Analects

2011-04-03T12:09:00.001-07:00

For recent drawings, please see the Meta-lects

Analect 2.851x

2011-03-14T18:08:00.005-07:00

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

2011-03-14T18:08:00.003-07:00

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

2011-02-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

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

Analect 2.845x

2011-02-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.843x

2011-02-01T13:43:00.000-08:00

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)

Analect 2.842x

2011-01-31T14:40:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.841x

2011-01-28T12:11:00.001-08:00

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...

Analect 2.840x

2011-01-27T13:25:00.001-08:00

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)...

Analect 2.839x

2011-01-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

25 January 2011. Sun, and warm...

Yesterday, with Yael...

Analect 2.838x

2011-01-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.837x

2011-01-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.836x

2011-01-15T19:00:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.835x

2011-01-13T16:44:00.002-08:00

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...

Analect 2.834x

2011-01-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.833x (Урок 4)

2011-01-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

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?"

Analect 2.832x (Урок 3)

2011-01-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

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"

Analect 2.831x (Урок 2)

2011-01-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect2.830x (Урок 1)

2011-01-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

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..."

Analect 2.829x

2011-01-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

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...

Analect 2.827x

2010-12-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

24 December 2010. Mild sun, beads of water on car window...sparkling against dark.

Seamus Heaney--the human chain. Which is the more proper phrase, of course. An subtle rejoinder--not to Roth himself, perhaps, but to the diminished view. "A snag in the road..." A tree branch or trunk, sprawled across the macadam. You look it up, and what do you see: road and tree. That's why it doesn't stand to be too literal about these things.

"A man with his arms raised..." Kafka, Diaries, 1913. You see, he has us already--arms lifted first, the purpose to follow...

Analect 2.826x (for Sergey Zadvorny)

2010-12-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

22 December 2010. December days...

Word this morning from Tatiana--Sergey in a hospital, in Kharkov...

Our wishes and hopes...

Angela, too...

* * *

(Для Сережи--"Вы встабайте-ко, братцы...")

Analect 2.825x

2010-12-21T12:24:00.001-08:00

21 December 2010. Longest night, shortest days. Zimá...

Here, a chilly breeze crosses the street, mildly clear...

Claims of a song. Svetalana--chansons russes--the ones her father sang to her, with his guitar, when she was a girl. Songs from another world, another time... "Le Vieil Erable," The Old Maple. Stary Klën...two voices, rising and falling, intertwined. A hastened embrace, a feigned denial--her face, just inside the door, eyes bright--Is he waiting...?

Always...

* * *

Старый Клёч (Девчата, 1961)

* * *

Analect 2.824x

2010-12-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

20 December 2010. Thunder, late afternoon downpour... This morning, sun and clouds...more rain...

Siberian visions. A fairy queen, land east of the Urals. Rivers almost without names, each one longer than the Volga...

Denisov and his partisan band. Petya's arrival, unannounced... A message from the general in a rain-soaked envelope... Trousers rolled up over his boots, wide face, lively eyes...

"Nash Platún..."

Analect 2.823x

2010-12-17T11:44:00.001-08:00

17 December 2010. Bluster and gray--winds all over town... On the bay--steel-coloured water...

A brass bowl, tarnished at the edges--carried in two hands, sometimes one, or held by the rim, along one's side. "I need the words of an inspiring teacher." "No, you must work harder on your practice..."

Analect 2.822x

2010-12-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

16 December 2010. December sun--for the morning, at least. Cold, brilliant...warming...

A room filled with an unimaginable assortment of things--directions galore--paintings, photographs (a mysterious woman in a gypsy dress, focus unsure), objets (including Jeremy's tribal drum, dark African wood, once next to the fireplace in his old house in the hills...), the jouncy figures of animals by a man from Dominica--or was it the Dominican Republic--rabbit holes and by ways...

Imagining Joseph Spence, for a moment, seated by a limestone wall in Nassau--or on Andros Island... ("Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer...")

Pieces of stone, pastel, pink and coral, smaller crafted work on shelves by door. "People brought things. I couldn't say no..." And Ariel's theater puppets plopped in each of the show-case windows onto Solano. Like something out of the Commedia dell'Arte, or a canal street house in Amsterdam... (The Nieuwe Prinsengracht...)

Mythos--Paris and the Three Graces (we'll forget discord for the moment). More Aglaia and Thalia, and maybe Jaimie, their sophisticated younger sister from Los Angeles (with her mysterious Korean past)...

How does one know these things... Yes, how does one know...?

Analect 2.821x

2010-12-15T12:59:00.002-08:00

15 December 2010. Intermittent sun...

Steamy car windows from swim gear and rain...an imperfect gasket seal, that would be the technical description. But more like windows in New Orleans, on Decatur, somewhere near the river. Giant ship's wake in the night--invisible wave of black water, massive, welling up, sweeping the levee...

A bending branch, ocean winds...

Analect 2.820x

2010-12-15T12:59:00.001-08:00

14 December 2010. Gray and rain, clearing for a while...

Older Chinese couple, with grandchild in stroller, knit caps all around, on a wet morning, the woman holding her arms down across her waist, hands clasped, their slow gait. Turning and looking now--middle distance. Something lost, something remembered...

A coot on the marshlands of Argentina--W.H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago... Provincia de Buenos Aires, somewhere in the southeast. The estancia of his family--those years...

