Sunday, April 03, 2011

For recent drawings, please see the Meta-lects

Monday, March 14, 2011

Analect 2.851x



9 March 2011. Pato argentino. We'll have to look into the source of this one--pato colorado, maybe, with its velvety reddish gray crown, blending into white below, on a marsh that Hudson himself might have known. Vicinity of Chascomus, southeast of La Plata by a few miles, but "pura pampa..." Rereading his stories, that truthful edge, sometimes dark--an acknowledgment of something real...

M48

Analect 2.850x



8 March 2011. Gray morning, rain on car...

Situationist Manifesto. Ken Knabb's face, reappearing, after 30 years. A book on Rexroth, the politics of poems. "Relevance..."

As with the ducks of El Tigre. Pato Picazo, deep red eye embedded in velvety black. Invisible waters, brown and gold-green, slow-moving, from the Iguazu.

The Rosy-billed Pochard...

M47

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

To continue with recent Analects, for the present you'll need to visit my Meta-lects site

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Analect 2.845x



3 February 2011. Sun.

Mexican couple in the 7-eleven, find myself pondering whether they're man and wife or mother and son. Back of the woman's hands--quite beautiful--often this way when there's a certain sense of age. On his cheek--a narrow line of beard, just a hint, a kind of memory, a noble past, or a way of being, sense of dignity revealed... Outside, pulled up broadly on the asphalt lot--bulbous white late-model truck with gardener's inscription, black metal-strut trailer just behind...

Nebraska, late-winter. Lincoln, a college town on the prairie, 1977. The breakfast place with a German name (Kuhl's?), local folks gathered, bib-overalls, coffee mugs, eyeing the stranger...

Closer to home--Nibbs, on San Pablo. Alex and his wife, their energetic Korean manner, back counter with aging Beatles shots, a flock of dollar bills folded into origami birds...

Gemütlich smiles...

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Analect 2.843x



1 February 2011. Fog at dawn, blurred trees, quiet.

Sun breaking through, mid-morning now. Seeing Po Chü-i's great poem, on a borrow'd screen, code unknown--his noble seven-character lines garbled into smallish black boxes, on the diagonal--each containing a question mark...a few letters--random?--scattered in between. But nothing is random, the boxes are not really black, the question is always an answer...and we are everywhere the goose, and the freer.

At one moment, wings lighter now, flight...

* * *

(Po Chü-I, Setting a Migrant Goose Free, David Hinton translation)

Monday, January 31, 2011

Analect 2.842x



31 January 2011. "Ojos limpios como el chingolo..." Eyes as clear as those of a sparrow. A line from a song by José Larralde, La Noche del Peludero...

The chingolo--a small bird, zonotrichia capensis--capensis originally referring to an African origin, on the Cape of Good Hope--which appears to have been a mistranscription of Cayena, the capital of French Guyana, the p replacing the y...and a birthplace in the Americas...

The head of the chingolo is gray, with prominent black stripe, and a smaller bonnet of gray. The throat is white, with a collar "de color canela..." Cinnamon. The back, brownish, with patches of black. The chest is brown, "con reflejos de pardo..." "A combination of colors and shapes that make it a very pleasing creature..."

The local names for the chingolo vary from province to province. Ycancho in the north of Argentina; cachilo in the east. Chuschiú in Córdoba. Vichi in Tucumán. Marumbé in the language of the Guaraní. Kiken in Tehuelche. And in Mapuche, chincol...

* * *

A man, singing, in the evening, Volga, vidalitá...

Friday, January 28, 2011

Analect 2.841x



28 January 2011. Gray again, cold to the bone...

Gathered around small table, warm room...yerba mate, Cruz de Malta, a golden-brown gourd with silver rim, large in size, filled with dusky herb. Bombilla--bright metal--set in along the side, water near boiling. Fogón, a camp fire on the pampa--the word itself indigenous in origen, from the language of the Indians of the Andes...Quechua, meaning "llanura"--an open plain. More "empty" really--an expanse of land where the sun sets over a long horizon. "...ve morir el sol allá, detras de los juncos..." You see it die, there, beyond the reeds...

Lagunas y sauzales...

Thoughts of Chuck, and the sea...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Analect 2.840x



27 January 2011. January sun...

El gaucho pintor. Note the brushes tucked in behind. Facón? Forget it. Not this time around. More Pan Apolek... An understanding of nature through the nature of a face, a gesture, "the turn of a back..."

La Pampa y la Montaña. Atahualpa, Este Largo Camino. Quite amazing to reread his words. "El hombre de la montaña le va creando voces, le devuelve voces que no esperaba...." (The man of the montains--voices come to him, voices return to him, unexpectedly...) The man of the plains (el sur) speaks in a strong voice. For the man of the man of the mountain, "todo parece un adios..." (everything seems a farewell)...

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Analect 2.839x



25 January 2011. Sun, and warm...

Yesterday, with Yael...

Friday, January 21, 2011

Analect 2.838x



21 January 2011. Battersea Bridge, Tower of London, local lament. Border of despair--for no good reason. Or for the best of reasons. A genuine wander--"it was no wonder"--to redeem beyond the realm of fragments, the writing of lists, recordings of the names of things known. As with the horse of the Argentine. Pelajes de caballo...the coats of horses. Coats, as in "a covering which offers warmth"--or is it protection--or simply a sense of difference? Beauty? Names become a kind of incantation--magic--the way the sound reflects (embodies) a world. A delight. But can it be shared? Translation--somewhere between insult and total damage. Not quite that bad--except that all is lost, all is lost...

The rider, the seafarer, the explorer...

