Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Analect 2.484x



29 April 2009. Sunny pale sky, coldish breeze.

Late at night, Jeszcze Polska nie Zginela... Faces of Polish soccer players in a Berlin sports ring. They stand side by side, with a row of children just in front. Individual movements of their faces, each one's voice...

YouTube screen grab of Oceanside wave. Gray water, gray sky...as always...

This morning, by the big window on Solano, pc earphones tucked under hat, cords twisting to harddrive tower. Voice of Atilio Reynoso... Domingo Pampeano, also a song...

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Analect2.483x


28 April 2009. Blue times blue...

Estilo Viejo, as played by Atilio Reynoso. La música de la pampa...

Si usted no conoce el sur
y piensa que es el desierto
no sabe lo que es La Pampa
porque ignora su secreto
La Pampa es un viejo mar
donde navega el silencio...

(La Pampa es un Viejo Mar, Juan Ricardo Nervi)


* * *


(If you are not familiar with the south
and believe it to be a desert
then you don't understand what is Pampa
because you ignore its secret
La Pampa is an ancient sea
and what plies there is silence...

La Pampa Is an Ancient Sea, Juan Ricardo Nervi)

Monday, April 27, 2009

Analect 2.482x



27 April 2009. Gray skies.

La Huella: Santiago del Estero. "Aprendí, como en una universidad salvaje y abierta, silente y misteriosa como una salamanca, las músicas más hermosas y representativas de la región. Muchas las reuerdo aún. Otras han quedado en una zona oscura de mi espíritu, como un secreto que jamás se podrá develar, pero que alienta el pulso de la sangre."

(La Huella: Santiago del Estero: "I learned there, as if in a wild and open university, silent and mysterious as a Salamanca, the most beautiful and representative songs of the region. Many of them I still remember. Others have remained in a dark zone of my spirit, like a secret that never could be revealed, but that nourishes the pulse of the blood.")

Atahualpa Yupanqui, Este Largo Camino



Note: The Salamanca myth has to do with the underworld--in this case, a cave open only to adepts, who are severely tested in its rites. Derives perhaps from Arab brujería (witchcraft) in the caves around Salamanca, Spain--and may be related to the Faust legend. In any case, the name struck a chord with the country people of Santiago del Estero (and elsewhere in the Argentine northwest). The folkloric musicians associated the Salamanca--and its trials--as a (mythical?) source of their musical prowess. Don Atahaulpa clearly connects with this tradition in his final sentence...

Friday, April 24, 2009

Analect 2.481x



24 April 2009. Sharp yellow band of sun on Honda glass...

Cuadros de la Ciudad. Fray Mocho y Cnia, barrios del Sur, Buenos Aires, los años pasados. Un mozo viejito, vida de payaso--o sea payador... Calles sombreadas, de la tarde, otra vez...

A Media Luz...

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Analect 2.480x



23 April 2009. Gray morning cloud, cold. Burlap bags on bed of truck, pile of damp brown sand. Two stucco workmen in worn jeans, hands jammed in their pockets, heads thrown back, following the movements of a compatriot on scaffold high above.

New shingles pretty much like the old--minus the variations of time. Guarantees of interestingness, now gone wanting.

As with a song--Atilio Reynoso, his "Estilo Viejo"--much to recommend. Or W.H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago...

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Analect 2.479x



22 April 2009. Silhoutte of green ladder against expanse of blue. Small jet slips away to the left. Soft explosive report of roofer's pneumatic nailer... Calls back and forth, Korean voices...

Or others, in turn. The carpincho, for example. Almost unheard. Montes y juncales, siempre cerca del agua. Nose and tiny round ears held just above the surface--the capybara--a Tupi word, Guaraní. The mother with ten nipples, nursing two to eight young...

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Analect2.478x



21 April 2009. Naked roof on milky blue sky. Scaffolding and cigarettes, language unknown...

As with the chiripá, or the rama, or the bird... Holding in space against a milky page...

Allá le voy a mostrar
mi mancarrón, mis dos perros,
unas espuelas de fierro,
y un montón de cosas más.
Si es entendido, verá:
un poncho de fina trama,
y el retrato de mi Mama,
que es ande rezo pensando
mientras lo voy adornando
con florecitas de retama.

(milonga)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Analect 2.477x



20 April 2009. Ojalá...

Friday, April 17, 2009

Analect 2.476x


17 April 2009. Without and within... Richard's new book, Great Basin Poems, on earth-colored stock. Working cattle in the 1950s. An opening into a world...

Last night: cowboys and la frontera. Nuevo Lareto, Sinaloa, LA, Sleepy Lagoon. Pachucos and the Repatriation Act. Kat and Mildred take us back through time, down Mexico way--but not quite. The borderlands, rather, and an entire culture so engendered. Braceros--in the lilting and effortless voice of Pedro Infante, while film clips reveal a darker truth... Lydia Mendoza and her sister, their impossibly close harmonies, Freddy Fender, and Lila Downs. Richie Havens, too. Vision from 1958, the gym floor, Oceanside High... "Para bailar la bamba..."

Kat: "She was pregnant when they crossed the border..."

Then: Chalino Sánchez and his son, Adán, both lost. Mildred's mom: "They shouldn't of gone back..." Her own growing up in the Salinas Valley, ancestors all...

La Llorona...always by waters...

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Analect 2.475x



16 April 2009. Springtime now. Restored roof in morning sun, tradesmen done.

Argentina, Provincia de Buenos Aires, en la década de 1880. Jacinto Duva (de barba espesa) da un cigarillo a su hermano Mauricio Duva... The founding of San Mauricio...

