Analect 2.207x

31 December 2007. Mild winter sun, ripply shadows in dark windows, Kathmandu reflected in reverse, white letters on a red-oxide field, twining narrow branches of sidewalk tree overlapping, grayed-pink wall above. Unrequited.

Adentro. The stories of Mansilla, set on the Pampas. Cacique Ramón, Mariano, Baigorrita... Tierra adentro, o quizás el desierto. Today, in the north: two engaging substitutes: El Dúo Coplanacu. Guitarra y bomba--the large hide-covered Argentine drum, held at the side of the waist, played with pungent tamped-down sound: muffled feet in rustic shoes on an earthen floor. Their faces, half-smiling, eyes alert, touches of gray in their beards...

Half a century before. La Plata, a theater stage, worn wooden boards, dust clouding the air at each pounding wave of footsteps. Dark boots of the dancers--baile folklorico--a warm-up act--naive and good-hearted, the best of intentions...giving it their all...

The past re-enlivened, the dance...

Analect 2.206x

28 December 2007. Warm gray sky, night rain. Latino paperboy in baseball cap with flat white plastic bags hanging in a roll from the back of his waist. Colombo truck skewed in at an angle, red lights on an even beat, woman in red parka crossing the pavement just behind. White smoke against luminous sky.

Songs of innocence. Tiny settlements on the Argentine plain. Ushelo, San Felíz, Leubucó. La pampa--el desierto. Your choice. Stretch of wild landscape over miles and miles--an inestimable distance, the scrub grass parsed out on patches of dry gray-brown earth. There: figure in floppy hat, white bandana and wide belt, a characteristic nonchalance. "No me vale pa' nada..." But what does he mean to say? The long horizon, a beautifully brushed horse, his facón with the intricate carved silver handle...

At the ends of the earth...Atamisqueña...

Analect 2.205x

27 December 2007. Clear cold sun. Winter surf, battened down and buttoned up. North Shore of El Cerrito--the creek break, glassy waves, 3-1/2 feet, north swell. Water something like 49 degrees--in the shade, and that's not counting wind chill--of which, today, very little. Calm.

Heading down Tyson--summer now, past the Weseloh Chevrolet dealership at Wisconsin and Hill--reflection in glass--then on over the Santa Fe tracks--thick palm trunks and scattered gravel--creosote brown of the Rorick houses--peaked roofs in the old way, more palms... Steep walk down to the Strand. Aging guard tower and dull stucco hut--Betty's Beach Cafe. Was that the name? Leaning against sun-warmed south wall after morning in the water, songs of a sort--Santo and Johnny, fins on the '59 Plymouth of Chubby Lopez' dad--inscribed in sign-painter's script: Costa Plenty. Before the coral-wash of subdivisions lined the hills...

"Well it's cryin' time again, you're gonna leave me..."

Analect 2.204x

24 December 2007. Sun, with a few pearly clouds. Pockets of mist in the hollows--Albany Hill. Local presence. Yesterday: run of valley land, dry winter earth, sycamore and oak. Stands of cypress guarding a barn. Church doors and tractors, tended fields. River Road--riparian wilds down to the Stanislaus, woodchuck, field mouse, deer. A cooper's hawk, silent above.

Evening: with Zoya at ninety, her bright bright eyes, small intense face. American songs for a Moscow girl. "Maskvoh," Yael reminds me, insistent. "My grandmother was demanding." But Zoya listens, her ears up, hint of a nod, a frown, a smile--the feelings wash over her face--a streambed in Byelarus--all the way to the Pripyet, that same run of land--family turf--Gomel', Mozyr--far far away, long long ago...

Analect 2.203x

20 December 2007. Winter light, sun, long shadows, streets wet with last night's rain.

Ahn Dong Ni, hermit painter of the Lijiang. Perhaps you know him? Osmanthus blossoms in late fall, water buffalo and phoenix-tail bamboo. The cormorant dipping for fish in silver green-gray waters and the mountains of Guilin hovering in the mist. Fields with remnants of the harvest--wandering rows of rice on browned earth, the stalks tended and tied, each by hand. A child's braids. Effie just ahead, on her bicycle, turns suddenly and smiles, as she shows me her home. Do you know the poems of Po Chü-i? His small house with pond alongside--just as it is here, perhaps. Hint of winter in the still-warm air, farmer's smoke at dusk...

Thank you, Mao-Yun, for the name--which can mean everything... "For water clarifies the spirit, no less than a perfect friend..."

