Analect 2.377x

31 October 2008. Morning rain, dark, wet steps, brown leaves.

A Basque family in the Chaco, women with long blouses, white aprons, patterned scarves with a single tie. Two men, just behind, their black berets, very horizontal. All standing in front of wide living room window, warm-colored curtain drawn in one tie, light pouring in from behind. Their faces obscured, smiling...

One woman with frizzy hair, maybe a little older, on tip-toe, leaning in over their shoulders, her forehead raised, questioning...

Analect 2.376x

30 October 2008. Dark house, impending rain. Three small candles on blue plate, late night note. Yellow flashlight, wavery sentinal beam...

"I don't like explaining my work." Just that. Or Tango Mío, from Tani Zarja, a la Gardel, muy porteño--make that porteña--make that porteño. An urban confusion, with full intention--where the sprightlyness of a well-cut suit perfectly fits the wearer. Rosas de Otoño... Bearings, knotted cravatte--a Spaniard in the Argentine...both present and lost to time...

"How are you doing?"

Analect 2.375x

29 October 2008. Nice morning fog, yellow street lamp light sometime before dawn, meandering through camphor branches. Satyr and nymph, in overcoats, no doubt--or at the very least, heavy bathrobes. Too chilly for the open fields. As with Matisse, Flanders, and the smell of beets on cobbled streets--industrial crop, gathered and mashed, dark wooden wagons with high sides, lumbering...

An early still life with muscular paint--urgent plunge and spread, brushed on with adamant touch. Escape route of the senses--a re-invention, in the face of kermess fairs and gray--heavy ladles, bowls of beer, the worn faces, wily and persevering...

Instead: calme et volupté...

Analect 2.374x

28 October 2008. November, morning mist... A team of oxen, oaken yoke. Farmer in battered boots, climbing over narrow furrows. Water in the ditches...

Or a pickup, in three tones--white and two grays, amalgamate. Parts yard. Polypropylene rope looped over welded rack, welted silver tool chest...

Two red tail lights, gleaming...

Analect 2.373x

27 October 2008. Fog wafts over Emeryville, evening air. Whoosh of cars, red lights ringing the bay, I-80, so to speak. Domestic huddle of commerce--the emblems side by side, a show of familiarity, all close in the night. Then, November dawn, a few days early. Albany hill still hidden in gray, brave show of shorebirds, patrolling. School lot empty, single figure swings out of non-descript car--a teacher, early...

Beet fields of Flanders, run of wars. Boys play at soldier, at knight. Every rock has drawn blood. Fierceness of defeat, in the foggy fields. Exhausted, famished, covered in earth--the French soldiers, 1871. Greeted by the townspeople, who wait with lanterns. Shelter, care...

Analect 2.372x

27 October 2008. Fog wafts over Emeryville, evening air. Whoosh of cars, red lights ringing the bay, I-80, so to speak. Domestic huddle of commerce--the emblems side by side, a show of familiarity, all close in the night. Then, November dawn, a few days early. Albany hill still hidden in gray, brave show of shorebirds, patrolling. School lot empty, single figure swings out of non-descript car--a teacher, early...

Beet fields of Flanders, run of wars. Boys play at soldier, at knight. Every rock has drawn blood. Fierceness of defeat, in the foggy fields. Exhausted, famished, covered in earth--the French soldiers, 1871. Greeted by the townspeople, who wait with lanterns. Shelter, care...

Analect 2.372x

23 October 2008. Autumn dawn. Whoosh of Bart train somewhere far off in the distance, gold light in the sky, pouring down Solano now from the east. Clunky beepy bus chugging up the hill, followed by flash of white van. Morning conversations-- "Hello Mo-mmm-y...," shared presences. As with Natasha, dark dumpling on round white table--the impervious cloth--arching her plump back in anticipation...

Letters of recommendation. "I first met the applicant..." No, that won't do. "I noticed her face..." Slightly better. More like the essence of something--trust, in part, affection, goodwill...

Tiny white shapes on a torn black field, inflected here and there, definite and tentative, just like the world...

Analect2.371x

22 October 2008. Warm morning in the dark air. Nicola's calico stretch, her paws up high on living room door, total exit mode. Natasha more demure, a puffy redolence of tortoise-shell, grays, tiny pink tongue half exposed, zaftig feline madonna...

The dance, as in Club Italia, Buenos Aires--la Union Vasca. National purposes--costumes and songs--an arm around a waiting shoulder, the squeeeze of a hand...two or three subtle steps, an ebony bandoneon...

Young people's lives--presence of song...la cocina, sonriendo, feliz...

Analect 2.370x

21 October 2008. Orange and gold against dark dark blue. Dawn sky--pacing figure across the way, inside, illuminated 7-eleven room. Javed's spot, unfulfilled, gulls have departed too...

A village, somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan...

Or singer and song... A Porteño viejo in a café in the Arrabal. Wool suit, a la Inglesa, cantando... quizás cantando...

Analect 2.369x

20 October 2008. Dark shape on a darkened fence--the agile racoon--scout and decoy, spotted from succah lookout, lemon branch and moon... A cup of wine, stories, October night...

