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)