Leonard, too...

Analect 2.819x

2010-12-13T13:12:00.001-08:00

13 December 2010. Gray sky, pale yellow sun....

Yesterday's gathering, Songs and Places, with guests. Laura's mother, from Venezuela, her beautiful high cheekbones... Sara and friend tucked in against wall. David's violin--mysterious and wildly accomplished, a tango, translated from the Polish into his own Russian--and Greg's entry, stage right, clarinet in hand, proceeding through room to the tune of Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho. Four of us, wooden chairs, makeshift stage, following each other's notes... Michelle--voice of Billy Holiday in the snow, Amsterdam, winter 1969... Then and now...

Michael and Irene and Daniel--also of today...

For just a moment, Andrea and Viktor. He turns, smiling... And Colm with Catherine Rose--the Hank William's tune (I hear that lonesome whipporwill...) Chuck's banjo, at the outset. May the Circle Be Unbroken. Mauricio, Christie...

Anthony, his own songs, and one by John Prine...Christmas in Prison. Anthony kinds of lines. Later, Cryin' Time, more Ray Charles than pure Buck... The last phrase needs a pause... But that's okay. We come together on an old sailors' song--The Greenland Whale Fisheries, and then Shenandoah. A capella style, free rhythm, letting the notes resound. David singing bass...

Yahya's mom, and cousin and sis--side by side, smiling, singing, especially when he comes up for Beulah Land--and--shoulders rolling--a good-spirited homespun version of everyone's favorite, Day-O. Family standing by picture wall, looking with care...

Christie, Sarah and Lindsay--a step dance in back of room. Sarah's voice, too... Wine and food (Anca's Romanian spinach pie--I'm making up the Romanian part)--and soda bread from you know who... Many many good things. Terry, smiling, with tray of something dark and sweet and downhome...

Swing low, sweet chariot... swing low...

Anaalect 2.818x

2010-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

10 December 2010. Woman in the rain, Solano...dark coat, open hair... Yesterday evening, Sarah, in sandals, fine white laces high around her ankles... Each generation...

Songs and stories, not necessarily in that order. One launches in--the flow, the continuities...

Memory of George Oppen. Severity and a sailor's grace...

Analect 2.817x

2010-12-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

8 December 2010. Berkeley rain, steady gray mist. Mo alone at counter, 7-eleven, looking to the side, out window onto wet street--scene from a film...

A drawing and a dance--elements follow, in balance. Or at least that's the hope--one dives in, Jacob and the angel--a struggle over the meaning of the divine (is that it?)--each time renewed. One line after the next, parts clamor for first place--now it's Samson and the lion--but that's much too grand. More Bonnard--a touch of light on a balustrade at a certain time of day. A bowl of peaches on a white table cloth, late afternoon...

These kinds of things...

Analect 2.816x

2010-12-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

7 December 2010. November sun--but wait, it's December...

Whisp of pale white dry cleaner's smoke over dark roofline of 7-eleven. "V'nekotorym rodzhe..." In a certain--or uncertain--manner... Gogol's slyly interruptive assertions, from another world...

The characters on the ranchos. Estates, as it were. Manilov, Sobakeivich, Mme Korobochka... Plyushkin's garden...

Or, a theater hall in St. Petersburg. Klub Vostok (the name also from another time). Two facing lines of Russian young folks--recorded music from the Emerald Isle. Enthusiam rampant as they make their way though the dance...

A man reading, learning, they say. Words for this...

* * *

Клуб Восток

* * *

Analect 2.815x

2010-12-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

6 December 2010. The sixth night. Turns and wrappings, dark-stained leather, parchment and opaque black ink, written with square-edged pen in tiny strokes, minute flourishes--the crowns--rising above, like prayers, or whisps, from an untrimmed beard--the Kurdish brow, Metropolitan, all rough and raggled, wandering above deep-set eyes...

Not quite memories, more stories. One's own, or gathered--Brooklyn, even... "The Gemara brings down a machloches about whether the correct brachah over lentils is she'ha-kol or mezonos..." uttered by blank-faced cartoon characters in a current YouTube (see under Vort)--but where can one go with this? A nod, a smile, an inner sense of...

The candles, one by one...

Analect 2.814x

2010-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

4 December 2010. Misty rain late in the evening...

The Irish line dance, Christie's dark wood flute, Moemi on Korean drum... The rest of us, in two facing lines, swinging through long diagonals, Sarah's encouragement, all smiles...

And a fragment from a Korean epic song--Anne, her precise explanations, incantatory voice. Henry, drum held close, aire of the definite... Opening into another world...

And the channukah menorah, second night--again, a bit of foil, candles held in place with drops of wax. And the old, old blessings--a joining of times past and times now--as with so many things--a memory, lived...

And of course--just after they've been lighted--our special channukah song...

"I ride an old paint, I lead an old dam, I'm goin' to Montan' for to throw the houlihan...

Analect 2.813x

2010-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

2 December 2010. Gray clouds moving in, mid-morning... Red sky at dawn...

Aleksandr Galich... To remember...

Channukah, first night... A bit of alumnum foil, wrapped over 3 oz. paper cup, bottom up, with skirt of foil extending on table to the left. Another scrap added to make it a bit longer. First candle set in place, Jaimie's Marilyn lighter at the ready...

