Friday, July 30, 2010

Analect 3.8x



30 July 2010. Season of the reeds. A bird or two--coot and grebe. Image of return, or beginning. As with each evening--marking a new day.

Quiet waters, lapping.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Analect3.7x.jpg



29 July 2010. A little close to the edge (meant quite literally). David's violin--the Dvorak Slavonic Dance No. 2, he launches in, impromtu, as if the arching studio ceiling had been constructed for that very moment. Stories--Fritz Kreisler (advising Brahms), Mischa Elman (a bit too slow), and David Oistrach (just right). "A late 19th century French instrument," David's own violin--and stories of his mother, born in Tartu, during the War, the family somehow making its way to a DP camp in Germany, then by ship to America... His grandfather, lost en route...

"It needs to be played like a dance..."

Connections and impossibilities. We reach out, but the clarity, the clarity remains an insistent challenge. Allusion and resonance--as in he music--the dance section already referring to an earlier time. The Austro-Hungarian Empire--these kinds of longings for the past seem to have come built in...

David hands me his iPod--he's listening, miraculously and in parallel--to the same Ardis recording of Voina i Mir... Beautiful Russian voice of Evgeni Ternovsky...

War and Peace. To remake the world...

* * *

Dvorak's Slavonik Dance No. 2

Analect 3.6x



28 July 2010. The afternoon in Oceanside, on Fowles Street, the year 1991, Dad sitting on the low couch, opposite the television, which is showing the news. It's the precise moment when the Soviet flag iss being lowered for the last time from over the Kremlin. I remember watching his face--wondering at his thoughts, after more than seven decades... But his expression didn't tell me, it was impossible to know...

Ispitania...

* * *

(Note on the drawing--Perhaps inevitably, not entirely my father, but an overlapping of the shape of his head with that of my own, and with my brother Peter's. As if the finding--the discovery--must always involve the three of us.)

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Analect 3.5x



27 July 2010. Attention on the big wave. Grandview, maybe--but not without a touch of Windansea (view down light-colored La Jolla street to first hump of wave out beyond pungent tide-pool rocks). Or even the pier (Oceanside, that is) where the middle swell allowed for left or right slide. Left being the most risky--in that a forest of pilings was never far off--mussel clumps on creosote logs, each fitted in at specific angle. It broke up once, in the middle of the night--a winter storm--huge combers rolling in from the north--roiling...

Always that way, at certain times of year--the wind-blown ocean, whitecaps, crazy waves this-way-and-that--the power of no order. Well, no order that we can fathom...

Tolstoy, all thoughout--first the event, and then it's meaning...made clear, but only at an infinite distance...

Monday, July 26, 2010

Analect 3.4x



27 July 2010. New world. Hotmail has changed the rules of the game--two small icon-sized images appear, needing a click--and reminiscent of the down-side of gmail--which means that my beautiful stack of drawings may be no more. Not entirely--let me be perfectly clear--I have no idea what's going on. But this represents change, big time...

So, one dives in. It was all a great experiment, in any case...

Two views of the mountain--a place known as Eagle Track. But known that way only to the hawks, the squirrels, and one daily guest, who makes her way up the path, greeting each tree. Some deer--a doe and her two fawns--appearing now by the side of the path...

I know not where...

Friday, July 23, 2010

Analect 3.3x



23 July 2010. So, is it worth it to save a tooth? Or join the masses with a hole in your mouth--an ancient tradition, yes--the toothless grin. (And Gram had lost all her teeth by the time she was 30...) One survives...

But still, but still, the delirious drugs--blocking all pain until just when one least expects it, and then (and then) that single tiny strand of nerve fiber...

Steve Martin, the film clip--predatory dentist on a motorcycle.... (Like Cecil's story of the polar bear--out there on the ice, you need a big gun...) Pretty much covers it...

In any case, there are deeper fears...

* * *

Better a nice walk with Chauncey and Odette...