Analect 2.202x

19 December 2007. High sunny morning sky, phalanx of fleece bits--a widening V to the west, but otherwise, as they say, clear... Claro qué sí, dice el diccionario de modismos Argentinos. No simplemente las palabras vos, o che, sino frases enteras--la pucha, vamos a morfar, qué querés?

Following Mansilla: the gaucho--a man with an open visage, high cheekbones and a narrow, somewhat aquiline nose (algo aguileño). Thick brows, straight across, with pronounced vertical lines in between--dark brown eyes behind heavy lashes, and a face burned black by the sun--el sol del desierto y el aire frio. Narrow hands, strong, with the flesh separated well from the bone... Translating aloud, late at night, flat on my back in a narrow bed, white upstairs room, paintings on flaps of loose canvas all around, also whitish, with brushy touches of white again, distributed in an even but irregular pattern over unbound folds: las pampas, perhaps, the beginnings of snow...

Analect 2.201x

18 December 2007, Tuesday. Gray wind through the magnolia, constant rain. Golden leaves against an even grayer sky--dull emergent browns. Homey emblem of the 7-eleven, emblazoned on milky slumpstone parapet. Marlboros: 3.99. Miller Light--red blinkers flashing, patient behemoth. Hooded driver leaning into handcart--dark blue cast iron--stack of plastic crates. A sliding economy with sketchy lyrics--something about Engelbert Humperdinck, or that unending version of "Delilah" (Tom Jones?) blasting forth from the speakers of a Bulgarian amusement park in Warszawa, 10 floors below. Vision of the future--1968--something raw, untamed. Or today--an elephant, constructed of vertical Venetian blinds, black-ribbed plastic ductwork and a gathering of artificial flowers. The authenticity of detritus. What is our choice?

Un equipo de gauchos, mateando...

Analect 2.200x

18 December 2007. Dull pings of rain on window at night. Cold wind off bay, clouds and fog. Waking to scatter of golden-red leaves on dark asphalt, touch of sun. Rolling amber light on curved back of moored WM refuse truck--an efficient nondescript yellow and green--color in the service of utility. "He made the trains run on time." And who'd want to be kept constantly waiting? Like a spurned lover, or aging golf-coach with fewer and fewer attendees?

Wide run of the Pampas. The Río Cuarto, somewhere below Córdoba. The gaucho: facón y boleadores--un chaleco con botones de plata. Rosas, Quiroga, Sarmiento. Bartolomé Mitre. A nation's names. But also--los caciques--Mariano, Ramón, Baigorrita...

Aquí me pongo a cantar
Al compás de la vigüela;
Que el hombre que lo desvela
Una pena extraordinaria,
Como la ave solitaria
Con el cantar se consuela.

Analect 2.199x

14 December 2007. Vapor trail to the east, over glowing patch of nascent sun. Above: whispy crescent of puffy cloud return against cobalt morning blue. Larry just on his way out: Nancy Pelosi conspiracy theories. (Each one of us is implicated). These are the risks...

Like a pair of shoes slightly too large. Or an unfinished book, lost somehow en route. Two hooded workmen with doughnuts and coffee--steaming in the chill. One gestures upwards with a mittened thumb. Again last night: Lucio Mansilla. Lo Argentino-- the qualities of a human being. "Reserva y lealtad."

Analect 2.198x

12 December 2007. Cold morning speckled clouds: winter trout over lost hills... Last night: unparalleled adamance, even with tears--a dangerous combination--but for whom? To the mat on every jot and tittle--with the subsequent claims of bad faith. Bad faith. Is there such? Large woman in the copy store, with her teenage daughter--serene magic of Africa and a South Carolina American Baptist church. Peering steadily at wide horizontal color image of ice flows in the Antarctic, mounted on foam-core and adhered to the wall. She inquires about preparing certain words in the same way: trust, truth, honesty, faith... These appear, one by one, in a dignified serif script, hovering over the wilderness, then vanishing...

Leslie Lerner, for the time he was here--visions out of Brueghel--an unending imagination...

Analect 2.197x

11 December 2007. Cold, golden morning. Four birds over bank roof, clustered swoops. Tiny plane with reddish tail high above. Then a gull, ocean bound, proficient. Sunlight through vinyl letters on glass--colorado--carried across the floor as a shadow, right reading: Copy Ce... Girl in floppy turquoise watchcap and brown-toned hoody, loping across the street on diagonal, papers in hand. All of a sudden: driver of the 18, long light red braids (dreads?) streaming down the left side of her face.