Gray book cover from 1991. Imagined Memories, my letter to Robert... A young woman's expressive face as she asks me about Warszawa...

Voyages... New Orleans, the Paraná. Rivers and lakes--each one our own...

Analect 2.812x

2010-12-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

1 December 2010. Almost 2011, a good number to write--the up-and-down ones, one after the next...

Photos in turbans. Ray's idea--cloths of different sorts--as are the faces. Only non-Muslims, though. That would be important. So we tried our own--a handful of paper towels from the counter, and a gray morning wall--chiaroscuro, the lights and darks--so that the leading edge shows against neutral ground...

Neutral ground. Yes, a valuable commodity. House finch and dove--a container of seeds (semilla) in early light--each grain seen (shared) through fabric's weave...

Analect 2.811x

2010-11-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

30 November 2010. Winter branch and bird...

Willow trees by the water's edge. Kokoshnik and sarafan...

* * *

Anna Pavlova, at the very end of life, holding her costume for The Dying Swan. "Play the last measure very softly..."--her last words. The performance was held as scheduled--but following an old ballet tradition, a single spotlight circled an empty stage where she would have danced...

Analect 2.810x

2010-11-29T13:38:00.001-08:00

29 November 2010. Pouring sunshine, morning chill.

Expanse of water and reeds...tidal marsh on the upland shores of Tomales Bay. Dawn light--breaking over Marin hills. Lift of fog in some more distant valley, for the rest, clear and cold. Layer of frost on boards and rails of long, narrow walkway out to birder's shack at far end--a simple affair, open to the east, board bench likewise dulled with cold. White egret in nearby shallows--the property manager, it seems. Grebes and plover beyond, taking off now in one flock.

Memories of friends here...time untouched, some now gone...

Analect 2.809x

2010-11-22T12:59:00.000-08:00

22 November 2010. Sun and clouds, intermittent. Rain in the night..

Natasha at top of kitchen stairs--a tortoise shell fur ball--hoping for a clear shot to the back yard...

The other Natasha, by the bedside of Prince Andrei, who "...had once said to her that no one made such a good sick-nurse as an old nurse who knitted stockings..." The ball of yarn slips from her knees, she bends quickly to pick it up...

"He gazed at her without stirring, and saw that after her quick movements she wanted to draw a deep breath, but did not dare to, and breathed with careful restraint..."

* * *

(Constance Garnett translation. The Russian for nurse is nyanya.)

Analect 2.808x

2010-11-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

19 November 2010. Gray skies, impending rain. Dark-browed workman with strong features, earphone arc...soiled hands and three brown-orange cups lined up in a row on steel counter of 7-eleven. Knee-pads over worn trousers.

"I'm lookin' for a job at honest pay..." Woody Guthrie, for Moe Asch, New York, in March of 1940. Lonesome Road Blues...

Last night: Image of a whale--the arching shape, on brown-tinted paper--delicate scrim of masts and sails.

Immigrants all...

Analect 2.807x

2010-11-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

18 November 2010. Weather--sunny but colder. A weatherman's cap--does a weatherman wear a cap?

In the drawing--botas de potro. A kind of rustic footwear from the interior of Argentina. Formed directly from the skin of the foreleg a colt. Terrible image--but at the same time true... A distant truth--historical...

Is it wrong to draw? The line will follow anywhere...

And the heart...?

* * *

("The silhouette of a man who, his arms half raised at different levels, confronts the thick mist in order to enter it..." Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1913)

Analect 2.806x

2010-11-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

17 November 2010. Sun, workmen across the street, covering 7-eleven lot with layer of black asphalt oil. Long-handled spreaders, push-brooms, graceful movements... Working in unison. Some sound of machinery as well...

Last night-- Amber, for just a few minutes, at my office door. Many paths. Christine, her bright smile. And Sara Rose, drawing of a man from the country...

Later--Michelle, listening to Jorge Cafrune... "No quiero ver el sol..."

* * *

(Bobby, George, Yu Chung, and Mike... Andrew. Kristy and Anna. Molly. Eric missing. Jack, now at home... Jaimie...)

Analect 2.805x

2010-11-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

16 November 2010. Warm November sun. Slightest breeze over the bay--dark green waters with touch of gold, smooth, with parallel ripples...

A local bird. Depending on one's locale. The house finch, propped brightly on feeder top. A greeting--his own particular call...

Analect 2.804x

2010-11-11T19:36:00.000-08:00

11 November 2010. Misty sun. Pool with regulars in autumn light, warm and dappled, chill breeze...

Contradictions. Return of the hoopoe, for one. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, so the story goes. An emmissary, on wing. And Leonard as well--a bird shared in an equal run of crazy views--his El Monte cartoon blurbs--ca. 1940--whereas my own asides have more to do with Tremont Street and the Santa Fe. Oceanside, to be precise--those oddly high curbs, houses close to the ground, always a certain blankness. Edges worn, but no sense of the past...

So, you invent your own. Pierre, wandering the streets of Moscow, the city in flames. (Pozhar--it even sounds that way.) Dashes into the burning house--in search of a child...

Jack...

Analect2.803x.jpg

2010-11-10T14:36:00.000-08:00

10 November 2010. Autumn sun. Man on street in dungarees, early hour, strumming small guitar, calling out lines of song. "It's been a hard time..." Old hat with stained brim, workshirt jacket, heavy black shoes. Guitar case open on the sidewalk, worn American flag on small stick, vinyl-bound book of scripture (?), copy of drawing on plain white paper--the singer's face--plus two or three unidentified cds. My dollar added, his thank you...

