Analect 2.320x

31 July 2008. Gray morning, touch of wind. Return from the north coast--this from Tuesday:

Mist over the headlands at Stillwater Cove, early morning, cliffs veiled, revealed, veiled again. Gull on dark waters, white, an act of God--or man--sound of crow from high above, in the pines on the hill. Lapping, glistening, smooth--only the beginnings of a breeze. Black wings arc through the mist, feathers spread wide at the ends as he turns in flight. Bull kelp--knotty gold-brown bulbous protuberances massed across the inlet--that particular smell--ocean's edge. Continent's even. A single winding silver path opens to the sea...

Analect 2.319x

28 July 2008. Gray day, chilly winds from the west, possibility.

Our great and compassionate good-spirit, the much-admired Alyosha. Namesake of goodness--of all the brothers, this first. Even if a few squirrels suffered his mighty attentions, --it was simply in the blood--the great open-ended flight, racing across fields, head to the wind, careening, joyful...always...

Analect 2.318x

25 July 2008. Creamy tan pink sky with lip of sun just appearing over hills to the east.

Chugo, an Argentine friend--well, in a vicarious kind of way. Pictures on line--"por Chugo", posing in front of small, battered white car, against the dry hills of Tafí. Travelling with his family, apparently--wife, three daughters, we follow them through rest stops, motels, a plainish little pizza place in Tucumán, the one with wooden tables, straw placemats, everyone sitting close together. It's wintertime, his wife never takes off her hooded parka, light blue, like her pale blond hair. (¿Lydia, quizás?) Then it's morning: one sloe-eyed daughter, the oldest, in black, at table with white cloth, wide glass of milk in hand, her hair damp from the shower, looking back at her father...

Analect 2.317x

24 July 2008. Sun over misty hills, dawn. Four crows working the street, pairs again, friends... Two boys in track clothes, early, crossing in front: ancestors from Ireland, Senegal...heads thrown back, laughing... In the evening--doves.

La quebrada. The broken places--vally of Humahuaca, the ancient route from east to west, from Inca times, over the cordillera, vertebrae of a continent, the road to Potosí. Stone houses made of mountain, mountain made of stone, arch and searing. A Spanish church--a haven within--dimpled walls, tiled roof, blue domes of the Moors... Córdoba, or Damascus--here reaching for a heaven of their own, the arid parched distant cobalt skies of Jujuy...

Analect 2.316x

23 July 2008. Sun at dawn, golden cast to the sky, misty hills. Pale stands of eucalyptus to the west, arking. * Aislado, un pobre zorzal. A black-billed thrush, color of the earth. * The earth, in handfulls, pulled forth, tossed back, made deep, open. Covering.

* * *

"Y sobre el nogal, centenario ya, un chalchalero ensaya su canto..."

Analect 2.315x

22 Julio 2008. Gray morning, four black crows on a single streetlamp stanchion, high above. Two by two, it seems. Moving closer, the ones on the left, each reaching out to touch the other's beak. A perfectly normal way of being: tendresse among the corvidiae.

Dos hermanos, Tafí del Valle, Tucumán. Their cast off clothes, hand-me-downs, the older one already with the stance of a man, jacket arm draped around his brother's shoulder, small hand exposed. Eyes askance--the hour, the setting, the world? Rubber boots for an awaited rain, dry hills--arroyos and vados--en las sendas de Tafí...

* * *

Qué mala será mi pena,
que sólo sabe penar.
Cómo me duele esta pena
de irme tan lejos de mi tucumán...

(Atahualpa Yupanqui)

Analect 2.314x

21 July 2008. Cold and gray, California mackerel boat out of Half Moon Bay. Monterey hull with child-like cabin perched aport, bobbing in the groundswell, green...

Solano morning, three typers in a row. Chess-game amidships, the board gone electric, while at the far end, Mr. Fast, his fingers in an impossible review, too urgent, too quick...

Last night: Los llanos, the empty plains. "El latino--vino solo con su cuerpo, su cruz, su espada..." (Mansilla). Or simply a farmer--a paisano, from somewhere in Calabria. Nicotera, perhaps, or the Golfo di Sant'Eufemia.

But now a single figure also... La llanura... Openness, a new expanse...

Analect 2.313x

18 July 2008. Chilly and gray, November in July. Bouncy jogger in cerise top on Portland at dawn, arms akimbo at her hips. Ying along green edge of pool, walking slowly, graceful in her own solid way. Head bent forward, meditative, counting her steps.