While his brother--the one with the robbers's mask, does a kitchen job on the sly --Alyosha's bisquits, pale dough, hardened in the shape of bone--scattered now on ancient linoleum by an small and unseen hand. After washing, no doubt--cat's bowl, in the local manner...

Oscar, somewhere in Byelorussia, 1904. A young boy, balancing on the railing of a bridge--over the Pripyat'--Mozyir. The beginning of the meaning of names...

Analect 2.338x

17 October 2008. Dented moon, takes a hit. Fender bender of the up above--royal blue stilton, her greenish-grays on cream--stark and awesome, a matter of days...

Our miss lonely hearts... Or, a handful of Basque dancers in an Argentine square--los cuatro vascos, animate, separate...

Fleeting...



(for Loren)

Analect 2.367x

16 October 2008. Dawn light over dark hills--one solo pine, dry-point and aquatint--Pissarro's hand.

A celebration of failure, that's what I told them. Manifestoes of ambiguity--where every known mark is questioned in turn--true meanings held topsy-turvy--all smudges and hints. The clarity of a shopping mall, those strange geometries over shining Latin faces--sudor de la bici, así es, no te puedes llegar sin estar bañado... But these explanations, they pass, along with reasons of all sorts...

And what's left, gentle blues, touches of white, warm impasto grays...

Analect 2.366x

15 October 2008. Dawn sky over 7-eleven, illuminated within...

Y divisé tu rancho
a orillas del camino
adonde los jazmines
tejieron un altar

Al pie del Calicanto
la luna cuando pasa
peinó mi serenata
la cresta del sauzal...


(Chango Rodriguez, Luna Cautiva)

Analect 2.365x

14 October 2008. First evening in the succah. Full moon peaking through eucalyptus leaves, night time sky. Seven small candles on a tin-foil plate, blazing...

Thoughts of Po Chü-i, his mountain home, same moon, same stars...

*

"Un patio tan ancho como la la luna llena..." Don Ricardo, amigo viejo, Riojano...

Analect 2.363x

10 October 2008. Dark red car in black of night, slowing briefly to launch a NY Times, all wrapped in blue... Our latest curves, down, down, down...

Vachel Lindsay, where is he when we need him--positioned at the back of the last Pullman car, eyes steady on the plains... The flower-fed buffalo of spring...

O los pagos de Chasquivil, al norte del Tucumán...

Viene clareando...

Analect 2.362x

8 October 2008. Dawn light push over filigree ridge--barely the tops of alders and pines, tiny against the sky... Distinct, as in shape--a woman's arms, held close to her side--radius and ulna--lovely by extension.

Dust motes in stage lights, worn wooden floor, dancers in gray--white handkerchiefs held high...

Panuelos blancos...

Analect 2.361x

7 October 2008. Whisps of gray fog, appearing quietly out of the east. Veiled 7-eleven facade, flourescent hum. Blocky Smirnoff Ice truck lumbering slowly out into the corporate gloom...

Au hasard Balthazar, Robert Bresson, recast in the New World. Piedra y yuyo. Yuyos agrestes--wild grasses. And three dark brown burros--their taut backsides, impervious to ruin.

A los cerros Tucumanos...

Analect 2.360x

Gray dawn, yellow lamplight amidst trees, burrows. A single racoon, loping form half-seen, bounding from one storm drain to the next...

Or Paris, hidden as she was in the name Pissarro. Or Walcott, perhaps--in Charlotte Amalie, the palmy heat and stone dry fields, sun and cobalt seas... But no, a quiet fog, enveloping, gas lamps and horses' backs, spectral in the mist. Almost unknown, yet light, so light--the brush, the grays--a single truth... Or fleeting reason, made immediate...

Camille...

Analect 2.359x

3 October 2008. Gray skies, wheeling gulls, talk of rain...

Analect 2.358x

2 October 2008. Gray dawn, rain in the air, autumn light. Natasha's plump darkness, on paisley spread, in the half-light, poking up her head for a rub...tiny pink tongue protruding, just a touch.

Our creaturely ways. Covered and hidden--in the half-light of a mantilla, estilo colonial--house of cloth, castle eve--gentle bastion and parapet, in the old Spanish way...Torrevieja, Alicante... Aires del Sur...

La Lopez Pereira...

Yo quisiera olvidarte, me es imposible, mi bien, mi bien,
tu imagen me persigue, tuya es mi vida y mi amor también.
Y cuando pensativo yo solo estoy
deliro con la falsía con que ha pagado tu amor mi amor,
deliro con la falsía con que ha pagado tu amor mi amor...

Analect 2.357x

1 October 2008. Soft lines of hills, yellow dawn--empezando. Notice taped to pool desk counter--also yellow lines, announcing close. Better the world...

A white ermine hat--or is it badger--or just fuzz? Thelonious as he was--blocky form, alert in perennial big-man's slouch, back straight--up towards the shoulder, whence the arm, the wrist... Playing with his thumb--splayed flat. Percussion precision: Dunh-dahhh....duh-duh-duh duh duhh, duh-duhhhhhhh.....dunh-duhhh...

Transcription impossible--it's either you or it's not. An essentialist here? We're talkin' grace, maybe, or truth, or justice, even...