But there's no need, the word is built in, "I need you, Mama," and all the rest. Verses from a lifetime, acquired and borrowed, nabbed, stolen, purloined... An insistent amalgam, set to the up-and-down rhythm of a worn pick...

Blues...

Analect2.802x

2010-11-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

9 November 2010. Again, beautiful sunny morning...

Natasha and Prince Andrei, tallow candle (sal'naya svechka), middle of the night. Aftermath of Borodino--wounded, seven days, between sleep and delerium--and yet his thoughts, when he does awaken--extremely clear. Love, for one, over all. And forgiveness...

Moscow in flames...

Analect 2.801x

2010-11-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

8 November 2010. Brilliant sun after day of rain.

7-eleven. Young man on aluminum crutches, reaching awkardly into pocket for coffee change. Tan face, gray sweats. Somewhere over the counter--men's voices, understated, en español...

Dark studio in the evening. Light falling fast outside. Brown leaves on wet gray ground...

Apple tree and sycamore...

Analect 2.800x

2010-11-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

5 November 2010. Somber sky, high layer of gray. Middle fall...

Music last night--Catherine Rose and Colm and Sara G. Colm's stories of Ireland, and of the Irish pubs in London--where he would go when he was living there as an architecture student, and feeling all alone--to hear the sound of Irish...

His beautiful and serious face, sitting in a room at Berkeley, again filled with architecture students--now separated by more than a generation. The Irish aires--"songs always with a certain slowness--from living with the sounds of the wind, the sea..."

Analect 2.799x

2010-10-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

25 October 2010. Difficulties and delights. Sunny morning after long day of rain. Yesterday’s dark dark afternoon—in the studio--working on small landscape with luminous trees, or was it luminous sky? Ochres, tans and off-shade whites. Cluster of paint specks becoming wind—or stars…

Today—international travels, time and space. A coffee bar in Buenos Aires, 1962. Café Brazil—a hole-in-the-wall, tucked into building façade with just enough space for one espresso machine and a small counter. Patrons stand to drink from tiny white demitasse cups—black brew, stirred sweet with equally small metal spoons. Overcoats in winter mist. No trace today, it seems--viewed from afar, at a distance of fifty years. World’s change…

So, you draw...

Analect 2.798x

2010-10-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

21 October 2010. Pied-bill grebe, young, with fluffy feathers tucked in down at the water-line. Platten-feather back--dark and waxy--lagoon waters. The Chinese painters begin with the eye (this I read)--eons back, when the shape of the iris of the eye of a bird might contain an entire universe.

As with Ni Tsan, who gave up everything to the Mongol reign--books, music, family, friends--until he wandered, more or less alone, on the lakes and waterways of Kiangsu...

Analect 2.797x

2010-10-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

20 October 2010. Gray morning. Gopher and vole...residents of the underground. Notes therefrom. As when Jack's head appeared suddenly from under the large white kraft-paper meditation chamber. Well, that's what he called it. Image of suburban living room, somewhere in the south bay, setting this up on the rug and crawling in. His mother's worried face--pulling the curtains... To maintain appearances...

But all of us, appearances, for short or for long. A volatile expanse of white foam core, dented and marred--puddle of india ink running this way and that, words (illegible at first) carved out along geometric lines. Anger at the universe becomes a form of liberation: I can do this.

Something positive in the act, regardless. A masked face, dark, sheathed in white. Leaves along delicate lines of feeling...

Grain...

Analect2.796x

2010-10-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

19 October 2010. Riparian wanderings, the Consumnes Preserve. Willow and oak, high grass in late fall. Marsh wren, coot and grebe. Off Twin Cities Road, somewhere west of Galt. Mokelumne trail, near the railroad trestle--rusted iron again a backdrop of distant mountain snow. Calls of the Wrentit and Varied Thrush...

Eurasian Wigeon, Bewick's Swan...

Analect 2.795x

2010-10-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

17 October 2010. The Great Heron and the shrike, with a walk-on appearance by James Curlew, of English descent...something about the small head, quite round, and long curve of beak... Numeneus arquata--the Eurasian variety... Or his cousin, numeneus americanus, going after those wiggly things--water-hopper, amphibean, ghost-shrimp, worm...

The heron, however, witholds herself--a form of royalty--her willowy reserve. Far-seeing wanderer, over miles of lagoon. The shallow-flooded fields, crops of winter wheat, millet and rice. A Delta blessing...

Ni Tsan...

Analect 2.793x and 2.794x

2010-10-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

Analect 2.793x

12 October 2010. Natasha Rostov, at that moment when Prince Andrei is leaving...

A silver bowl...

Lower me down with a golden chain, oh lower me down with a golden chain... Lower me down with a golden chain. Was poor Willie that got drownded in the deep blue sea...

* * *

Analect 2.794x

13 October 2010. The true hare. Or the untrue hare. Lines on paper... an open field...

One imagines the fur--bristly in the north of Scotland, or bursting across a weir on the "wide and lazy" Baltic shore. Peoples without kings, and without the hierarchies of kingdoms. Or even the desire for such hierarchies. Beuys. A pint of beer from local hops, or the meandering, democratic west-slavic verb. Autumn light, gathered hay, a forest clearing with mushrooms...