Zanja Alsina, a kind of of the Wall of China--but carved into the earth...

(Lugar Historico)
ZANJA DE ALSINA (1876-1877)
EXTENSION 374 Km.
Paralelo a la misma se originó, casi una rastrillada mas,
el "Camino de Zanja", el que Ud. está ubicado
catorce eran los fortines en el partido de Rivadavia

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Analect 2.474x



15 April 2009. Chill wind, endless blue. Woman in long black wool coat standing alongside light green car with curvy roof. Seen for an an instant...

Then, the good doctor, in queu at 7-eleven with white poly bag of ripe bananas, dark yellow with fine brown lines. Ripple of color on the label... Workcrew continues on roof as well: Jerome Blank's green-rated shingles, installed by veteran tradesman with white hair, in perfect rows. The younger ones attend...

Calle Florida, reseen. Porteños all...

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Analect 2.474x



14 April 2009. Blue all the way across. Two workmen high up on Navigator Escrow--now the Jerome Blank Building. New shingles on an old mansard roof. Sound of hammer from a distance--reassuring... Water bottle balanced on wooden batten...

Thoughts of repair. As in a note from across time. "I have been reading Analects for about a year now..." Where we left off--the small house on California Street, upstairs. Melville's Pierre...or, the Ambiguities... The affinities, too... A sailmaker's loft in BC...

"...on Prince Edward Island..."

Monday, April 13, 2009

Analect 2.473x



13 April 2009. Sunny with fluffy clouds to the south, filtered light. As it should be.

Long blue pipes stacked to side of street--heavy PVC with steel tubes at the ends, rusted, to join. Metaphors of emplacement. Runs and flanges...

Late in the night: a discussion of what's been written about the design of parks, following Adrián's Castellano text... Andrew Jackson Downing, Olmsted and all the rest. A move to corral the maximalization of capital--those long New York blocks with street-front galore. Sarmiento's visit--to a cemetary in Brooklyn, the Green-Wood, hyphen likewise rusted, a golden red...

Friday, April 10, 2009

Analects 2.472x



10 April 2009. Yellow push from the east, embroidered pockets of blue... Nicola asleep, curled, just under the piano...a new place...

Conversation out of early Joyce, currently being conducted in copyshop aisle... Ivy Day in the Committee Room...

"I've been very fortunate, I've had the most amazing clients, ever since July..."

"I was that way, I took five jobs..."

"It will turn around..."

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Analect 2.471x



9 April 2009. Passover morning, nice spring rain. Gentle and unexpected...

Slowness of the seder, word by word, rabi Eliezer, rabi Tarfon...rabi Elazar ben Azarya... they're back, camped out again in B'nei Brak, holding forth of an evening, long ago...

We rehearse their words--a sequence of questions, really--as to what is true...

And the students arrive, only at dawn...

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Analect 2.470x



8 April. Erev pesach...locomotive skies, a rumbly gray with dashes of light. Hamid on front walk of 7-eleven, under the eves, having a smoke...

Compadritos of Parque Patricios, barrio reo, del tiempo anterior... Walk of the porteño, somewhere in the shoulders, slightly raised, a quizzical but definite anticipation. As if a question should follow--something philosophical, but still earthy. The remnants of a Europe lost--Seurat's trees, or those of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot--wirey branches, finely limbed, taut curves with a mind of their own...

Rousseau, Proudhon, Babeuf...

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Analect 2.469x



7 April 2009. Fishtail clouds, dark aire, fuming smoke against gray sky... Beeping sound of beer truck backing--Red something-or-other Jamaican lager. Jamaica? Lager? Young man in brown hood pulls up slatted door...

The girls of Quilmes, projected back a bit in time. Colegio Nacional in 1961--when the first handful of visitors from the liceo appeared, in starched white smocks, a tentative presence, distributed evenly amongst 500 boys... Regrouping instantly at every break...

Monday, April 06, 2009

Analect 2.468x



6 April 2008. Butter sky, cool.

Names of birds: chingolo-- zonotrichia, sparrow family. Here with crest. Ycancho en el norte aregntino, cachilo en el este, chuschiú en Córdoba, vichi en Tucumán; marumbé en idioma guaraní...

Peter's birthday...

Friday, April 03, 2009

Analect 2.467x



3 April 2009. Mellow morning. Young girl, tiny hands, riding on her father's shoulders, looking this way and that... His heavy leather coat, brown courderoy trousers, emblems of masculinity...

Or Little Richard, at his baby grand, in the potched-up bathtub seat, holding first a miniature fluff towell, then a bar of soap, and finally, with a quick double squeeze, the pièce de résistance, a small inert yellow rubber ducky...

Leaning in...

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Analect 2.466x



2 April 2009. A sunny morning...

Humberto 1º y La Rioja--o si fuera San Ignacio, esquina del café Margot. Libros temática ciudadana--y cositas distintas. Una papusa tomando café, sin duda, con los tipos del barrio. Buenos Aires sur, una fábula de cuentos, de escenas particulares, temblando...de buen humor...

"o tu voz, donde está..."

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Analect 2.465x



1 April 2009. Weather master says it's a go. Early morning tv, scratchy noise at dawn, test pattern and a table of booze. The Jim Beam bottle on it's side, bar smells, late night crowd...

But wait, that's Nicola's fine head, with the impossibly soft ears, leaping onto window end of bed, making her way up past calf and thigh and hip, tentatively eager for a caress...

Two otters, side-by-side, their more-than-human hands joined in furry embrace, parted for a few moments--the exigencies of the tide, then regained...