Thursday, December 31, 2009

Analect 2.629x



31 December 2009. Gray on gray, plus morning chill. Berkeley Monthly, folded in its rain wrap, askew on red cement pathway to house. Two days now...

Tatiana and Sergey, their respective modes. Animation of the storyteller--Nikolai Leskov--hovering at the edge of conciousness. "The most Russian of all Russian writers," as Benjamin might have added. Quality of the telling--an alert kind of patience, the mind on the balls of its feet--relaxed, hands aloft...

"The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."

* * *

(Note: the last line is also a quote from Walter Benjamin.)

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Analect 2.628x



30 December 2009. Pale light, winter morning. Rain on studio roof last night--skylight sounds.

The local view. Oystershell clouds raking in from the west, on a low slant over sempiternal 7-eleven roof. Just now: young woman in brown leopardskin slippers with darker brown bows sits down alongside at the middle PC. The middle PC--a political tract of some kind. Goes with her half-finger gloves--the black over-the-wrist variety, reaching up to brush aside sleepy brown hair.

Li Ching at work just behind--wheel-bag, several pockets unzipped, his mild green nylon jacket (with unexpected Harley-Davidson emblems front and back) draped over handle.

Reaching for thumbdrive, her keys in hand, red heels...

Ending Poverty in America...

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Analect 2.227x



29 December 2009. Dawn light through white curtains...

Neighbors' cars nose to nose on quiet street--insistent voice of starter motor, engine engaging in bloom of white exhaust...

Or, the Bud Light delivery truck, backed tight against 7-eleven facade. Driver buried in cab, hovering over forms propped on wheel...

A restless morning...young mother in Chamonix baseball cap, pony tail and dark green sweater, waiting for file to download as tiny blond Lita and her older brother explore the interstices of neighborning machines... On to water cooler possibilities across the room...

Greg, in patient voice, "Let's go see mommy..."

Monday, December 28, 2009

Analect 2.626x



28 December 2009. Morning chill, layers of white down, hood...

An evening with Sergey, invigorated and at his best, songs from Glinka, Shubert, Mozart, Brahms--a fragment of Handel on Jack's worthy upright, Sergey's frock-coat form leaning deeply into each note. Image of a bird--ptitsa--Nestor Vasil'yevich Kukol'nik--do I have this right?--a bird on the wing, Sergey in his perfect moment of theater, just before beginning, reaching up with an open hand...

Then after, gathered at two skewed tables, champagne, a toast, platters of Klara's Armenian spinach pie, beet salad vinegret (svyokla), in simple bowl, from Tatyana's mother, who speaks with Roma in her beautifully clear Silver-age diction--studies of language, history, philosophy, science--borders shifting with each decade, with each breath...

Physics, taking flight...

* * *

Sergey Zadvorny, the noted Russian-born basso cantante

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Analect 2.625x



22 December 2009. Cold, brrrrr, winter sun. Steam rising from the pool...

King again, pine trees against eastern sky, their companion silhouettes. Shivering on deck while Yassir surveys the lanes. Woman with dark form, vigorous stroke. The tattooed girl from El Cerrito--her thin legs embroidered with Prussian blue flowers. Lin, his street-wise face bundled in life-guard red. Water sweet, a relief from the cold air...

A trailer frame nestled in the tees--random image from the Paraná. It's summer there, along the river's edge. Awning of red and white, metal...a combinatory aesthetic--the ore of an urban world...

Monday, December 21, 2009

Analect 2.624x



21 December 2009. Rainy morning, King Pool. Gray skies with flurries of wet. Low-rider changing rooms, dank and dim, with the same worn green poly-mesh clothes bags hanging from their skewed wires. Empty benches, puddled floor, a gym bag or two, someone's shoes tucked underneath, and the winding hallway to the deck, with snatches of Moroccan sounds en route--and there, the regulars. Yassir, for one, his sculpted beard now a little gray, directing traffic as of old. "Here, you swim in this lane, pointing. Two will be out soon..." Memories of that commanding diction--and the morning, late summer, nine years ago, with word of two buildings in flame. Same room, radio voices--Larry Bensky, coughing in an unexpected way...

I look into his face--the same warm smile, regaining time. "The same good eyes..."