Grzyby, or some such...

Analect 2.792x

2010-10-11T12:57:00.001-07:00

12 October 2010. Life of the cow. And the carer for the cow. A kind of dream--if ever there was a dream. Impossible conjunction of bones, there in the hip, onwards and upwards along the back, until, suddenly, that quick drop to the tail. Vacaville and Modesto--the town of Ceres. Walnuts and moos...

Idyllic settings, Part II. Anything with hills in the distance, open fields. A J-2 road--Alameda to the San Joaquin. Dusty margins, power lines--wind-scudded waters of a man-made stream...

Escalon...

Analect 2.791x

2010-10-08T12:19:00.001-07:00

8 October 2010. Autumn sun, beatific.

Sweet voice of mother from Pakistan, a thank you--as she must speak with her children...

Last night: gathering of song, soda bread and Candy Man at Lothlorien. Dark shadows of Barbara Allen, with Terry's spontaneous a capella rendition--modal chords and Jean Ritchie's sinuous embellishments. Learned from her grandmother, in the mountains...or from an iPod in Berkeley. ("I've been singing it all week...") Gyspy Davie, at the outset. These stories. "...tonight I lay on the cold cold ground by the side of Black Jack David..."

Redolent...a good word to share...

Analect 2.790x

2010-10-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

7 October 2010. Hows and corses--that's how it works out sometimes. Here in Dubovsky's Appalachia, somewhere in the back country of San Diego County--the old Pala Asistencia, Temecula Grade, or Rancho Guajome, closer in. You are what you see, perhaps--the thin-branched eucalyptus on a willowy morning, Southern California light--the ocean nearby, between coast and hills. From the Tehachapis south--that's how Carey McWilliams begins his masterful characterization--An Island on the Land--quoting A.P. Jacks, an early settler: "My first impression was such as one might receive on arriving in A City of Refuge..."

The biblical allusion lost today in a sea of shopping carts and Taco Bells...but why go there. Progress, following Marx, being inevitable, whatever we might mean by the term...

Better our songs, grounded in something that grows--like the ridgeline of the hills, or a dark dark brown acorn from high in the Sierras--or more nearby, a metate of hollowed granite--rounded from decades of pounding corn, the fine meal, each cake formed by hand...

Or the estate of Martha Breasted, somewhere in Northern Kentucky, 1970--near a place called Florence, then quite remote. A winding road in summer's dusk, warm and humid, piqued light of fireflies meandering amongst the trees...

But that's not what first returns, the banjo and overalls notwithstanding. Rather those drier hills, the coastal air...

Home...

Analect 2.789x

2010-10-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

6 October 2010. Digger pines and mining claims, gold pan as moon...

A cabin high in the mountains, night of giant storm. Lightning on all the nearby peaks, hail and rain beating down on tin roof. Inside, feel of wood--the rounded walls, pine-wood beds--a table of varnished boards, small windows onto great trees...

Two crayfish on rocky bottom at edge of Gold Lake, jaunty hunters, slow moving, adept. A small blue claw, partly dried, in the pebbles along the bank. Later--golden bee with small black head, tucked in against side of white car...

Granite crags high above...

2.788x (Analect almost without at drawing)

2010-10-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

October 1, 2010. Blustery and gray, a surprise.

A morning that can't quite decide--or is it the perceiver of the morning. Second cup of coffee (Brazilian Bold) from Mo across the street (7-eleven) while the crew of workmen continue their impossibly elaborate form work--2x10s stacked on edge, sloped, at angles, with rebar struts--to contain someone's vision of concrete... Design...

The work of us all--to contain someone's vision...

Lee, just now, waving from outside, A little stooped, but adamant in her gathering--the bottles, bags and cans of a neighborhood, popped into a beige Safeway shopping cart, moored just now against the linden tree...

* * *

(mac and scanner down for a while)

Analect 2.787x

2010-09-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

27 September 2010. Another hot one.

Workmen across the way--their brown faces, brown arms--setting to some concrete work. While inside, Carolina, a wandering Italian with sweet eyes, pens a letter to her rental tenant. Spoons and chairs--contract details...

Yesterday: The Normandy, Oceanside, years ago. Fish tank in the lobby, stocked with piranhas, feeding on proffered bits of raw beef. Tremont Street, the train tracks. King's Men...

Analect 2.786x

2010-09-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

24 September 2010. Big morning, Dr. Ho. Don't ask... Let's just say they drilled...

A quick hello to Jay Sordean following--with Diana at her desk, in the burrow. Smells of incense and herbs, small rattan matts tucked over back of file cabinet, blue curtains, hand sewn, draped across shelves at back of narrow room. An appealing clutter... Choir...

Earlier in the morning--revisiting Walters--the counter and register, with my father standing alongside. Varnished plywood tables with distinct piles of folded shirts--the white paper size tabs stapled on at lower left. S/M/LG. Behind, racks of jackets, also set in varnished wood, and a silk-screened banner, Lay Away--$5 a Pay Day.

A pay day--yes, that's the idea. Marine Corps salaries in a sometimes desolate beach town--Oceanside. Well, no, desolate isn't the word. More a sense of anomie. The gray beach light, heading down Third Street to the pier--clean swells, gray-green ocean beyond...