Analect 3.2x



22 July 2010. Exigencies of the road, on a gray morning. In this instance, a PGE truck parked on the diagonal at intersection of Peralta and Solano--heavy metal disk pulled up onto the street, yellow ribbed ventilation tube, men in rumpled orange work clothes, rubber boots, leaning over, investigating.

Investigating, that's it--but with a less precise goal. (Can urban plumbing ever be precise?) A wandering, amidst the balance points--as with the various implements attached to the back of the truck--a yellow cannister, line of rope, state license plate mounted high, and one dull red stop reflector on off position. Traffic cones.

Voice of Tolstoy, over tiny 21st century ear-buds, another gathering at the salon of Anna Pavlovna. Ippolit returned from Vienna, his irrverant humor intact. "The King of Prussia...," pronounced in gravelly French. She takes umbrage, a royalist to the core...

Pierre Bezukhov, gone now, far to the south, to be with the land...

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Analect 3.1x



22 July 2010. "The drawings are ahead of the painting," an old expression, but no less valuable for it. Meaning that the points reached in a drawing are clearer, more manifest, than what follows in the painting. (Of course, the situation can be reversed.)

And sometimes the drawing is right there in the painting, sneaked on, from the side, as if it were just an everyday kind of thing... A surprise, like the ringing of a phone...

Kusok Chleba, my love... A bite of bread...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Analect 2.755x




21 July 2010. Overcast morning...

Sergei and Tatiana Nikitin, mid-1990s--singing together in a casual but adept kind of harmony--at home in their own on-stage world. Camera turns to the hall--panning over a sea of once-Soviet faces...pausing here and there...

A couple in their middle years, the man in coat and tie, nicely heavy eyebrows over a thoughtful expression--his eyes blurred behind a prominent pair of glasses. Life of the mind, an analyst in some noticeable respect. His wife, equally alert, but with her own dreams...

Brich-Mulla... Words from a poem, set to music by Sergei Nikitin. A town in the mountains of Turkestan--the Tian Shan--and a child's own yearning, listening to his mother's story...


Golden Brich-Mulla...

* * *

Brich Mulla, their 1962 version

Brich Mulla, from the mid-1990s?

Analect 2.754x



20 July 2010. Tisha B'Av. Living room floor, yesterday evening--returning to the story of Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza... R. Yochanan ben Zakkai: "It was the excessive punctiliousness of R. Zechariah ben Avkulos..."


Late yesterday--Sergei Nikitin, singing Brich-Mullá, with companion musician on button accordion, Russian-style. Story of a life--a tarantas... Gogol's image for all of Russia, at the end of Dead Souls--a racing troika, but racing to where...?

Brich-Mullá, brich-mullí, brich-mullé, brich-mullú...brich-mulloyú...

Play-words, a grammar's cycle--and also a kind of pause, a post-station on the road of song...

* * *

Sergey Nikitin, 2009?

Monday, July 19, 2010

Analect 2.753x



19 July 2010. Following the Russians, a sunny morning, cool wind, the regulars up and down the avenue... Pogulyat'--to stroll.

Gulyal po Uralu Chapaev-Geroj--he strode out through the Urals, Chapaev the hero... On sokolom rvalsya s polkami na boj...

Whereas here, rather quiet this morning--the normal hubub, a phone call or two, sound of change from the register drawer, "how about a bag," or, "have a good day, Mr. Morris," called out from the back room, "do you have all your originals," that sort of thing... Mechanics of the everyday, a dependable hum of experience, applied in discrete touches, always forward...

Vpered vy tovarishchi...ne smeyte otpustat'... Forward, comrades...

A life lived and relived...

* * *

Meaning of giving--or is it also a taking? Terrible doubts, middle of the night, not so much failure as the impossibility of making a connection--as if the threads from such diverse ribbons (lugares sueltos) might be joined--and to what end? A pleasure in the fulfillment--yes--but more an impossible acknowledgement...of something more grand...

The other side of the river--the other shore of a single stream...

