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...

Analect 2.156x

20 August 2007. Mottled gray sky, white smoke rising. Golden retriever racing across wide lawn, coat flying, lunges up to snatch red disk in mid-air. Coiled hose in ivy tangle--kinked green links, pulled more-or-less straight. The night-blooming jasmine, unexpected.

Pouring forth.

Analect 2.155x

17 August 2007. Sunny, blue skies, crisp light...almost autumn. Woman in wide straw hat with scooping down-turned brim, eyes lowered as well, making her way down Solano in small decisive steps...Fujian, Hangzhou... A chalky red sweater, neither bright nor pastel, returning as a Digueno, here from a 19th century print--the flight into Egypt... Sauvage, Christophe explains--not so much wild as close to nature. As in the names--Jamul, Cuyamaca, Pauma Valley...the back country, mom called it...dry boulder-studded hills, touches of red clay. Manzanita and chaparral--cumulus cloud banks over mountains to the east, the desert beyond...

Ceanothus--a wild lilac, scrub oak, toyon...

Analect 2.154x

16 August 2007. Sunlight with pink gray clouds, quiet streets. Far in the distance--figure of woman in orange tee, stocky, set in relief against gray expanse of high school gym. Her golden-colored dog running back and forth, back and forth... On the radio--markets all in red--the Nisei Index, Tokyo stocks, Singapore, Hong Kong...a serious dismay (more current phrase). Nothing untoward.

The back country--San Antonio de Pala--image of adobe tower, two bells...wandering roof tiles sloping this way and that. Single tiny figure next to wide door--the chapel, at least today. Dark walls, clay floor, figures of saints with votive candles. Quiet, even austere. The Asistencia...

Analect 2.153x

15 August 2007. This morning: sol y sombra. Tiny golden-haired creature wanders past the window, almost looking in. Mothers and their daughters--Yael, Hannah, Celeste... At dawn--lithe figure in pool, dolphin awaiting a child. El mundo entero...

Talking with Christophe, almost unexpectedly--as if we walked this way every few days or so. Smell of the camphor trees, black pine--California live oak, privet, ash...a blue-flowered bush from Ethiopia, the one that he planted here--color of Sandra's eyes, as B spoke of them, after Sandra was gone...

El Río Sin Orejas--a book of origins, and the sense we make of them. Sunlight through clerestory window, just above the whispers of fog. Alongside, A Nubian maiden...

(for Christophe)

Analect 2.152x

14 August 2007. Gray clouds against hills to the east, dark birds wheeling. Image of the dry shores of Lake Superior--gray newspaper text. Lamplight inside, on a gray morning. There on the thick Columbia Encyclopedia, poems of Larry Levis. Tessellated pastel cover--a painting, maybe, or the overall pattern on low-end linoleum. Elizabeth Murray, Winter Stars...

And birds of all kinds flew in front of me then.
I learned to tell them apart by their empty squabblings,
The slightest change in plumage, or the inflection
Of a call. And why not admit it? I was happy.

(from Larry Levis, The Poet at Seventeen)

Analect 2.151x

13 August 2007. Sunlight, early, a single whisp of fog hovering on the edge of Albany Hill. Voice of Werner as the Dalai Lama...where did he come from? Metal detectors and class schedules--a mind full of bric-a-brac, woe, woe, if only emptiness. Chuang Tzu--along a path. The great bird P'eng...

In Northern Darkness there lives a fish called K'un. This K'un is so huge that it stretches who knows how many thousand miles. When it changes into a bird it's called P'eng. This P'eng has a back spreading who knows how many thousand miles, and when it thunders up into flight it's wings are like clouds hung clear across the sky. It churns up the sea and sets out on its migration to Southern Darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.