Lucio Mansilla: Los Siete Platos de Arroz con Leche. Time of Rosas. Rozas, as he spells it. "From rezar--to pray..."

Analect 2.196x

10 December 2007. Gleaming winter sky, low angle sun. Black Toyota work truck in 7-eleven lot, side panels like Greek fire, wirey lumber rack on top, styrofoam coffee cup balanced precariously near the edge. Last night: I reach to pick up Natasha, but in her desperate feral state one long nail hooks my wrist and forearm: long narrow line of red, then more...

Passions and fears. Line of trees in winter mist, somewhere in the eastern part of the valley. Stearns Road, running north to the Stanislaus. Grays and dull gray-greens, empty branches to the water's edge, summer splendor turns winter's ruin. Residents and guests: wood duck in the shadows, golden-crowned sparrows... Lapping of the river, quiet damp air. Marshlands and melancholy...

Analect 2.195x

7 December 2007. Golden morning after a long night's rain. Glistening on gray streets. A long spider strand holds the light for just a moment--gleaming against dark mansard roof across the way. Delivery truck in low gear, passing. Man with high forehead, hand to chin, propped in cab of double Dodge truck, dark dark green, moving uphill...

All views possible. Like last night, with Benjamin's wall of scrawly drawings, ear to ear, gears and faces, made personal by a particular unexpected intensity. A table of food--Nathaniel's cheeses, chocolate--a respite of luxury, alongside (my) plebian wine. Las Españolas, their whispery voices, quizzical, enchanting--a sea bird flying up the face of a cliff, wings spread wide. Ptarmigan, gull. Hanukkah candles--the third night, on a homely cardboard menorah with tin-foil doily, which I see lighted suddenly from across the room. Hojin's embarrassed smile--"It was me." And why not? Three candles, each one waiting. We make the blessings. How could they not burn?

Analect 2.194x

6 December 2007. Yellow lights against gray, golden leaves on dark sky. Man in heavy coat and tired jeans, standing under 7-eleven eve to light a smoke. Lee at her work nearby, bending over metal-topped refuse box, gleaning: the dented can, the twinkie wrap, aluminium foil. On roof above: narrow whisp of wire, straight up.

Yesterday: the red elephants. But why? Fragments of torn paper, jostled into shape, bits of scotch tape. Sabina prints them out--smallish saffron squares, spots of red, stapled onto immaculate and dignified white cards--a little off-kilter--with all our names. "A Modest Extravaganza."

"Please join us."

Analect 2.193x

4 December 2007. Gray on gray, morning rain. Golden Corona bottle splashing into tropical pool (delivery truck), while all around the puddly asphalt sits waiting. A kind of bland and homely anticipation. Lone gull banks left, wings wide, touch of mauve in a damp sky. Another flash of red and gold--boxy emergency vehicle--now gone, replaced by nondescript white panel truck. Signs in windows, orange-red and off-green. Announcing. Gull returns, swooping close, heading up the avenue. Arched and pointed wings...

Last night: pilgrims and penitents. Tuan's work. Narrow column of Vietnamese names, preceded by Dominic, Peter, and John. A church in Hue, half-destroyed, then half-destroyed again. Filling the fields for three-days, dozens of thousands, the claims of faith. Against what odds?

A wayward king...

Analect 2.192x

30 November 2007. Bright chill air, scarves and winter coats on a Northern California morning... Light raking long diagonal on blue-white Pepsi truck, the great yin and yang reduced to its cathode ray tube equivalent, lodged on a dull horizontal. Think instead of Ni Tzan, wandering among the reeds...

Among the reeds... A dutch girl in gypsy shoes--or is it a gypsy girl herself? Nurse? Curandera... Gathering of warm hair under prim white cap, sign of attentiveness, patience, care--all the qualities of value and need. Far off--pouring rain in a dark garden, matted willow leaves, clumped ferns. Remnant blossoms of South-African orange, hugging the fence in misty air. A small lemon and lime...

Gracias a Dios...

Analect 2.191x

29 November 2007. Gentle November sun. Ripple of water at pavement's edge, green hose snaking through overgrown yard. A verdant intertwining. Songs of innocence, songs of experience. Yesterday: a young man in muted red sarong, his blouse an even deeper red, buttoned all the way to the neck. Small hat, dark in color, carefully placed on a round and forthright head. The dress of somewhere far off--a drift of peoples, each one known to the other, fathers, mothers, sons, pictured in part, at a table, before a window, working in a field. Houses amidst trees, gestures and meanings, lived over time, source of story. "The Human Clay," Kitaj's phrase. Always with a certain dignity--as if the endeavor itself were beyond question, to justify each other, to redeem--each touch, each line, each act...

