For recent drawings, please see the Meta-lects

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

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

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...

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)

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...

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...

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)...

Analect 2.839x

25 January 2011. Sun, and warm...

Yesterday, with Yael...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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?"

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"

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...

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..."

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...

Analect 2.827x

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...