Analect 2.785x

2010-09-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

23 September 2010. Sun-filled autumn morning. Standing in the succah, under a cover of palm fronds--white cloth on small table with scatter of rye and caraway seeds from the evening before. Full moon rising through heavy branches of the mimosa--a golden friend...

Later--a line from Derek Walcott, in Tiepolo's Hound. The sharing of something so personal amongst the very many...

As with Leadbelly--Caddo Lake, far northwest corner of Louisiana. Then Sugarland, Angola. A life of song...

Analect 2.784x

2010-09-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

22 September 2010. James Wright, in the aftermath of a difficult evening. Anger in the air--at the raw blindness of violence--or simply frustration--at the great patience demanded when you take on something unknown. To put down a line, or a patch of color, following its life to conclusion--or to a new beginning. These kinds of things.

Hope...

* * *

James Wright

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Analect 2.783x

2010-09-22T14:15:00.001-07:00

21 September 2010. Anna Jacoba--an old Hollandse seafarers' song--on the rowdy side, especially as recorded by Pekel, the Rotterdam group with boisterous voices, set to the clanking of mugs and glasses...

But who was Anna Jacoba? A quiet Dutch girl from a garden in de Haag. White collar with a bit of lace set against her gray dress. Wide-brimmed summer hat, discrete with flowers, the black ribbon tied under her chin....

Silk Road...

Analect 2.782x

2010-09-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

20 September 2010. Voice of Scrapper Blackwell, on a scratchy disk, sometime long ago. Launching into each new phrase, that particular slide up, slide in, slide out, with a smooth return...

Guitar balanced effortlessly, oriented...

Last night: Napoleon on the banks of the Neman, looking east. Prince Andrei's last visit to Lysiye Gory. Princess Marya's parting words...

To forgive...

Analect 2.781x

2010-09-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

17 September 2010. Gray morning...many songs...

Analect 2.780x

2010-09-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

16 September 2010. Sun, on an early autumn day...

Voice of an Irish flute, begun slowly, notes elided, lyrical and plaintive, building into the rhythm of a dance--her foot tapping the wooden step, evening dark, playing to gathered friends, family from afar--the father, Adolfo, with his beautifully formal and somehow delicate words--"mi hijo..." and the others in turn, speaking of Maradona, on a small tv at 4am, the boatyard, "I am a sailor," in borrowed coat, waves breaking over the bow... A life in the making--Zamba de Mi Esperanza...

Stories, poems, songs--in all their immediacy, to re-enliven a being...

"Do not forget him..."

Analect 2.779x

2010-09-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

14 September 2010. Chestolyubov'--the love of honor, Russian for ambition--a strange usage. But that would never describe our Pierre. Better Prince Andrei's words, "he has a good heart..."

Questions of forgiveness--Princess Marya, listening to the stories of the wanderers... Their lives of devotion. And Natasha, whose tears of grief become for a moment those of gratitude... Blagodarenie...

* * *

This morning, a living form emerging from the bushes at side of the house. Her sizeable gray presence--graceful back and narrow legs--Lydia's daughter--stopping now just in front of the house, on the street, ears up, nose twitching slightly--then moving on...

* * *

Pierre, in the very last words of of Book II, "...his softened and torn soul..."

Analect 2.778x

2010-09-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

13 September 2010. "And they talked late into the night..."

Natasha Rostova, scene with Marya Bolkonskaya, their first encounter--and the sudden shuffling footsteps of her father, the old Prince--both unexpected and expected... His disdain for Natasha--and emphasis on the word God...

"Old and sick, but a good man...," Princess Marya's letter.

Anatol Kuragin, troika at the ready... "I will love you to the ends of the earth..."

Analect 2.777x

2010-09-10T11:02:00.001-07:00

10 September 2010. The place of the church, or the church of place. Pala Asistencia, in the back country, as my mother used to say, San Diego. Mid-summer afternoon, hot, the dry grass of a small park, surrounded by eucalyptus and sycamore. Formerly--a single ruined bell tower, white plaster over river stone, or at least this is how you imagine it--the rough cast iron bells themselves, ringing out through the valley...

Analect 2.776x

2010-09-09T12:15:00.001-07:00

9 September 2010. Gray clouds, sun pushing through.

A group of women in the doorway of a train, somewhere in Mexico, 100 years ago. To the day, perhaps. Their homemade dresses, algodón, shawls...

Films of Robert Bresson. A certain kind of quiet--no sound but for that in the scene itself. Footsteps on wooden stairs, creaking... A memory...

Just outside now--the Solano bus. Recorded announcement announces Solano. Whoosh of breaks, one figure emerging...

Analect 2.775x

2010-09-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

8 September 2010. And where that shy star? The one in the Babel story, that bit of Jewish biscuit... "a Jewish glass of tea, and a piece of that retired God in the glass of tea...?"

Blustery clouds, chill wind. All possibility...

Analect 2.774x

2010-09-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

7 September 2010. Cat apparition, early fall. Clouds and cool wind...

Two German women alonside, writing something together at the computer. Their soft voices, sylibants, rising, falling... "Er kommen..."

Yesterday--a quiet afternoon, warm, the streets empty. Sikh driver with carefully wrapped turban, earpiece tucked in on the right. His smile from afar...