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Analect 2.837x



18 January 2011. Sun, warm morning...

No los conozco. That's how it is, strange tilt of a hat, hem of a dress. Familiar, yet impossibly different. Imposiblement distintos... Reachable in language--the glide of each word. "You sound like an Italian," observation on the part of Marcos. As opposed to a resident of Oaxaca? Well, yes--an Italian. Italiano. That immigrant lilt, transferred slowly, by ship, to the horizon of the River Plate, Río La Plata. Color of lion--color de león--Lugones' phrase. Everyone quotes him--and rightly so...

A gift, bound in rough calfskin--small volume of Martín Fierro. This from mis compañeros in the Colegio Nacional. Quinto 3ra, the year 1962. Their names, too, signed one by one. Dip and flourish--muy argentino...

Time...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Analect 2.836x



14 January 2011. Pilchas gauchas, on a sunny morning. Orlando Vera Cruz, song of instruction and lament. Admonition, but from a position of the seeming inferior. His own view, of course--not in the least so. A matter of pride--knowledge as well... Un tipo del campo, a type, in the mimetic sense--Erich Auerbach, "Odysseus' Scar," read many years ago. The way in which a culture--that is to say, an entire view of the world--becomes manifest in word, langauge, story...song. Not such an unusual view, perhaps--we live this each day--but formulated here--brought together--by Auerbach in his exile during the war, a refugee in Istanbul--sans library, or notes, he wrote the entire book (Mimesis) from the primary sources themselves...

Older woman just now, in 7-eleven window. Oddly blond hair, small glasses propped on her nose, standing in the light, bending over to scratch free the marks on a lottery ticket... Habit and hope...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Analect 2.835x



13 January 2011. Modus rainus. Light gray mist, shifting to something more constant, then back again.

Torn between the Russians and the Argentines. Ancient slavic lands--rivers flowing south from the middle of a continent--Dnieper, Volga--and the peoples who live alongside them, older tribes, clans--predki--ancestors (russkie, ukraintsy, belorusy)... The authority of language--or is it just the words themselves--names and such. Spoken, heard, recognized, remembered...

Dub--an oak tree, something on that order...

Horses and lands. A rider's gait...

Song...

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Analect 2.834x



12 January 2011. Warmer, with sun. Amsterdam cat, sitting in the window...

Many scans later--a morning of tests, or, a testing morning. Anger can be enjoyable, but it doesn't help. Patience is infinite, time not. The balances...

Urok. Lessons, these Russian drawings, words leading to images. Or to the words themselves. Sound, in part. Listening to Tolstoy--sound of writing... His voice...

Istok, source. Another word. Water, for one. Fuente y manantial. Water from the earth... Each creature's need...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Analect 2.833x (Урок 4)



11 January 2011. Cold, gray day. Crossing street against the wind... Two cups of hot Brazilian bold, smiling clerk, young, dark hair, Lahore or beyond. Grizzled man in plaid jacket, curly, bending over transparent counter to pick lottery cards. Array of hope, laid out under glass...

Headlines notwithstanding--or therein. Gleaming face of killer, a demented pride--his accomplishment of the day. "Dangerous..." Alongside, budget threats--a slower demise...

Holding coffee between my knees--no cups on table here. To humor Lynn... "Where is my gold star, my gold star?"

Monday, January 10, 2011

Analect 2.832x (Урок 3)



9 January 2011. Cold sun..

Russian lessons, with misspellings. Misspelling lessons, with some Russian. Book from teacher at Columbia--Leon Stillman--Graded Readings in Russian History. Chteniya po russkoj istorii. New York and Oxford, 1960 and 1990. Walter Benjamin--the only true things one can say about the universe being the place and date of the publication of books.

Benjamin. Thoughts of Kitaj. Photos of him, later years, a refugee in LA. Incongruous, after his "long period of impunity"--the London years. Dark rooms with shelves lined with books. Not quite like the Russian shelves lined with books, though. There in the background in so many photos. Homey shelves, more than scholarly. Books as a life.

Last night, late--War and Peace. Desciption of Nikolai Rostov, later in life. Lisiye Gory. Princess Marya, their three children.
His library--in winter. I prochital kazhduyu knigu--and he read each book to conclusion...

* * *

Kitaj quoting Robert Lowell: "Nothing is more respectable than a long period of impunity"

Friday, January 07, 2011

Analect 2.831x (Урок 2)



7 January 2011. Misty sun, heading up Fell Street towards the park, golden light, late afternoon. Offshore breeze at Ocean Beach, large swell, sweeping in to abrupt humpy peaks. Two small figures, almost lost, far outside, ... Brown birds with beautifully fuzzy heads, lining the parapet....sparrows, for one. The starlings alongside, darting in for immediate peanut gratification. Sparrows more hesitant. Vorabyey...

As with the Seurat sketch--in oil--Pauvis de Chavannes' Fisherman--a single figure, alone in a boat, the canvas itself, pictured among the reeds, shifting light, dappled greens...small moment of mystery, a living touch...

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Analect2.830x (Урок 1)



6 January 2011. Warm sun, bright day...

Young woman and her mother, seated alongsided, from some far place--Middle East, Iran... Voices in another tongue...

As with Rambal, the French soldier who makes his way to the Russian camp, in the night...through heavy snow. Gathered around the kostyor--Russian for bonfire--they offer him vodka, kasha gruel... So many, lost, from both sides... "Moyi druzya, moyi druzya..." "My friends, my friends..."

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Analect 2.829x



4 January 2011. Winter sun.

Story of a horse. A few lines, smudged here and there, repaired and revised--coming into being, slipping a bit, then reappearing.

Hi hum...