solitúd. Nos quedamos hablando, cantando--a medio día, a media luz, como si fuera cosa ajena... la distancia imposible. Siempre eso, lo querer, cosa de dios, me parece...

White bird on a gray sky, wheeling and turning. Ocean winds, off the pier. Huddle of immigrant fishermen--mackinaws and marines--an ammo case tackle box, heavy-handled bayonette. Starfish in a plastic pail, one flopping perch, fate undecided. We search for compassion--is that not it? A congruence, a field...

"There's a new breakfast place up from Nib's..."

Friday, April 04, 2008

Analect 2.255x



4 April 2008. Mist and sun milk, yellows into gray. Last night--overland with Sara into the wilds of North Beach, San Francisco Italianate boîtes, patrons at their small tables in early evening light. A Greek waiter doubling as a paisano, all mustachio and glint, offering a tray of unnamed treats as we pass quickly by his door. Up Russian hill to a narrow alleyway, beautifully illuminated room in back, walls lined with small bronze gestures--lost wax casts--women, satyrs, imagined organic machines. The age in which we live, anything becoming possible, while the attenuated thread-lines to a denser past become more and more finely drawn. Thoughts of Maillol--a woman's middle--or Bonnard, from his very late models--or Renoir, even--where the impulse towards sculptural form leaves no curve unturned. "How her skin takes the light"--a painter's vision, and French as well--clarity of the morning, a folded table, wood, windows to south and east, line of hills with olive trees--or poplars--or wild black oaks...

Mi corazón...

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Analect 2.254x



3 April 2008. Té juro, corazón... La voz de Chavela Vargas, cada día, de humo, de ascua, siempre empezando, empezando... Albur de amór...

Flash of morning sun on silver white van, gift of the gods. But which gods indeed? Ovid's own telling, gay, insouciant, posing the question--as if every question could be answered... Except again in the telling. Daniel on Tuesday--a tour de force--Socrates and the Talmud, with reflections on Bakhtin, Levinas. The events of the world become concepts, concepts become real, fluid lines of analysis, parry, play, a kind Rabelasian bouillabaisse --or borscht--and a delight in contention (contentio)--sometimes for its own sake--that which arrives from the other side. Sitra wha'? Where language takes on its own transcendence, its own demise...

At the outset, in this grand auditorium, all flags and banners, lone podium and the chancellor's voice (omitting the key word, fat). In a moment of thirst, Daniel reaches under the shelf, producing a narrow bottle of clear water, lifting it to his lips, with words of assurance to an eagerly attentive crowd, his right hand trembling, ever so slightly--a tiny visibility--in the strong light. For a moment, we see him make a she-ha-kol--a blessing--silent, the words, unspoken--the only ones...

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Analect 2.253x



1 April 2008. Sun, pearly clouds, sparkle. That kind of morning, if only for an instant. Tim with broom, his off-white loafers, nylon sweater, sweeping the sidewalk in front of beauty parlor. Old words--beauty parlor--as on Oceanside Boulevard, taking Mom in the car "to get her hair done." One of the buoys in an attenuated universe of meaning. Verities of place, time...

Sabina: a figure grasping a tree branch, his feet swing wildly into mid-air, born by the wind (unseen, unheard), Hat flies off into the heavens... A bird in its nest...

"Who knows the meaning of pedregal," as in Juan Charrasqueado? And why should they? A poignant turn in a forgotten song. Chavela's voice, slowing ever so noticeably (this happens even more in the following verse)--a shift in tone, in mood--the world returned to its center...

Creció la milpa con la lluvia en el potrero,
y las palomas van volando al pedregal;
bonitos toros llevan hoy al matadero,
qué buen caballo va montando el caporal.