Friday, December 18, 2009

Analect 2.623x



18 December 2009. Warm winter sun, unseasonable delight. Santa hats, t-shirts and smiles...

Weather for the birds, as one can see. A collation of little ones--house sparrow and finch, with the obligatory pidgeon. Cooing strut--city gait. Tiny violin case with miniature Chicago-style submachine gun (Al Capon--a terrible fate--a terrible pun)--while here, simply the partially puffed chest of an everyday egotist. Not so, research tells us--all behavior has a purpose, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, at a very swift clip--round the last turn now, they're neck in neck--it's Fritz by a nose...

Die welträtsel, some would say...

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Analect2 2.622x



16 December 2009. Two tigers loose in the house, one curled on a pillow, the other on freshly washed pile of blankets and towels. Winter poses, while outside, the steady rain, a nondescript mist of gray, home to house finch and mouse...

Signs of life along the street--wet camphor leaves, blue-gray light...airbrakes of recycling truck, careening around corner. Two faces behind blurry glass...

Fifth night--a home to all...

Analect 2.621x



15 December 2009. Even gray sky--single disk of gaberdine cloud with illumined edges, high over dark 7-eleven roof, broken arc of white just alongside. Glowing winter sun...

Full stop, then a beginning. As with a sentence--each linked set of words. A party tray--Harry and David, those Oregon gents with their apples and cheeses and pears, sent from afar in heavy boxes, nestled in excelsior. Channukah lights, fourth night...

A menorah of plain wood--from the garage in Oceanside, 2x4 with line of eight roofing nails. One for the shammus candle, too--tapped in a little higher...

The rock dove...

Monday, December 14, 2009

Analect 2.620x



4 December 2009. Sunny winter's morning, red-gold leaves mushed in the rain gutters, faces with smiles...

Zampanò e'arrivato...somewhere around 1954, rolling into town on that ancient motorcycle contraption. A touring show--Gelsomina's trumpet-plaint--and her unforgettable upturned eyes, all innocence and doubt...

Chains around his chest, a blanket for a cape, fiece look but strangely delicate shoulders, Anthony Quinn strides out before the crowd. Townsfolk--riffraff and loungers, children, too--until the sound of a car, just off camera, begins to build, gaining speed, and at the moment it passes--paaaaam--the links are parted...

La Strada...

Friday, November 27, 2009

Analect 2.619x



27 November 2009. Rain on the streets, rolling clouds, gray...

Yesterday: Delta roads, filtered sun. Field of sheep, their gray shapes, grazing. Coyote running along furrows of yellow husks, stopping, looking back, then running again... Sandhill cranes in Mokolumne backwaters--flooded fields of Staten Island. Their projected voices from afar, at first unseen--two sharper sounds, then a rumbly gobble. Same from high above... "They come all the way from Siberia..." I remain skeptical--half way round the globe? "The Bering Sea..." Home waters in Delta fields, winter light...

The killdeer and a piebald grebe...

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Analect 2.618x



25 November 2009. Pale sky over dark hills, early. Swimmers in yellow-lit pool, flip turns and splash... Woman's form alongside, breathing, jumping in feet first...

Water bird and ling cod, eel grass in dark green sea. "Rocky, marine sub-tidal areas--in crevices and overhangs..." 

The shape of the guitar--imagined again for its ins and outs--a viguela, tauter at the waist, with six sets of double strings. De los tiempos de la corte de Carlos V...

Trovadores--cormorant and dove...

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Analect 2.617x



24 November 2009. Slanting sunlight, east wind from over the hills. Water bird, high above, wings churning...

Borges, in a field of trees. Eyes with a touch of white below each pupil--sanpaku--a question of sight. Into a certain distance, that is--his world of English nouns and Elohist plurals--alternative names for visions of the Divine--distinctions gathered from arcane traditions, rewoven "bajo la luz del Sur..." Also--an impatience with sentiment--with the exception of what might be deemed a determined starkness--as if the world could be summed up in telling bas relief...

Buscando lo criollo...

Monday, November 23, 2009

Analect 2.616x



23 November 2009. Crisp sun, chilly gold ripples on blue pool. Swimmers with arms held in close to their sides, scurrying for the warm showers...

Or, a beach in Santa Monica, 1963. Fred Price (violin) and Roscoe Holcomb, his banjoe at the ready, angular face, perpetual upright stance... Southern mountain hat and stiff gaberdines. Here for their appearance with Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson at the Ashgrove, on Melrose. The old days. Tradition and bohemia in gentle collision, by the edge of an unknown sea...