(translated by David Hinton)

Analect 2.150x

10 August 2007. Filtered morning sun, sparkling through pearl cloud. Ulica Glogera--a small street in Warszawa, curving, pre-war...the general's house, an older man in darkened rooms, laconic, gruff. Emblems of a cossack past--curving saber slung above the mantle, ancestral pictures in heavy wooden frames. So why did I leave him the Dr. John album--Gris Gris, I think--as if to bring the centuries into alignment, collision...

As with our arrival at Friday Harbor, spring of 1964--songs pouring forth from speakers on the deck of the long white schooner--She Loves You--dappled northern waters--I Want to Hold Your Hand...

Women of La Bretagne, white headcoverings, heavy skirts and clogs... Each gathering a kind of necessity. Pèlerinage...

Analect 2.149x

9 August 2007. Fuzzy gray sky--more velour than chenille--a meteorological children's blanket, pulled up over the crib... Woman from Bretagne--face à la mer--something from a painting by Serusier, or Gauguin. Truth of the local--even when it's not one's own. As in the Tempest--the English expedition of 1609, a second batch of colonists set out for Jamestown...they encounter a massive mid-Atlantic storm, find themselves wrecked on the shores of Bermuda. Written up later in the colonies by survivors, the story eventually makes the rounds of literary London--and corresponding details appear in Shakespeare's final play...

"When thou camest first, Thou strokedst me and madest much of me..."

Analect 2.148x

8 August 2007. Gray roof against gray sky. Darkened end of pool, scaffolding all the way to arched ceiling. Young guard in red sweatshirt, red shoes, hand to the side of her face--pensiveness in an unexpected setting. Two hooded figures, alone, facing a wide streambed. Glauber Rocha? A donkey in between them, nestled, wicker basket alongside. The arroyo disappears into break in distant hills.

Boulders and chaparral--the back country, gray-green leaves and a wash of red clay--an unexpected balance. Mining for gold, some ninety years ago. "I made a garment..."

Lagarto y libélula...

Analect 2.147x

7 August 2007. Truck door swings open, somber morning light. The claims of philosophy and the claims of love. One or the other...like a long metal railing, bow to stern, on the Great White Steamer... Calm of San Pedro harbor, early morning, darkened wharfs and gray waters, all the way to Avalon. Last night: some Tío Pepe, one glass after another. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she explained--another kind of darkness--unpredictable, maybe, or at the very least, unknown. Wild in part, and from a distant source. Migrant trails out of Punjab, turbans and hidden knives, sharp blue eyes take in every horizon--a horseman, defender of the realm...Mughul...

"If I have a daughter, perhaps she will sing..."

Analect 2.146x

1 August. Calm gray skies, shadowy pool, clerestory light pouring in from the east... Pèlerin. A French side-wheeler of the old vintage--along Catalina lines. The big white steamship, leaving San Pedro at dawn...all of us, passengers, Avalon bound. Through the jetty and into open waters of the channel--first taste of the sea, long swells and a rolling gate, clear gray. Dolphins lead...

Shirley last night--also a clear gray. Her face and head--beautiful still--and a sure voice, with all the articulate tentative touches... Circles and arcs--visions of light, Yehezkel's wheel. A small dark room in London, we're told--not Yerushalayim--just her voice--against a background of time, friendship, world...

All ends are beginnings, if so discovered...even now...

Analect 2.145x

30 July 2007. Gray morning, golden cast to sky in south. White workman's truck--number 18--with tool rack and ladder, one fine celadon hose coiled neatly over stanchion on back. Illuminated brake light now as he pulls out... The things of Europe--William's paintings, for instance. Suffusion of Italian light--the Borgo of Santo Sepolcro, his home--San Sepolcro--founded by two pilgrims, on their return from the Holy Land. Or a procession on the way to Jasna Góra. Gathering of young people, all sorts. They refer to themselves as hippies--hippisi po polsku--all peace signs and beads, Ottoman kerchiefs and woven vests, macramé, stars. Ingenuous, too, and scruffily appealing--as if hope might be renewed along the road, their faces, along the path...