Friday, July 16, 2010

Analect 2.752x


16 July 2010. Summer, yes...

Kornei Chukovsky, surrounded by a group of Russian children. They've made a place for him on the stage--a large chair is brought forward, as he stands there, in his dark suit, smiling. The children gather round. He begins by saying he'll read one of his stories--and needs their help. That they supply the sounds of each of the animals--which, as children they freely do. But first a test. "Oh no, that's not it yet!" he says with a certain sternness. They try again--with much more energy. This time he beams, and the story follows...

Scene earlier, in a classroom, this time with an appealing young teacher, who points to a photograph of Chukovsky. He asks his class if they know Yuri Gagarin? Yes, the first comonaut. He then tells that when Gagarin was about to meet Kornej Chukovsky, in a public ceremony of some kind, his first gesture was to bend forward and kiss Chukovsky's hand.

An order in the universe...

* * *

Kornei Chukovsky

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Analect 2.751x



15 July 2010. Warm sun, white produce truck alongside, briefly, young driver hops back in, holding one or another liquid...

Vlaga, as the Mason expounds to Pierre in the waiting room of a remote post station--a purifying moisture...

Temnaya Noch--Dark Is the Night, with Mark Bernes singing, just the guitar and a few deceptively simple notes, decisive and mournful... Frieze-like frames of his wartime companions, piecing out their letters home in an underground bunker, on the front, faces held against another kind of darkness...

For a few moments--sound of water, dripping from above, overflowing...

* * *

(Note: Image in the words of the song--"...I know that you're not asleep, and by the baby's crib, you secretly wipe away a tear...")

Temnaya Noch--Dark Is the Night

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Analect 2.750x


14 July 2010. Sparkle sun, early...

Somewhere between a tree and a sword. Let's go for the tree, becoming a branch... Puteshestvie--on the road. Peredvizhnik--a traveller, long robe. Standing to the right, a choir of soldiers--the year is 1944--on a stage with banner in Hebrew script just above, Russian words as well. Bound as one...

Zhdi Menya... Wait for Me...

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Analect2.749x



13 July 2010. A Tuesday, gray skies.

From a portrait of Prince A.A. Dolgorukov...of the long hands (that's how I always understood it), the original too everywhere present--a celebratory oil with hints of something untoward--the eyes and mouth in contradiction. Leave them out, just one Larry River's hot spot, around which a face--or a cat or a stallion--can form at will. As in the fourth grade, Horne Street School, up on the hill, where Mrs. Malone, recently arrived (is that possible?) from Iowa would pronounce La Jolla with a hard "J", to am roomfull of sly smiles. "Fingers Malone," our sobriquet--from where? Film Noire still on a distant horizon, Orson Welles unknown...

Grasses finding root, Cossacks circling the field...

Analect 2.748x




12 July 2010. Istomin, Vasily. From a portrait painted in 1799. Woman in a Blue Dress, sitter unknown, together with another painted in the same year-- a man in a dark blue kaftan--again, sitter unknown...

Friday, July 09, 2010

Analect 2.747x



9 July 2010. Gray.

Drawing as a form of murder. No, that's much too extreme--but the shape of this guy's head remains beyond me. Same elongation as Pasternak, but here, in a painting from 1925, by Victor Nikolaevich Perelman, the poet has disappeared, to be replaced by an acronymn--rabkor--rabochij korrespondent (worker-correspondent). Knowingness of the structure of the painting--masculine jaw, jutting but not too heavy, wide lips, cigarette in place, at an angle. Eyes cast to the side, thoughtful but clear-minded --"eyes on the ball", we might say...and then the ever so slightly beau brummell hair--Soviet cultural worker as incipient matinee idol. Which bothers me most--an inability to catch all this (congenital?)--or an ongoing impatience with a forced truth--also an impossibility...?

So, Pan Apolek appears alongside, as easy as butter on roll, paint box and cap and well-reinforced German boots...

With Gottfried, his blind garmoshka companion, singing together on the road...