Friday, November 20, 2009

Analect 2.615x



20 November 2009. Clear to east, high storm cloud wall coming in from the west...

Cold November mornings, closely trimmed head of Eritrean man behind counter in 7-eleven--shades of brown and gray. An immigrant's smile. School kids piling off city bus--arriving from who knows where...

A backyard garden--personal victories of a sort. Rutabega and chard, millet, a few Idaho potatoes. Miniscule harvest in the blowing rain...

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Analect 2.614x



14 November 2009. Late fall, red leaves--colors of the earth, worn round the arm... Adam, adamah...

A truth in sadness--the bending bow. Judgments and conclusions of human kind--with all reasons invented after the fact. The world as plan. But no...becoming instead one grand river of delight--moments of challenge, love, tenderness--the feel of a cheek, a mother's breath. Two young birds, side by side, beginning anew...

Ongoing...

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Analect 2.613x



18 November 2009. Awakening to clear skies, after yesterday's drizzly rain. A few cold nights in the woods--manzanita and madrone, white pine, fir. Home fires in a black cast iron stove, meandering flame through tempered glass. "Water is more beautiful than fire..." An assertion, even as we sit transfixed by the warmth, the snakey light... Outside--the Leonids, sparse... The Pleiades...

En route--a market in Cloverdale, hidden away on a frontage road. Spanish surname over the door, tall man with awkward teeth standing just in front, conversing with a friend. Their postures--from afar. Music inside--corridos--and a young girl at rotating counter, her shoulders bare, bright eyes...

Leaving for home: wild turkey in brush at side of cabin road--a mother and two offspring--their careful one-after-the-other steps, backward glances, disappearing in the gray rain...

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Analect2.612x



12 November 2009. Clear with bright sun. Emery high on his stand, black balaclava pulled snug--an ageing terrorist of the lifeguard line.

Gaucho indumentaria. A history of clothing--but, of course, it's more than that. The tellingness of gesture--la chinita, for instance--homespun skirt at once graceful and plain, wrapped around her strong waist--opposite of stage-attire elegance. Long to the ankles, feet turned out with a hint of charming uncertainty. Flat on the ground--cloth alpargatas--hard to draw in just their plainness. Two braids and maybe a flower...

For the chango--as with the birds. The male plumage. What's downhome here is the hair--more front-to-back than up and down. A kind of connected solidity that belies the fanciness. Also something slightly rumpled as to the hat--worn true.

Cosas así...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Analect 2.611x



11 November 2009. Pale sun against mantle of gray, pushing through.

Choice and resolve. A wandering line, figures emerging as if from two pieces of cloth--held in the hand, released in the air. Their separation a measure of commitment--as if the bekoning were all.

The zamacueca, first danced in Lima, in 1824--la liberación, Gral. San Martín. "Su denominación como 'zamba' se aplicaba a las mestizas descendientes de indio y negra (o vice versa). La danza esta diseñada para seducir a las zambas, y de alli su nombre, tanto en Perú como en la Argentina."

Agitando Pañuelos. "...bailando esta zamba repiqueteadita..."

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Analect 2.610x



10 November 2009. Half blue sky, bundled guard, change...

La firmeza, danza de galanteo... A dance of courtship, the two figures separate and independent throughout...

Moving through their steps with a poignant sureness, bending bough...

* * *

Coreografía:

1. Cruz
2. Vuelta
3. Giro (de espaldas)
4. Primer paseo: hacia la izquierda de varón
5. Segundo paseo
6. Tercer paseo
7. Cuarto paseo: apoyo de codos
8. Retroceso: con la mano izquierda en el oído
9. Avance y retroceso: con los dedos índice y mayor de la mano derecha en la cabeza
10. Avance y retroceso: en el 2ndo compas, las manos en el hombro
11. Avance y abrazo: el hombre intenta abrazarla a la mujer y ésta se agacha
12. Avance y abrazo: hacen lo mismo; en el 4to compas, el hombre le tira un beso a la mujer
13. Zapateo y zarandeo: el zarandeo se realiza con gestos de negación y de vergúenza
14. Media vuelta
15. Giro final

Monday, November 09, 2009

Analect 2.609x



9 November 2009. Cool November morning, all nines.

Margot and Daniella, a birthday gathering, on a hillside at the edge of a great park. Circle of trees along the ridge line, just behind another circle of gathered flowers and boughs. An offering--heather and rosemary, California sage. Other young people, and a mother with two bright children. Talk of Portland, a French teacher, the rain...