Analect 2.773x

2010-09-03T17:54:00.001-07:00

3 September 2010. Oceanside...

Analect 2.772x

2010-09-01T14:25:00.001-07:00

1 September 2010. Still morning, warm day...

La China Poblana. Catarina de San Juan--remembered and forgotten, remembered again. An East Indian girl, Mirra by name, carried off on a merchant ship from the Philippines to be the personal servant of the Viceroy of New Spain, Diego Carrillo de Mendoza y Pimentel--but kidnapped en route by Portuguese pirates, who took brought her to Cochin--where she managed to escape (this is getting elaborate!) taking refuge in Jesuit convent, and baptised Catarina de San Juan, only to be re-kidnapped--by the same pirates--taken to Manila, where another merchant finally delivered her to the Mexican port of Acapulco--not to the Viceroy, but selling her as a slave (for ten times the price) to Miguel de Sosa, a private citizen from the city of Puebla (hence "Poblana"). De Sosa died within a few years, but provided in his will for Mirra's manumission. At which time she again took refuge in a convent--and was said to have had elaborate visions of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus...

Venereated as a saint until the time of the Inquisition...

* * *

(The word china in Hispanic cultures is commonly used to refer to all persons of Asian descent... Mirra's practice of wrapping herself in a sari is said to have led to the china dress.)

Analect 2.771x

2010-08-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

31 August 2010. Gray valley mist--San Luis Rey. Stream from the mountains, cottonwoods and willows. That particular gray-green light--dry, but with morning moisture. Boulders on the hillsides above. Home...

Time in late fall, white disk of the sun, veiled...

Analect 2.770x

2010-08-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

30 August 2010. Beautiful morning, cool air, sun... Otoño...

Chance meeting in the copy store with Flor, from thirty years ago--at a seder, in Oakland, by Noach and Rivka... Her two sons, then just young boys--and the extremely tender way she spoke to them... "Mi corazón...," pronounced with a lilt of endearment that could come only from a culture where love transcends idea...

I play for her (on the iPod) a bit of Cuco Sanchez--Cama de Piedra, with the question-- "Flor, how can this song, which is at once so personal, become the very emblem of something as broad as the Mexican Revolution?" She considers for a time, continuing with her xeroxes (long division problems for a mathematics class?)... "You know, there's never been a day that I haven't thought about just how personal an encounter can be there--people tell you what comes from the inside--while here there's often a certain distance..."

Later, just before leaving, smiling slightly-- "Maybe it's that in Mexico (where Flor was born) it's honorable for a man to die for a woman--much more so than to die for a political cause..."

Analect2.769x

2010-08-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

27 August 2010. Late in the night. People are good. Alexi from El Salvador stops his janitorial cart to help, no jump cable--but kindhearted Altagracia (also with cart) has a portable charger, so we walk together down to Durant, where's she's parked off campus for economy's sake--listening to her life story--and head back to the Boalt lot, where my ancient Honda has died yet again. But her starter won't work--this time the battery is truly gone--and I wait in the dark for the truck from AAA--it's Gustavo, from Matzatlan, 23 years old and very heads up. His English almost unaccented, and he knows cars. "Me gustan los coches." At midnight, new battery in place, I'm on the road...

Congo Square. An image from New Orleans. And today the date of Katrina, five years back. Song from that odd-ball Chuck E. Weiss--and the photo of two men, sitting opposite at a small table somewhere in the LA basin. Yahya's response last night--to my question, "What are layers?" (We've just sung Down in the Valley.) He quotes Psalms--"I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...," adding, "It makes me think of an alley..."

Songs and Places. "If I get to heaven before you do, I'll cut a hole and pull you through..."

Analect 2.768x

2010-08-26T14:09:00.001-07:00

26 August 2010. Foggy dawn, off the Oceanside pier. Black-green water, translucent, swirling around the pilings. Creosote and tar. Clumps of mussels at the waterline--breathing with the tide...

As in a song--voice of Cuco Sanchez, late in the night--La Cama de Piedra, guitar of Antonio Bribiesca leading us in, slow, beautiful, filled with evocation. Of a time and a place--hardly known--or not known at all, but somewhere a truth--in the only way a truth can be conveyed--as something brought together in the life, cherished (or feared)--and made whole...

Analect 2.766x

2010-08-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

23 August 2010. Warm, even early in the morning... Yerushalayim...

Departures and arrivals. The fox, the wolf, the hare and the crow. Stretches of bright winter wheat on dark fields, stubble, wet with rain...

Tolstoy...

Analect 2.765x

2010-08-20T14:51:00.001-07:00

20 August 2010. Ultimate regression. And a most beautiful song, from Mexico--Cuco Sánchez--La Cama de Piedra. "La mujer que a mi me quiera, me ha de querer de ha de veras..." Scene from a film--una cantina--with an abbreviated Greek chorus in the background--the bartender, towell in hand, polishing a glass, and two customers, turned in each other's direction... He's much younger here, seated at one of the tables, holding a guitar. Moody light. La servidora (something of Patsy Cline--how is this now not possible?) approaches, ample bouffant of dark hair, bending forward to place something at his side...

Or, much later, with an elaborate line of mariachis on the stage just behind him, now with a wider face, large sombrero over his chest, its brim embroidered with flowers...singing just the two verses...

Adoración...

