Monday, September 29, 2008

Analect 2.356x



29 September 2008. Wheeling gulls, by the dozen, arcs and whorls, Javed's world. A scatter of bread, or dried cake--pulse and dal--pullao, biryani, naan... Cast by hand on on asphalt lot. Each one a being, each one a name...

This day beginning, this year, this world...



Rosh Hashanah...

Friday, September 26, 2008

Analect 2.355x



26 September 2008. Yellow dappled light on brownish gray. Larry's truck, lodged at curb, wheel turned in to blunt roll. Meanwhile, on his haunches--a narrowish black dog, red collar, positioned at very center of double 7-eleven door--waiting. While the "open" sign for Clean Living Cleaners forges ahead, in italic, motionless...

Like the economy. "We're talking about point two per cent." "Round it off to two trillion...," voices in the near distance, adjusting figures, as in checkers, or mah jong--a morning's romp...

Ivy Day in Committee Room, Joe Hynes maybe. Or Mr. Henchy.

"He took two bottles from the table and, carrying them to the fire, put them on the hob. Then he sat down again by the fire and took another drink from his bottle. Mr. Lyons sat on the edge of the table, pushed his hat towards the nape of his neck and began to swing his legs..."

And Ben Webster, when we need him...

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Analect 2. 354x



25 September 2008. Winding up La La Loma at midnight, hairpin curve through redwood arch, swinginging left onto
Virginia, then down downhill... Quiet time in deer town again. Art Pepper maybe, mellowed-out on the alto, a personal message from Echo Park...

And to the morning, autumn sparkle on an Indian summer's day. Euphoria of the evening before. Making pictures, making sounds--lips with dimple, language unknown, seen up close as can be, trying to ar-ti-cu-late, to ar-ti-cu-late the im-pos-si-ble... A bus and a car, or somesuch, via Seoul, via the heart...

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Analect 2.353x



24 September 2008. Beautiful day, can we say this? Sounds from back office--silky and mellow... "Some...where over the rainbow..." Willie, even...

Short order place on Tenth Avenue, diner-metal siding, pink motif mixed with grey, waitress who's been there forever, her slightly tilted white paper tiara announces a presence--as does the steaming cup of black brew she deposits on quick-wiped linoleum before me... Mornings...

Or a bus stop in Berkeley, book tucked under arm, gazing up Solano, waiting for the G...

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Analect 2.352x



23 September 2008. El Lucero--the morning star--poised in the branches of the mariposa sometime before dawn. A luminous embrace--as in the legend of Huanguelen, son of a Mapuche chief--who fell in love with her...then became himself a star, to follow her forever...

Gambles and predictions. Smokescreens of fate...

Comó se inclina la flor
hacia el tallo que la guía,
así se inclinó mi amor,
sin pensar de tu falsía...

Friday, September 19, 2008

Analect 2.351x



20 September 2008. Two dark bird shapes against pinkish gray sky, heading west. Dawn. Ying behind pool counter, already smiling. Her ancient block-like Lincoln moored at curb, corroded grays in early light.

Llanura. A man of few words. Qué no dice mucho. Lo quería conocer, pero no se paraba de hablar... I wanted to understand him, but he just kept talking. Better to offer a smoke, see how he accepts it, lights up. The gesture. As in coiling a rope--something simple, revealing...

La cosa es así...

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Analect 2.350x



19 September 2008. Sun and shadow, for once. Push of dawn, bank of opaque pool windows to east--now glowing gray. Javed at eight, dark jacket on bike, watchcap, glower...heading home.

Los cuatro vascos, otra vez. Dependably themselves. But why? A consciousness, perhaps, of something tight and old--like worn brown shoes, or a wooden wheel in a deep rut, or the clasp of the foot of a sparrow on a twisted branch. Agarrar: to seize. An old word. As in Ipousteguy or Abarrategul--chunks of sound, like the rocky cliffs in northern Spain--peninsular--limestone and chalk, buried deep in the earth...