One of the younger women with spoon in hand, carefully ladelling chunky apple sauce into one of the children's bowls. Slow and precise movements of her hands--just so. As if all the care in the world...

Friday, November 06, 2009

Analect 2.608x



6 November 2009. Ying at pool window, notebook of college studies. Elbow arms of swimmers, back and forth, hint of sun...

Story of a puma in the Oregon landscape--Thalia, near the Dalles. "All orchards and fields." Her brothers wouldn't believe her till they saw the size of the tracks. Big smile, both arms in the air, straight up, a contemporary hooray...

Or Christine, telling of musicians in the Austrian country towns--local folk, each person involved. "You don't buy a drum, you go to the man who will make you one; he makes the other instruments, too..."

Carmencita, filmed with el Cachafaz, mysterious bit of footage--unique, from years past. Then, dancing again, at ninety-five...

Derrick and Lisette... Adiós, arrabal...

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Analect 2.607x



5 November 2009. To the northeast, island clouds--St. Thomas and St. Lucia...speckled and spotted, mandrake root...

A man alone, heavy wool on an ancient plain, his hands bound in iron, head down, eyes inward--contemplating--no, just first imagining--the long-term history of a noble refusal--in this case his own. To reclaim a kind of justice, yes, great horned owl of the Dakotas, prairie wind, also his own...

(for Leonard Peltier)

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Analect 2.606x



4 November 2009. The gray skies...

And Tennessee Ernie Ford, with all his polished eagerness--the closely-trimmed moustache and those artfully wobbly teeth--sitting onstage together with Odetta, her presence, also artful in her own way--singing Woody Guthrie songs--the apple pickers' union in the Garden of Eden. A feigned spontaneity--or something more? Not that it matters, really, when they're so clearly enjoying each other's company... And the chance to do again what they truly love...

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Analect 2.605x



3 November 2009. Early pool, blue sky, golden jet sliver on long diagonal, upwards...

The claims of Corot. A woman reading in the landscape, by the side of a modest French pond. Barbizon School... Hand to cheek, book in lap, and in the distance, a boatman, partly hidden by rushes at water's edge. Here made wide, the horizon out of Homer or Inness, perhaps--a seafarer--the Coming Storm...

That expanse, a patrimony...

Monday, November 02, 2009

Analect2.604x



2 November 2009. Gauguin morning, two figures at pool, rounded forms, dipping, smiling...

"Her Name was Vairaumati," and so the question remains--Vairaumati then, Vairaumati now, if only for this glancing moment, in the line of a shoulder, a flower, a young breast. Turned to the side, after the Pharoahs' wives, on dark blue cloth...Prints of flowers--frond and swirl... White petals...

The sea...

Friday, October 30, 2009

Analect2.603x



30 October 2009. Morning sun, clear and bright--not yet that late autumn mist.

Hablando de puchero y calabazas--Victoria arrives a little late, with cloth covered bowl of home-made empanadas--dulce de membrillo, quince jam--and a pitcher of tereré...that hot-summer variant of yerba maté... Nos encuentra cantando, our first pass at Tierra Querida...

And visiting from New York, Heather's grandmother, Edith, who appears with a spry smile at the classroom door...

Then: a black and white photograph of California land--darkly shadowed foreground with rolling hills, two rounded granite boulders, and a scattering of live oaks... where also appearing, mysteriously, at the far right--a small and convincingly incongruous rider on a rearing horse--borrowed, no doubt, from some long-forgotten yerra down Uruguay way...

Face of don Ata--a merging of worlds...

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Analects 2.602x



29 October 2009. Face peering up from pool, "This lane's free..." Christina's voice...

Mate pava on office floor--small bright metal kettle with narrow handle, balanced precariously on plug-in hotplate, a little water spilling on brown linoleum, our version of the outdoors. Victoria's grandmother, in the countryside near Luján... Enlaces...

Or Melissa, a few minutes later, sitting with Alice. "Do you think Mansilla (she uses the traditional soft elle, not the raspy Argentine pronunciation) actually lived the way he writes?"