Cafrune on horseback, retracing the Argentine lands. Lamento Salteño--Calchaqui, Coplas de Baguala del Valle, Verde Litoral. Zamba para Mi Rancho. Preguntitas. El Ultimo Zapucay...

Years ago: long view from window of train, valley fields. Power poles and sidings, endless run of blackened tank cars--crude oil, manganese, creosote--hoppers and gondolas. Stock cars, reefers, Modalohr road trailer carriers...

Signposts and dusty roadbeds... Hercules, Modesto...

Lo que se puede ver, lo que se puede comprender...

Analect 2.312x

17 July 2008. Soft gray sky, black crow careens past blank stucco wall, feathers spread wide, distinct... Truck rumble--flash of the number two train--muffled squeal on downhill brakes... Cast-iron pillars with rivets the size of steel apricots, a vertical dotting that stitches the whole business into one, massive hidden cave-built world... As opposed to mild Solano, acorn gatherers, reed baskets, finely woven grasses--a culture of patience, more than anything, where the cycles of fog and sun and rain bring almost all...

Boleadoras, stones of a certain weight, wrapped in leather, seams stitched by hand. The smell of horses--pasture--"grasses eaten by cattle," from the old French. See "pastor," 1242--a shepherd. Also, "spiritual guide, "shepherd of souls." "To lead to pasture..."

Quién te llamó pasto verde fresquita
tal vez tu aroma sintió,
poema de los desiertos
versos de un coplero que pasó...de un coplero que pasó...

Analect 2.311x

16 July 2008. Also gray, inviting wool blanket of a quiet Saturday morning--but it's Wednesday, of course, as woman with floppy brown hair clambers out of sloping late-model white car, gum in the side of her mouth, hand loose in sweatshirt pocket as she fumbles with keys, eyeing the avenue up and down before bounding across on the diagonal...papers in hand, heading our way...

Or, a makeshift wicker corral somewhere on the Argentine plains--after Prilidiano Pueyrredón, whose attentive grasp of each costume gesture--the tilt of a panza de burra, or a good pair of calzoncillos...or the figure with lazo in one hand, leaning forward on the balls of his feet, a blur of charging cattle in the background, snorting, mountains of dust, pampa sun at midday...

It's about 1863--even before Mansilla's excursión into Tierra Adentro. To the Ranqueles, the Araucanas... Cacique Mariano Rosas... Baigorrita...el Indio Blanco...

At the ege of a world...

Analect 2.310x

15 July 2008. Gray all the way, moofy blanket of almost wet, puffs of cleaners smoke, whitish, drifting upwards... Children's voices now--two little ones near the workbench. They've got the yellow highliter going... Mother swoops in, cheerful but insistent, "Get the lid back on, you did a good job...let's go..."

Let's go. Bueno, che... Circle of the unexpected. A small guitar, on the shape of the vigüela, close to the ground, gathered. It's evening. Cebando mate. Brewing mate. A calabazo--golden-yellow gourd--dull silver band around top, filled with aromatic gray-brown leaves. Yerba--Cruz de Malta. Insert bombilla--hollow silver metal tube... Add water, not quite at a boil, from small dented kettle... almost to the top.

Unexpected presence: Alyosha and Nicola. Qué boludo. What the hell are they doing here...? Out on the pampa, far beyond Huanguelen, night approaching...

Only the songs, the stars...

Analect 2.309x

14 July 2008. Gray Monday, solid mass of sky, wedged over roof of 7-eleven, light from above. God's photography studio: seamless, good strobes, bracketed exposures, all high-res...

Earlier... Sylvia in her Subaru wagon, a nice dark green, bending forward over morning paper as she awaits aerobics. Pool filled soon with older veterans--all sizes and shapes, splashing the water back and forth with their hands, with poly-foam wands... Sprightly beach-ball coach, also splashing...

As do we all, in one or another pond...

Analect 2.308x

11 Julio 2008. Dia de cielo gris-amarillo, algo de sol viniendo de las colinas. De las colinas--algo cierto en la vida. Un montón de piedra, barro, tierra misma.

Una joven india--Guaraní. Ojos de morocha, ámbar, con fuego adentro. Monte, llanura, rio lento y paciente--como las aguas del Paraguay, los arboles de Corrientes. Leyendo Shakespeare, parece. Lo de King Lear. "Mejor me gusta Edmund," dice. "Ve las cosas como son." ("Why bastard? Wherefore base?") Agarra a lo vivo--eso--de los hombros, del cuello. "...una loca que no entinde nada de la vida..."