¿ Dónde está mi corazón,
que se fue tras la esperanza?
Tengo miedo que la noche
me deje también sin alma...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Analect 2.349x



18 September 2008. Gulls whirl above 7-eleven roofline, gray skies. Larry's brown truck lurched in at an angle, moored in fact. Welted silver tool box propped in place, mute red tail lights waiting...

Morning's return. Forget the banks--insurance bets to the tune of three trillion--or so Javed, with his bags of almost stale bread--the gleanings, in reverse--a source of wealth, scattered over asphalt, as they wheel in, wings spread wide, from Richmond, Hercules, Pinole...

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Analect 2.348x



16 September 2008. Gray, simply gray.

The hodge-podge of hedge funds. Bonds. Narrow poll shows financial analysts ahead by a head, as they come 'round the curve on Hanover--Nassau, Pearl, Moore--all the alleyways that add up. Let's examine in terms of chiaroscuro--the deepest tones following always, later in the afternoon...

Sun behind mountains--the concerns of the highland people. Because they hear the echos of their own voices. Moon rising in the east, then gliding over the highest peaks, "a su muerte," so goes the myth. And what else a vanishing...?

La luna alumbraba el canto,
el grillo junto al camino,
y yo con sombra en el alma
pensaba en la ausencia del bien perdido...

Monday, September 15, 2008

Analect 2.347x



15 September 2008. Gulls guard gray, all facing east on pale 7-eleven cornice line--or is it simply a strip of aluminum molding along run of roof? All take flight but one, grayer than the rest...

A Russian tale, somewhere in the Crimea. Koktebel--a place of myth--the stone house, dry hills, wind-blown sea...

Girl in white--early Soviet, or a t-shirt maybe--BVD--where the touch of soft cotton, a strand of hair, milk...

Friday, September 12, 2008

Analect 2.346x



12 September 2008. Gray, and just now eight. Javed, shoulders hunched forward, heading out on his bike. Young latino guy, back on 7-eleven curb, t-shirt, hands in pockets, leaning in with all the rest...

Leaning in, as with Vicente Huidobro, from Chile, here perched in Spain on a bit of photographer's property--the short run of the baroque, balusters and newel posts, aimed at the sea. At the sea... "Vientos Contrarios"--contrary winds--the endless horizons of the south, lo Pacífico--where leagues become sound--phrases, words... An expansion of meanings, groundswell and kelp, beyond jetty's end...

Y si yo soy el traductor de las olas
Paz también sobre mí...

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Analect 2.344x



11 September 2008. Gray gray skies. Seven years. Changing room at the Martin Luther King pool, just after eight. A voice on the radio, coughing between phrases--Larry Bensky--sense of unease. The hyper-real announcements--facts?--one after the next, beamed in from Washington, New York. Unfathomable...

Reading about a baby goat. Cabrito chico. Open volume held in both hands, before a group of school children, vaguely attentive. White tufts of fur--or were they gray--tucked behind each ear, or under the chin--a farm animal story--as if there were animals, as if there were farms...

More, miles of steel cable, girder and joist, raised up after Harte Crane, intent and mindless--mindless in the classic sense, mindless like Babel, like Cheops--more an assertion than an idea...

The two men in the tango room, pibes in perfect suits--city garb--their confidence and slicked-back hair--gomina--leaning towards each other, un desafío, a challenge--all before the first beat...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Analect 2.343x



10 September 2008. Gray clouds roll in, muted dawn. Lights on the hillsides at night--a quiet jewelry store, twinkling.

"Los cuatro vascos locos..." Phrase from decades back--depreciative, of course, but not without a zigzag of admiration. The square in front of the cathedral of La Plata, capital de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, it's high severe facade of brick, etched in the cold... The very first days of spring (Septiembre)... and gathered there in "national dress" a group of Basques--all alone--folkdancing in the icy winds off the river...

Río de La Plata, silver and unseen...