Analect 2.190x

27 November 2007. Gold-gray November skies, light from the east, poring over the hills. Morning. Young man with dark hair helter-skelter, dashing along street to reach bus just as its door is closing--the driver, impassive, pushes a lever and the door re-opens. Across the way, gaunt man in red tee, climbing out of polished gray Prius--bending as he does so.

A tiny boat--white in color--on a dark dark lake, set in a narrow column of black. Next to a rolling field of trees and grain, neither open nor closed. Above--two figures, also dark--a man and a woman--standing side by side, almost touching. Long diagonal of floor--somewhere inside--reaching up and up. At the right--faces of figures from far away. The past? Or simply distant?

A single ear--in chiaroscuro, carefully drawn--to hear the world...

Analect 2.189x

20 November 2007. Hands moving over keyboards, man of middle years working alongside--plaid shirt, watchcap, pointed gray goatee. Weathered face, but not quite Gary Snyder. Rubber flip-flops--Solano de jure--humming occasionally under his breath.

In the front, with crumpled newspaper in hand--Mr. Copes. "How are you my friend?" He smiles in his predictable but always genuine way. Teeth occasional. But his walk is off--he holds the doorframes as he makes his way along the street, gathering materials, returning inside to do the windows, standing on a rickety aluminum ladder from the back room--the corporate ladder, so inscribed--but for Mr. Copes, simply an approach to heaven...

Or the day's wage...

Analect 2.188x

17 November 2007. Slabs of gray, with yellowish underglow--maybe a touch of blue--or is it the tint of the window? Monsanto, House of the Future...

Gold-gray Pathfinder pulling in, Lela and Deepak. Her red and gold leopard floral pattern dress, red cotton blouse, black tights and sandals from Nepal. A girl, a mom, an ancient being. Hair pulled back in taut clump, cotidienne casual... Deepak in his customary black--vest, t-shirt, cargo pants, stubby black hair trimmed to the strong and compact shape of his scull. Sauntering across street on an unplanned diagonal, nibbling on a half-peeled banana. Tough-guy retinue--but for whom?

Last night: Anu visits. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Large eyes in a dark dark face. Precise plans, inner animation. At one point I ask the class what it must be like today to raise a child--living amidst this avalanche of untoward influence. "Anu, you're a mom, what would you say?" Thinking for a moment, then, slowly, "To have a child is a great great pleasure..."

Analect 2.187x

14 November 2007. Clean November light. Dark shadows under the eves. 7-eleven lot: chunky strips of yellow concrete at the head of each empty parking space. A single white panel truck, at an angle. Now, suddenly, a smallish dark maroon Toyota...

Germaine Montero: Spanish folksongs. No Hay Quien Pueda. Fisherman's song. El Puerto de Bilbao. Yellow lights on dark harbor waters, criss-crossed gantry cranes over brightly lit decks. Across the way, smaller lights, running along sandstone cliffs and low hills. The Café Iruña: a single figure hunched over curve of long bar. Pintxos calientes: serranitos y morunos. Vino tinto criaza.

The claims of possibility, each new image an opening. Ports of entry. Voyage, viajero...roam...

Analect 2.186x

13 November 2007. Gray gray. Dr. John. Chunky woman in dark blue hood emerges stretching from low-slung silver car. Earlier: Russian girl and her mother at the pool, a Giovanni Bellini in Albany (the doge swim cap drawn high over mound of hair). Yesterday: l'hitrondel: a new word in the Israeli governmental vocabulary: to fly back and forth with little effect. C-o-n-d-i the root... Just now: a teenage boy in old-style baseball-length cutoffs--very narrow build, droopy orange backpack slung low on his shoulders, whitish cap, walking in desultory fashion--one long right arm down with sliver of cigarette. Opposite: Lee's shopping cart, a single yellow plastic bag, among others...

Home...

Analect 2.185x

9 November 2007. Sun on veiled sky, November weather. Whether November... Velzy & Jacobs, veiled obsessions--a darkish room smelling of balsa and fresh resin--the glossy sheen of each leaning totem, silent in dowelled racks... a kind of lore, each shape made real. How so? A question of the ocean--the form of a wave, its particular mass and curl, rate of break...face of left slide at Trestles, through the scrub and Marine Corps tracks, a streambed estuary opening to the sea. Or, the Oceanside pier at dawn, checking the break against just how far out along the pilings--to the fish house median. Winter storms--a roiled expanse of broken white, spindrift foam blown horizontal, cross-current chaos...