Cosas del campo. Rebenque, chambergo, tipo tosco. Con miradas del lado, quemado por el sol, por el viento. Entendiendo nada, entendiendo todo...

Yo soy arisco, como tus breñas,
y así te canto, tierra querida.

Andaré por los cerros,
selvas y llanos, toda la vida,
arrimándole coplas
a tu esperanza, tierra querida.

Analect 2.307x

10 July 2008. Sun, gray, warm.

"Babylon...statue made of different metals...that's in the Book of Daniel..." "Thanks, Robert." "Yes, now your day will go well..." Fragments on the horizon of knowledge: La Teoría del Conocimiento. Book from Eudeba in 1962, gray cover, type with narrow black border--à la française, apparently. Purchased in a bookstore in Buenos Aires--a kind of keepsake, unopened. No, opened in snatches, for a few moments here and there, over the years, trying to make sense of the unending abstractions therein...

A kind of language that listens mostly to itself...thought thinking thought, as Stan Rice might have said. Or better, brain doing brain. Closer to the core. Suzanne Langer: image of early man, standing before a group of trees as they sway wildly in the wind. Standing without words--silencio--only the dance of the snake from deep down within...

Una milonga achamarritada...

Analect 2.306x

9 July 2008. Disk of red sun against smokey sky in the evening, reflected again in smoked-glass bar room window of the Sky Lounge. Memories, always... justo así...

"Tuve un overo rosao,
un alazán y un picaso
que pa’ cualquier tiro ‘e lazo
nada mejor he encontrao,
un malacara bragao
voluntarioso y seguro
y, pa’ salir de un apuro,
huyendo del alvoroto
tuve un overo poroto
un tobiano y un oscuro..."

* * *

"De cabello esparcido..."

Analect 2.305x

8 July 2008. Hazy sun, warm to the north. 108 in the shade. "I came through Sacramento at 7 o'clock, and it was still 102."

Inversion layer--ocean air pulled up into mist, spreading inland along the coast. Artichoke fields in the fog, figure of a man working, pulling weeds out of the earth. Root and clod.

A freeway overpass, seen from the car, years ago, also in the evening. Coastal fog. Shimmery gray concrete mass to the side of the road, apparition of solidity, whooosh, then gone...

Carmen Funes. La Pasto Verde...

Analect 2.303x

7 Julio 2008. Clearish skies, promise of a warm day. Characters before the window--tall guy with rumpled wavey hair, Ichabod Crane; finely-made black leather laptop bag, San Francisco bus. Blond girl in form-fitting skirt, folds of skin on back of her neck as she strains to catch sight of the G. Bag of groceries and supplies, something leafy and green on top...

La Pasto Verde, a song from the south. Neuquen--composer, folklorist and poet--Marcelo Berbel, singing with his sister, their flights and intertwinings, given modern form, but in the elaboration, old, old... Even more so, José Larralde, singing it as a lament--as with so many of his songs. Trayendo Pasados, the name of one album. Bringing yesterdays... or, carrying the past...

Quién te llamó pasto verde fresquita
tal vez tu aroma sintió,
poema de los desiertos
versos de un coplero que pasó...

Analect 2.303x

3 July 2008. Sparkling sun. Gray-pink slumpstone wall, mansard roof with worn shingles, small escutcheon sign, captain's wheel. Wind in the plum.

Dark red leaves, deep velvet, absorbing light as if there were no tomorrow.

Or Corrientes. Single figure on a river--shallow water's edge. Reeds and water grasses, green banks merging with greener stream.

Last week: standing alongside the Brabant--a Belgian draft animal, 19 hands at the withers. Golden brown--a sorrel--gleaming coat and well-trimmed mane. Huge head, patient eyes.

Ongoingness...

Analect 2.302x

2 July 2008. Gray wash of low cloud behind Navigator Escrow to the south. Otherwise clear, chilly breeze. Intent fellow in black sweatshirt to my right, receipts taped to larger pages, leaning into monitor...

Or into the future. As with text from Nathaniel, in Amsterdam, unexpected. "Give my regards to the Nieuwe Prinsengracht...", the Hortus, the Plantaage... The Zwanenburgwal...

The future. As with Nubian goats--two small ones, dressed in black, upturned faces to their mother's breasts, fore and aft. Dressed for success--and hardly dressed at all. Rather a kind of innocent charm, immediate and sweet, built in, like a Wolf range in Borrego, or the Fowles Street closets with sliding doors. Mom's clothes, from years before. Patterns and colors--blacks, gold, olive-green. Touch of red-orange on brown, melded now...

Rose dress with flowers...