To ask these questions, for the first time...

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Analect 2.601x



28 October 2009. Clear and cold, wind raking pool, guards huddled under laters of red. Ying's smile...

Vitello Abalos, bailando una zamba con Elvirita, just two years back. Born in 1922, "estrenando sus primeros 'pantalones largos' como miembro del conjunto de Los Hermanos Ábalos..." who first recorded Nostalgias Santiaguenas in 1939...

Pañuelo de la gracia, corazón de la vida...

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Analect 2.600x



27 October 2009. Brisk wind on pool deck, small penants horizontal, cirrus clouds, just a few...

With Chugo again, somewhere in the northwest of Argentina. Breakfast with the locals, a reprise of Cezanne, Fanta-sipping cardplayers at small tables, the non-descript landscape calendar high on tan wall, digital tv monitor on old wooden stand... A single wire providing the horizon...

Evidence of travel--time, space, sympathy...

Monday, October 26, 2009

Analect 2.599x



26 October 2009. Sunlight slicing through blue-green pool. Vigorous types in two-piece suits, flip turns... Swim coach on deck, head down, sorting through cell-phone mail...

The modern age. Le plus sa çhange... Payo Solá, seated, many years ago, somewhere in provincial Salta, his narrow fingers and dark lapels, bandoneón pulled wide across his knees. Flaring hair, also from another age--both wild and controlled, as with Toscha or Cavafy... An island personage, yes, stranded on the coast. Alexandria, perhaps--another backwater town--theodolite of the past...

Friday, October 23, 2009

Analect 2.598x



23 October 2009. Natasha curled in easy chair, lamplight. Early sun through white cotton curtains...

Of people and birds. A white-crowned sparrow, on a narrow branch. Gorrión, chingolo. Rufous-collared, too. A small and lively spirit, building it's nest "round farms and cities."

"...such a good-looking wee bird..."

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Analect 2.597x



22 October 2009. Solano before dawn--yellow lamps in the mist.

Atahualpa Yupanqui as a young man, seated, in front of four accompanying musicians, each dressed in white, guitars at the ready. His presence the focus. Early recordings, in 1936, for a company that distributes yerba mate... Recital Indígena por Radio Fenix... Caminito del Indio (Odeon Mangruyo)

Preguntas sin respuesta...

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Analect2.596x



21 October 2009. Cool and gray, autumn.

Ying behind the sliding window of pool booth, page of science under incandescent lamp. Lifts her head, smiling.

"I watched you grow up. In a chrysalis, at the old pool...". Open look. "You know, what the butterfly's in before it becomes a butterfly..." Another smile...

Silver light on October waves, reflected on wide low-tide sands. Two figures walking on the beach below, in the distance--one of them in orange. Slight breeze. A woman's weathered face appears at top of stairs--the bather.

Faces and lives...

Friday, October 16, 2009

Analect 2.595x



16 October 2009. Beautiful sun...

October light, Pacific swell. A summer's morning, I don't know when. Gray at dawn, tucked up in hooded sweatshirt, Schwinn, board under one arm, ocean bound... Down Alberta Street hill, over to Wisconsin, across Hill Street, the tracks... First glimpse of morning's waves--about three feet, breaking glassy, gray-green...

Ojalá...

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Analect 2.594x



15 October 2009. Golden float lines on luminous blue, rain mist pool...

Chamamé. And this is what happens when you bring the polka to the Paraná... A close embrace, each bending forward to press cheek and chest, as if everyone in this world were small--in stature perhaps, but grand in spirit. A willingness to attend to the requirements of the dance--a necessity even, each morning, where the brown waters sweep slowly by...

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Analect 2.593x



14 October 2009. Gray morning, after the storm, lacy and intermittent hints of blue.

Dance of the stars, as led by Lee, with Safeway cart, winter hat, no-nonsense boots. Her frail form, bending over 7-eleven bin, collecting. A chance for the Reed's Black Cherry to live again...

Clark, portable radio in hand, sidewalk mambo...

* * *

Ramsay's face, bending near, "May I ask a favor?"

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Analect 2.592x




13 October 2009. Pouring rain on pool water, drips on drops... Lifeguard hunkered down against damp stucco wall, bent forward in poly hood...