Summer mornings, new light on a deep blue-green, no trace of wind. Outside, outside...

Analect 2.184x

8 November 2007. Ta'o Ch'ien. Both straight and bending. Gray on yellow gray. "Very resourceful." Single gull on high pole, a puffy mass on two spindly legs. Colors just like the sky, but with more emphasis.

Edge of a winter stream: the teacher. The listener, rather. Stories from life, Tárrega and Sor, beautifully rendered. A shadow just behind the door: Hojin. Also life.

Suddenly, the sirens at noon: righteousness.

Analect 2.183x

Gray morning, coast to coast--or at least our little part of it. Churning thoughts: first, man's inhumanity to man. A guy in an alligator suit, somewhere in Florida. Go 'gators. But what about us gators? Not to mention Paul Watson, on the Farley Mowat--gold braids and the black flag of a pirate, careening across the southern oceans. Eye of a wounded whale--true and massive compassion--in the Buddhist sense--or is it some larger intelligence that can (finally) bypass vengeance? As in territory, as in unbendingness. Reeds in the wind: the ancient Sung dynasty painting--Early Snow on the River--fishermen in their matted huts, built on spindly piers out over gray water. The wet and the cold. To find some appropriate interchange with the universe. For what IS modesty but a need for the private--and a willingness to listen.

No truth in ideas, however golden. The materials are all...

(for L)

Analect 2.182x

2 November 2007. The Road to Magnitogorsk, on a sun-filled autumn morning in California. An untenable contradiction? The story of Victor Kalmikov, in bast shoes, six up in an early Soviet railway carriage, then, with a 50 pound drill, pounding evenly-spaced half-inch holes into a steel girder. Night school with chalk words on rough blackboard--again, the name of the place of the name. Mag-ni-to-gorsk--City of Magnet Mountain. A Pittsburg in the Urals. Photographed by Max Alpert (credits say 1899-1980). A long life, to tell the story--a Soviet Salgado.

The commissars, in Mozyr, to my father, in 1921: "But Osher, we are BUILDING something here..."
k

Analect 2.181x

1 November 2007. November sky--even and gray. Sidewalk opposite: a youngish man of Middle-Eastern descent, charcoal watchcap, downcast, hands shoved into pockets of short gray coat. Just outside: golden retriever leashed to bus stop pole. Patient gaze in our direction, tail tucked ever so slightly between his back legs. Mouth ajar, alert--he turns his head suddenly, then his shifts right ear. The world--present tense.

An interior by Gwen John--upstairs room. A garret? Suffused with warm and delicate light. High, round-backed wicker chair, a book on a small table--naples yellow and white with a touch of dark. Jane Freilicher, too...

Analect 2.180x

30 October 2007. Gray wall-to-wall sky. Packed in and looming. Weak-tea warmth of 7-eleven sign--a dingy yellow lucite bubble with grayed-off striations (missing bulbs). Driver in dark shorts and red hat, loading dolly. A million gallons of Coca-Cola--nine million cooling units world-wide--run 'em on CO2 (even GreenPeace agrees). Beeping back-up lights and a lumbering arc as he pulls out...

Ron Rael. At the ends of the known world--four hundred years in what's now Colorado. An architecture of earth. "Until my generation we never lived in anything else."

"To see god..."

Analect 2.179x

26 October 2007. Gray cloud halo, luminous and white, backlighting the magnolia. Sun almost unannounced. Contractor in faded orange tee, standing in front of long double-cab Tundra, cell phone in hand, gesticulating. His ear-piece a tiny moon rocket, ca. 1969... The history of wallboard...

Desert road to El Centro, the Coachella Valley, an inland sea, now baked dry, parched fields and endless rows of melon: cantaloupe, casaba... Aunt Sis in the bar downtown, low porch, opening to a high-ceiling room, always dark...indelible whiff of last night's drinks. It's Thanksgiving. We gather in the backroom cafe, linoleum counter, rounded edges. A platter of spaghetti...raised eyebrows....

The blessings...

Analect 2.178x

25 October 2007. Filtered sun, just like always. October. Two double-red brake-lights peaking from beneath extra-long horizontal run of Glacier Ice Company truck--a white tractor-trailer with its own amber flasher. Prongy blue geo mountain, scrap of white paint for snow, sign-painter script with one swoopy capital--the G. Bags of ice on iron pallet, lowered on plate of welted steel. It's going back up now, the workman trucker leaning casually against side of lift, one foot up, looking off into the mist.

