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...