A blaze of chickens, nonetheless. Houdan, Old Hungarian, Wynandote. Golden Montazah, and the lone Araucana... Araucana, from somewhere in the south. El sur, as with Lucio...riding to meet Mariano Rosas and his Ranquel band. Also Araucana, at least in part. Having adopted their ways. Tolderías, tents of wood and hide, cooking fires within, well hidden, ample flocks and herds...

These final moments, when two worlds meet, each one gathered into the next...

Rain...

Monday, October 12, 2009

Analect 2.591x



12 October 2009. Gray clouds piling, oncoming rain...

Lila on sidewalk, her head covered with a muted pink scarf, leaning forward as she pulls aside the large gray German plastic recycling container. Moments later: seated in their new tiny Honda Fit, electric blue... Equivalents (Victor Schrager to me, in 1978: "See them.")

Toscha, as a young man. A student of Mischa Auer: "Heifitz, that angel, Toscha, that devil..." Or so came the family story. As told in San Diego, a Navy town, with its parade of sailors up and down lower Broadway, white caps at a maritime tilt...

Beached there, along with a handful of Russians--Dad, Uncle Howard, Jimmy Toback--Stelly, and Toscha himself. Eddie Janowski and Aunt Mae. Do I remember scampering along the back of the built-in dining table bench--all freedom of movement, everything permitted--with Toscha's irritation mounting...?

"But Professor Auer develops a natural bowing, with an absolutely free wrist, in all his pupils..."

* * *

For the Toscha Seidel references, see Fredrick H. Martens, Violin Mastery: Talks with the Master Violinists and Teachers, available as a Project Gutenberg eBook:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15535/15535-h/15535-h.htm#Page_219

Friday, October 09, 2009

Analect 2.590x



9 October 2009. Low gray clouds, churning...

Talk of colors, adjustments and compensations. A row of oak trees on a Palo Alto Street, removed of a morning...

The history of loss. And the words for longing: añoranza, anhelo, saudade... The latter from Beatriz, sitting with me in the window on Solano, a little more than a year ago. Of Portuguese fishermen, setting out to sea, their wives alone on the beach, some of them weeping, as the boats disappear on the sea...

Succoth, a time of joy, autumn moon...

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Analect 2.589x



8 October 2009. "Morning low clouds and fog...," reassuring radio voice, while just outside, morning low clouds and fog. Impatient Saab directly behind, swerves right, then left, then right again, careening past onto narrow side street at high speed...

Where we are going. As in the pueblo of Huanguelen, tucked away in a remote corner of the Province of Buenos Aires. Miles and miles of wheat--dimpled clouds against a late afternoon sky. Community center room, bare, the ubiquitous modern plastic chairs and a single table on one wall, with a bevy of older women at antiquated monitors. Our computer class...

Or a gathering of children, in the public square--this from many years before, in fading black and white, their uniforms and pinafores arranged just so, arms around each others shoulders in a protective way--tiny gestures of dignity and anticipation...

José Larralde--Un día me fuí del pago...

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Analect 2.588x



7 October 2009. Gray light over hills at dawn, a single bird...

El Alma del Payador--the soul of the story-singer... Santos Vega, a gaucho from around 1830 who lives on in myth because of a challenge from the Devil in human form--the figure of Juan sin Ropa. "Una sombre triste que vaga por las lagunas de la pampa..." A somber shadow that wanders amidst the lagunas of the pampa... Playing upon any guitar left forgotten nearby a well--aljibe, the old Moorish word. Constantly associated with water, and an invocation of the wind...

José Larralde in the film version of Obligado's classic--half-western, half-Whitman--from 1971...

Bajo un algarrobo...

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Analect 2.587x



6 October 2009. Beginning of fall. Cold rounded poolside edge, blue water...

Stories. Named by her father, her mother still calling her Marta. Tucumán, cuna de los sueños. To Mendoza, a marriage and a son, then alone. Her voice--a gift and an impediment. "Para mí cantar era una tristeza..." This as a girl--again, the wishes of he father, but singing left her aislada--alone...

Soledad...y compromiso. Solitude and commitment--interwoven...

The concerts in the Opera, 1982--a sudden opening after the years of darkness. Her grand return...

"Un puente sobre todos los abismos..." Her openness, maybe to a fault--and her crazy friendships. Charly García, for one. Tall, skinny, outrageous. Her own view: "A veces cuando habla es tan inteligente que uno sólo puede admirarlo..." The two of them: De mí

And with the Chalchaleros, en la Rural, Buenos Aires: Zamba por vos...