Lost Distance--the planned poem book with Leonard. Two quasi-Chinamen. Someday, perhaps.

Analect 2.176x

12 October 2007. Gray and rain, glossy street, gleaming yellow curb on dark wet asphalt of the 7-eleven lot. Hunched figures, back and forth, incipient winter clothes. Interiors: Nicola curled up on the downstairs soft chair, a room inside a room. Natasha on the wicker couch, also deep inside...singing.

Taoist immortal on a Tyson Street bluff, Oceanside. The Pacific. A blue-green rubber raft, in mid-July, 1954-- paddling out with first set of fins, swirling turn in even greener water, then whooshing down the face of a wave...

The shape of a gourd. Emblematic--living form, below and then above--growing, that is, the smaller following the larger, held up to the sky...

Analect 2.175x

11 October 2007. Autumn sun on car glass, gleaming. Rain at night, now moved east. A figure in black, ample, with t-shirt emblem, white on blue, angling across the 7-eleven lot. All my characters, exposed...in search of a play, walk-ons, with minor speaking parts... Polonius, hiding behind a curtain...

Yesterday, late afternoon. Walking with Hojin and Ayosha, up and around the quiet El Cerrito streets. Narrow white shepherd at fence, prancing up, alert. Screaming whoosh of Bart just above, slowly setting sun. Later, Yao-yo San, with Alyosha at the door. Customers pass by in delight. Kim-chi and scallions...a true friend...

(for Hojin)

Analect 2.174x

9 October 2007. In between sky, gray to patchy blue, then again to gray. Indian summer, or beginning of the rains. Melancholia, under a pear tree... The lost shepherd--with a hint of Joseph Beuys--his tall crook hidden under heavy felt, wild companion alongside, pacing back and forth, sniffing this European... A reënactment, as in Jamestown, or Plymouth, even...man and the forest--except that now it's by 747 (was that true in Rene Block's day?), and an ambulance careening along the Van Wyck Expressway... Hero or victim, delivered to the stage--an actor, in any case--for history's thing...

(for Kari)

Analect 2.173x

5 October 2007. Warm morning sun, single white Caspar-the-Ghost cloud hovering over 7-eleven roof. White Salvation Army truck rumbles across the lot just below, red insignia emblazoned. Two red tail lights alongside, on polished black trunk hood, late-model, non-descript. Lots of action...

Philip Guston last night: nailing it down. The early paintings, thirties imagery, all thematic--his tiny figure on a ladder, working on giant mural. The nooses and hoods--inside or out? Ku-Klux-Klan, LA garage, merging. We jump to Semana Santa in Seville--the ur-hoods, even taller, even whiter. Question to Berta, from Bilbao: "How do you feel when you see them?" "Scared." Hovering within, unknown...

A lumpy figure in a tilt-up bed, twined geometries, and two parallel shoes, one after the other on an adamant horizontal. Face--if there is one--hidden away at the top of the slab. A monument to the impossibility of doubt... Dear sweet sleep, o save us...

Analect 2.172x

4 October 2007. Morning light, scattered leaves. Plum and mooncake--abundant comparisons. As when the Appaloosa... Last night: reading Psalms, two voices in each line--a kind of call and response, the first part sinuous and flowing, the second, an understated return. Again, and then again, the rhythm ongoing, like ocean waves, or the waters of the Yuba--bright stream on dark stone, granite, murmur and roar...

Analect 2.171x

2 October 2007. Gentle October sun, sidewalk-planter plum leaves shift slightly in the breeze. Woman with her son's penguin drawing--Charlie, that would be--a insistent mess of black, white and orange--intense and innocent, just the way a five-year old... His name a scrawl at the top, then again four more letters--including the ch--in a kind of wampum block on right. The bird frontal, but unrevealing except for its presence. In the background--loopy violin reprise of Brahms at the county fair--a layer of smoothness applied evenly, everywhere...

The test of Ivan Karamazov: the tears of one unknown child...

Analect 2.170x

28 September 2007. Scraggly dragon cloud whisping over white patch, heavy layers of gray tom tom, rain soon, rain soon, standing white lamp post--arched sentinel to the gods, silhouette, and tucked away under the eaves, run of warm interior light--constancy of the 7-eleven. Constanz--how we searched, the Dutch painter of atmosphere--was that it?--not so strident as Karl Appel Or Kiefer, before. "He's so aggressive." Force, more like it--the recognition or the imposition. Strands of matted yellow straw--embedded in an expanse of gray oil. "How golden thy hair Margarete, how ashen thy hair Shulamith..."