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Analect 2.746x



8 July 2010. Again, gray, cool...

Listening to reading of Pan Apolek. Я помню: между прямых и светлых стен стояла паутинная тишина летнего утра... (I remember: between straight and glowing walls stood the cob-webbed quiet of a summer morning...) Babel describing Novgorod-Volynsk, 1922.

But here, Leningrad, twenty years later. A painting from a summer's exhibition in the Tretyakov. Neo-Impressionism (for lack of a better term) brought to bear on the siege of a city in winter. Sloping piles of snow adorn each cornice (Apollo in the Snow), and a single figure stands to confront the pinkish neo-classical facade of a building unknown... Pale gray barrage balloons hover in a darker gray sky, over silent roofs. A single band of whitish crimson juts across flash of horizon...

Amsterdam, half a century later still, summer again. The street just outside Avraham Unger's flat, near the Javaplein. A songbird in a cage, placed there each morning by its owner to spend the day in open air...

Visitors...

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Analect 2.745x



8 July 2010. Sea of reeds, or thereabouts. On a gray July morning. Sound of heavy yellow truck making its way down the street, men in orange vests of some immensely stiff material...

Bending reeds, cattails and sedge, tall stalks over gray waters. A bird or two, hidden in the shadows, Swamp wren and grebe, their unique song... 

Visiting...

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Analect 2.744x



6 July 2010. Coldish and gray, bay wind...

Moe's face, 7-eleven counter, wave of black black hair over narrow forehead, eyes alert, a little tired...

The Russian loon--chernozobaya gagara--black-throated diver. Gagara--an ancient word, like the creature itself (this being the lore). And Yuri Gagarin--the first cosmonaut--his name from the same source...

Monday, July 05, 2010

Analect 2.743x



5 July 2010. Gray morning, after evening mist, plain of sparkling lights, muted booms...

Figure in a field, overlooking a river, Voronezh...

Friday, July 02, 2010

Analect 2.742x



2 July 2010. Cool July morning, sunny breeze...

Bakers Beach and the grand tour, beginning with De Young and the Impressionists--and a dense press of onlookers, admitted in batches, crowd control. Overdose of media, too--the photos and photomurals and video screens and walking tapes and pocket charts on wall--however, nothing can touch the beauty of even most fleeting of the Renoirs...a woman's veiled face, the black spots of lace each alive and different--or the red line on the ribbon of Bazille's slipper, tucked in at the bottom to fix and enliven a narrow S curve. Or the intense light of Algiers--Valley of the Wild Women, all heavy reds and browns and brown greens--pushed color in middle value range, moving towards darker clumps. A gathering of pools of light, or dark, not a distict edge in the bunch, pointing towards the later paintings. Pissarro, too--the shock of the paleness of his colors--so high key, the price of a vibrant immediacy (Hoarfrost, first, and then the Self-Portrait from 1874). No surprise that he wanted pale frames as well...

Later, the ocean, white strokes on gray-green--windswept. Young family on the sand, mother and two youngsters--who dig holes in the sand and lounge about. Young couple reading, books propped up on the diagonal. Elmore Leonard and Michael Chabon, stretched out side by side. Lithe figure of a man running full tilt on wet sand--his small dog struggling to keep up...

Stow Lake, and other old spots in the park--paddle-boats on placid green water, gulls and pigeons and Canada geese, all hoping for handouts on nearby grass. Then across town on Vanness to the Bay again--Aquatic Park, late afternoon, beautiful northern summer light, slow distance swimmers in their patient back-and-forth--two kayaks on sand at foot of steps, and a crew of young people in half-donned wetsuits, getting ready to enter the water...

Thoughtful man, thirty or so, carefully dressed, walking a Wheaton terrier...

Back along the Embarcadero--old streetcars borrowed from Milano, Birmingham, the castoffs of another age, lovingly repaired and repainted, city as theater...

* * *

Late last night--Austerlitz, Nikolai Rostóv...