Monday, October 05, 2009

Analect 2.586x



5 October 2009. Morning darkness, autumn chill. Masters team in changing room, talking laps and times...

That old phrase--chewing the fat. Hearthside, or kitchen table. As in the note on NPR--the nation swept by a sudden interest in craft. Richard Sennett in the lead--with words, that is.

A just shaping. The sense of touch, a feel and a turning. The pine bow, stripped of bark, white wood exposed to winter's air. Bite of the knife, along the grain, each fiber an opening.

Entire worlds...

Friday, October 02, 2009

Analect 2.585x



2 October 2009. Beautiful fall day, damp pool edge...

"Ojos limpios cómo un chingolo..." From José Larralde, La Noche del Peludero. The meaning of the words in a song, given such particular focus by the necessity of their ongoingness... Figure of Victoria's bisabuela--as a young woman, in the dress embroidered with a Mapuche design. Subtle, white on white, a remembering in the cloth itself, as with her beautiful elongated face--the dark eyes...

Reflections on a life.

I play for them La Fernanda, accompanied by Diego, seated upright, alert, just to her side... Attentive to the song--present and past, made one...

Cómo siempre...

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Analect 2.584x



1 October 2009. Morning pool light, sun...

Indumentaria--but not simply old clothes. Well, yes, old clothes--but in the sense of very old clothes--those worn a hundred years ago or more. That's old, isn't it? Bombachas, pañuelo, chiripá... The Indian names--Tehuelche, Mapuche, Pampa... Restitched for an immigrant clientele... One sees it on their faces--hard and unsure--like the horizon itself, always at a certain distance--to the west, al poniente del sol...

Unknown...

* * *

Yamhill Market, Portland, 1964-- a pair of beautiful brown woolen trousers, pin-striped, and very long-waisted, with suspender buttons and 1-1/2 inch cuffs. Another life...

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Analects 2.583x



30 September 2009. Gray light over hills, how many ways...

Two Polish girls, on the hard side--Hotel Polonia--armed in black, rayon... The pose revealing more than the pose--a kind of tough vulnerability--clutching purses--or maybe not even so tough, the veneer thereof...

And within? Mokotów, Praga, the farms beyond...

Childhood of dreams, ads, enticements--the bounty of the west, crashing down... An unsuspecting populace--muddy fields, Częstochowa, the Pope...

A hidden unity, half-remembered--named in ritual--Body of Christ...

Solidarność...

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Analect 2.582x



29 September 2009. Pearl clouds with intermittent sun, wash of grays, whites, pale blues...

Two Indian gentlemen in pool changing room, conversing in the old way, a morning in Delhi, the Jumna, despite all...

And a violist, whose autumnal sound, deep voiced and calm, soars in middle register, straight to the heart...

We have no word for this. The quality of tan in Taoist thought... "A semblance of impoverishment...should conceal an inner richness, serve as a plain garment which covers the embroidered robe."

Reb Zusia...

Friday, September 25, 2009

Analect 2.581x



25 September 2009. Sun at this moment pouring through gray--early fall.

Wyspianski's Wesele--The Wedding Party--in Wajda's film of 1973. Bronowice, a village near Kraków. The poet who marries a peasant girl, Lucjan and Jadwiga. Rachela. the young Jewish woman who appears unexpectedly at the celebration--"a victim of her own euphoria"--inviting in the chocholy (bound grain sheaves in the fields after the harvest) and thereby an opening to the mysteries of the Polish past.

Wyspianski's painting--figures of grain, in an autumn landscape. Van Gogh's space, Van Gogh's trees... Night, and a sense of distance...

They become real...

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Analect 2.580x



24 September 2009. Gray morning, gray gull over pool, glimpsed for an moment...

Marcello Mastroianni, bringing his charming Italian je ne sais quoi to the wintery environs of Torino--the Fiat factory strike, sometime after 1900... Image of the worker as Genovese extra--the café faces, clenched fists, worry and doubt, but a willingness to listen, maybe even follow. His narrow-rimmed university specs--the student--better with Schiller under his arm than Plekhanov or Marx...

François Noël-Babeuf--a society of equals...

Mourant de faim, mourant de froid...