Analect 2.169x

27 September 2007. Succoth, a warm evening, moon through the mimosa tree, clearing the hills to the east, flooding the sky. The Mid-Autumn Festival, also people sitting together outside, eating mooncakes... Carrying brightly lighted lanterns. The two ends of the world--or is it so? Landing at night in Guilin, her mysterious hills hidden in the mist...

On the river at dawn, each bend disappearing... Fisherman on a bamboo raft, cormorants, shaggy phoenix-tail bamboo lining the banks, water buffalo in the shallows... The banyan tree...and a special kind of flower--or was it the fish named for the flower, as Effie instructed me--the Osmanthus-blossom... Perhaps that was her name?

The Five Treasures of the River. Friendship, a time of peace...

Analect 2.168x

25 September 2007. Filtered sunlight, early fall. Dusky yellow Ford pickup across the way, nosed in to 7-eleven wall. Working day. Voices of strikers on radio this morning: north side of Kansas City. Resolve and bewilderment. As in Lev Shestov--Athens or Jerusalem--more the resolve. His vision of the Garden of Eden--an eternal ecstatic existence--bounty of faith, perhaps, not yet brought down to the realm of distinguo--those grudging oppositions, true or false, good and evil, locked into the realm of "nature"--and every impossible false choice. Instead, to love the trees. Indeed, to speak with them...

Simone Weil: L’attention absolument sans mélange est prière...

Analect 2.167x

21 September 2007. Dappled sunlight, mild--as opposed to yesterday's dark hint of fall... Doritos truck safely parked along 7-eleven curb, golden triangles this way and that. Open doorway to Clean Living Cleaners across the lot just behind. Woman en route to bank, shapely black skirt, high boots... Human endeavors...

Last night: unexpectedly animated. Anthony's songs, "in my bosom, in my heart," Nathaniel's wandering images, moments of focus, delight in the act... Hojin's somber elephant--girl lifts cup to drink, then again, then again...grains of sand, a wrinkled pea...the start of life... Sabina: Acrobats circling a bar, round bicycle wheel. Man in suit with pink pillow, in black & white...a woman's surprise. Mound of dark earth, held in the hand, moist, each grain...

Harry Belafonte song, from that same era. Day-O, day-ay-ay-o... World of something real, even if far far away... A life lived...

"Work all night on a drink a'rum
(Daylight come and he wan' go home)
Stack banana till morning come
(Daylight come and he wan' go home)"

Analect 2.166x

20 September 2007. Gray skies, first small drops of rain. Natasha on round table this morning, arching her back and tossing her head. Whispery meows. All is response, water vapor, the rising seas. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Reading last night--poems of Larry Levis...each one new. Fresno, valley fields, dry grass, weeds alongside the road. Smell of winter, tule fog. Scene shifts to New York--I held her in my arms, Lexington, Third...whiteness of snow. Later: The Graves of Rome. A subtle preoccupation--recurring, always, shadow-like...


"...I'd almost forgotten that what
Most people leave behind them disappears.
Three days later, staying alone in a cheap
Hotel in Naples, I noticed a child's smeared
Fingerprint on a bannister. It
Had been indifferently preserved beneath
A patina of varnish applied, I guessed, after
The last war. It seemed I could almost hear
His shout, years later, on that street. But this
Is speculation, & no doubt the simplest fact
Could shame me..."

Analect 2.165x

18 September 2007. Gray cloud veils hide touches of blue, unexpected mass of Albany Hill to the west... Cars divulge their student guests--itinerants all, backpacks and untried clothes--each new costume a blaze of youth, dashing, unsure... Girl in red top with long sleeves, slightly lighter carnation skirt, a little short, red mixed with white, tiny tattooed bracelet on right ankle, she looks back over her shoulder through sandy blond waves, all aware... Boy with intent expression, lifting hood of trunk--he reaches for handle of dark fiberglass case--a guitar. Asian woman, a little older, pushing cart of metal trays along edge of sloped driveway, balancing with uneven steps...

The scholar painters. Zhu Haonian's "Portrait of Tang Yin after Qiu Ying and Zhou Chen," 1851. Figure in dark cap, seated on a rock, one leg draped casually over the other. Reddish shoes, hands in sleeves, hidden in the folds of long garment. Impeccable line, mirroring elongated sheet of scroll. On bare wall, the paper catching every shift in New York light. Indeterminate age, looking back at the past, remembered in part...