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Analect 2.342x



9 September 2008. Gray from Albany to Port Costa, rolling banks of cloud edge in over the bay, sweeping low over the hills...

The purpose of description. Two figures on horseback, from the north--Salta or Jujuy. White horse chests, prancing. Wing shapes of leather to either side--as in the time of Güemes--cuero de vaca, por el monte--vela mayor, de un barco viejo--trinquete, velacho, juanete de proa. Seas of land. All but that other guy, who somehow just won't go away--a bystander on a dusty streetfront, next to Mary's despensa, alongside the dented pickup truck of heavy build, the narrow elm with missing limbs...

Age of imagination--boundlessness, huellas sin fin...

Autumn...

Monday, September 08, 2008

Analect 2.341x



8 September 2008. Autumn gray, bay fog laps hills. Ying's six o'clock smile, beaming through the dark.

Or three sisters, their own darkness, from somewhere deep in time. Ancient braids, bound in home-spun, cotton shifts prevail--whiteness--and a certain modesty, but purely from within.

Or Cézanne, crossing the schoolyard to greet an outcast--the young Émile Zola--who next morning brings a gift--a wicker basket filled with apples--each one green...

Friday, September 05, 2008

Analect 2.340x



5 September 2008. Sparkle and sun, mid-morning now, interrupted, after animated talk with Beatriz, sitting by this window on Solano, Toyota Tundras and all...

The word from Portugal--Lisboa, Oporto, Coimbra, (a university town, "like Oxford or Cambridge, scholarly and old...") The three schools of fado, each one distinct--"Lisboa of course being the saddest." A kind of deep melancholy, or longing... The Portuguese word, saudade... without translation. The quality of a particular place, a particular time... Like the fisherman of the northern Portuguese coast--launching their boats out through the surf, their wives remaining behind, on the shore, alone. The women's feelings at this moment--the immensity of the sea, the unknown... "Some already weeping..."

Or Ercília Costa, in Lisboa, 1930s, casa de fado... A girl from the countryside, simple--almost entered a convent, but instead, the fado bars of this ancient port town. Fados--songs of loss and lament--she sang them always with her hands pressed together, in front of her breast...

Saudade...

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Analect 2.339x


4 September 2008. Sun again, luminous air...

Un ritmo elemental--de negra y dos corcheas...un óvalo oscurecido, silencio...

Words for music, hidden in the traces of the cordillera. Laguna Brava--an Andean lake, high above, rippling with sea waves... Linked, as legend has it, by underground caves reaching all the way to the Pacific...

Baguala--mountain song...

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Analect 2.338x



3 September 2008. Clear sky, shadows from early sun--warm grays on creamy tan wall.

* * *

Coplas de Baguala...a lament from the highlands of Salta. Coyas--pueblo del norte:

Para cantar a bagualas,
la música está de más,
cóntale tu pena al viento,
y el viento las cantará.

Voy andando por el mundo,
lo miro al cóndor volar:
¡ malhaya, bicho dichoso,
tus alas me has, ¡ ay !, di dar.

¡ Malhaya con mi destino,
caminar y caminar!.


(Juan Carlos Dávalos, Atahualpa Yupanqui...)

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Analect 2.337x



2 September 2008. Golden morning, hint of fall--Indian summer, rather, with blue skies in all directions. Albany High kids already returning, half-grown gulls with puffy gray plumage, nothing fits quite right. Girl with dark hair hopping out of car on one foot, loaded with books, Sierra pack, swinging door shut with free hand while nudging an inadvertent goodbye in the direction of her mom, the driver, whose hands grip the wheel like out of Le Mans, or Bakersfield, maybe, an all-night truckstop on Highway 99--as the big metallic Honda lurches off down the street...

Payador. Where story becomes song. "Re menor," the key of D minor, different somehow in those southern climes--la llanura--the untouched plains, an endless expanse of open land, incommensurate--

Cómo no he de llorar yo
sí me quitas lo que es mío...