Analect 2.764x

2010-08-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

19 August 2010. Girl by a river, water without end...

Carter Family song, Little Moses...

Away by the river so clear,
The ladies were winding their way,
And Pharaoh's little daughter stepped down in the water
To bathe in the cool of the day.
Before it was dark she opened the ark
And found the sweet infant was there...

Analect 2.763x

2010-08-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

28 August 2010. The mountains recede--mountains always receding...

Cities of red dust...

Analect 2.762x

2010-08-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

17 August 2010. Chilly morning, almost fall...

The Sierras. A forest in the mountains--white pine, incense cedar, kellog oak--names of trees and birds--osprey, eagle, stellar's jay. (A healthy type, his prominent hop.) Gray squirrel, with narrow back and pointy ears, imagined in November. Or rumbling brown bear, touch of white on his nose.

Small cabin, from the 1930s. The Fir. Log walls, filled in with grout, plywood overlay in spots, appropriate wires. A lamp shade made from a pine star--five narrow branches, rough pentagram spanned with bark. Bed posts of tree logs, boards, handmade quilt--somehow intact. Full-throated salmon leap across cotton curtains, destination unknown. Maybe to the top of the pass--Lakes Basin, Sardine, Packer, Gold...

Analect 2.761x

2010-08-16T13:45:00.001-07:00

(to be re-posted soon!)

Analect 2.760x

2010-08-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

6 August 2010. Tolstoy and the Tolstoyans, after a painting by Nikolai Ge, Lev Nikolaevich's great friend. That's the figure on your left--the young woman with strangely long face and close-set eyes--or is it simply Ge's handling--a subtle shifting of tones, the blurred ears (quite large, in fact) and the way he revels in the full weight of the darks... (Renoir--"Black is the queen of colors...")

Like the beautiful woman at El Cerrito pool, whose matronly form belies a girlhood of impossible grace. The deep tones in the colors of her skin--Anatolia moving east, Cochin perhaps... She's back the next day, peering up out of the green water at pool's edge, and my curiosity wins out. "May I ask where you're from?" "Lebanon," she answers, smiling...

"You're very distinctive..."

Analect 2.759x

2010-08-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

5 August 2010. Beautiful gray morning, fresh shirt... No immediate rips or tears in the collar, wavery lines. Dressed for success (!)

That's the kind of thing they say. But what if you're living in the Zen Center, waking each morning at five for a bowl of tea, buddhist chants--and then off to your gig downtown as an fledgling investment banker, zipping up to the 35th floor... View over the bay, Marin hills....fog pouring in through the Golden Gate. Or Natasha, out farther on the bluffs, where silent guns awaited enemy ships, Fort Point--drawing trees...

A delight, yesterday, with the Russians, and their companions, veering from song to story to poem. Brodsky's taut lines--in Viktor's voice--a nice insistent edge...

Andrea--grace.

Analect 2.758x

2010-08-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

4 August 2010. Morning sounds, rumbling of cars outside, rumbling machines within. Vne i vnutri--as in the Brodsky poem, Naturmort--these opposites (or facings) always in balance... Not so much resolved as acknowledged...

"God or man, woman, I am yours..." You just don't get lines like this often in one lifetime...

And Norris, on the same page. His quiet hulk, bending over copy machine. The patient daily racing forms, clips and paste-ups, a dance of intelligent speculation. But today it's something else--a letter from the Library of Congress--paperwork on copyrights--their tardy recording of the authorship of his songs...

Yes, to sing. Evening room, yellow light, an old rose...

Analect 2.757x

2010-08-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

3 August 2010. So, one day everything sails along--and the next it's a nose dive. Well, not exactly. Just that you can't do the same thing twice--which is to say, you shouldn't even dream of it. And yet, Tolstoy--repeating every other word--but that's not twice--that's emphasis, an altogether different matter.

Matter--as in shirt sleeves and lamb's wool collars--polyester, maybe, but still fluffy. A border man--crossing first to one side, then the other. This is done with bravado--and not a little hesitation--the tunnels, the payoffs, the close calls. But what can They do, finally, but send you back home.

Home, to set out again...

Analect 2.756x

2010-08-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

2 August 2010. And why not...endless dance--a sense of what's on the inside. Brodsky's view--"Naturmort"--the brown-light dust, with overhead bulb, a bristling vast and static presence. But I can't be sure on this--the language is sinewy, and loaded--so that his shoe-store denial of the language of physics (my analogy) seems strangely accurate--but accurate to what?

Possibilities of redemption. A small Japanese hole-in the wall on Shattuck--beautiful vegetarian dishes--two distinct flan-like mounds of golden-yellow paste (eggplant tofu) and the brown fruit itself positioned in between. Also a kind of physics--in which the optic nerve--that is, the eye--does all the heavy lifting. Cooks behind counter, sound of accidental ladle gong--everyone turns. Sheepish, meat-free smiles...

Or Tolstoy, a bouquet of flowers, vsyegda...

Analect 3.8x

2010-07-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Analect3.7x.jpg

2010-07-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-29T14:04:00.001-07:00

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.)

Analect 3.5x

2010-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

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...

Analect 3.4x

2010-07-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

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...

Analect 3.3x

2010-07-23T17:59:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-23T14:41:00.001-07:00

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...

Analect 3.1x

2010-07-22T18:11:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-07-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

Analect 2.755x

2010-07-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

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?