Analect 2.164x

14 September 2007. Ha Melech ba-sadeh... The King is in the field. Mountains of Edom, Ethiopian steppe. Creature as figure, standing for... Gesture of nobility, a pride of lions. Oldest living court, back to the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, crossing the Sea of Reeds in a narrow boat, approaching the city of Jerusalem. Notion of Zion, a hillside, a gate, the land itself...the meaning shifts to meet each man's need. Need, yes, in a time of gray clouds and early rain, first drops on the dry earth, forthcoming...

Analect 2.163x

11 September 2007. Gray morning, approaching rain. Shaggy clouds over low 7-eleven roof. The good old days. Heavy-set man crosses street on diagonal, heading into the barber's. Woman of middle years with top-knot and khaki shorts, next to a white station wagon. Just last week: warm, humid afternoon on a crosstown bus, 23rd street, between 9th and 10th. Designations.

Kaikodo. Painting of a scholar seated on a stone. Somewhere in China, three hundred years ago. His long face, kind and severe. A motionless repose, where the weight of the support becomes him. Very much at home.

Analect 2.162x

31 August 2007. High clouds pearl gray, even a chill to the air, after heavy end-of-summer days... Valley hills, parched and brown, concentric rings to the east. Copper mines and zinc, chunks of iron, the entire mineral lore--opening onto miles and miles of straight-plowed fields... The Golden State, by some standard, a banner and a name... Gray marshlands at dawn, absent wind, every tiny ripple... A minnow scooting back and forth in cloudy shallows, then another...stands of reed. A heron watching, preparé...

Analect 2.161x

30 August 2007. Warm light over the hills, a Jerusalem morning. Figure of a man just now outside, peering up Solano, one hand to his brow, waiting for the Number 18. Figures of change, a crow, perhaps, poised, or something smaller. Robin or raven...

There's no telling. All is story--an unfolding of fleetingness... In México they sing, in the Argentine, staccato--so Ilan Stavans this morning, early, on the radio. But wait, that can't be. The guttural purr of the Porteño?--all sounds bending into "zh"--immersed in atmosphere... Avellaneda, Riachuelo, Hincha La Boca...

Analect 2.160x

28 August 2007. Argiope in the shadows, morning sun, spray of water across gray enamel hood, opening... La foule de pèlerins: Mark last night, to the entire gathering: what would be your question... A challenge--not in competition, but as a kind of vast encouragement. What would you engage--today--can it be done together? Roomful of faces, quizzical, tired, eager, intent, one woman staring vaguely down into the screen of her laptop, a red-haired fellow way in back raising his eyes to the ceiling, girl with dark dark hair, beautiful and patient--sits waiting. A compact blond: "It should be provocative..." We listen for ripples of response. Maybe. Lists of books, tenacity of the mind, winding intertwining paths of thought, the temptations of control. But no, there's no plan, we're flying blind, as usual, soaring, even, the horizon way down there below, a few clouds, otherwise clear...

Analect 2.159x

23 August 2007. Fog trails over low hills, morning light. Last night--Thom Gunn's essays. Ben Jonson, the occasions of poetry. Yesterday--panadero, the provider.

Sea gypsies--the Moken people, maybe now a thousand still survive--living out their lives aboard long hand-carved boats, entire generations, afloat, swimming in the Andaman Sea...

Analect 2.158x

22 August 2007. Gray dawn, hint of sun. Black dog amidst trees, tall, narrow verticals, as in Seurat. Figure of a man, waiting nearby, hand outstretched--holding something shaped like a cup. Now, just across the street, patient flash of revolving amber light--large green truck, pulled in to curb, also waiting...

Valley fields, somewhere near Wasco. Forlorn towns on dry valley scrub. Once the largest body of water east of the Great Lakes... Kern River out of the mountains, wetlands for miles and miles--cattails and sedge, gray brown mallards with their dark heads, distinctive touches of white... Wings lifting by the thousand, immense...

Yesterday: Stockton school yard field. Empty in late August, no one in sight... Unexpecteded: a flock of Candadian geese, gathered, gleaning...

Analect 2.157x

21 August 2007. Ying and Keri in hazy shade at near end of pool--filtered indoor morning light, blurring. Girls. Yesterday, in green leaves at bottom of campus eucalyptus, two figures entwined. Smooth brown hips, arms around...

Rilke's castle at Muzot. A medieval tower, ancient walls. Small window through stone overlooking a wild garden...grapevines and summer heat--the Valois. Print of Swiss officer--expression so stern that Rilke would take his meals facing the other way...

Anthony: I cried afterwards...