Analect 2.301x

26 June 2008. Lip of sun over dawn hills, rust orange against dull dull sky.

Unending drone of Congressional voices--questions bluntly posed (a stance) --and the lawyer's answers-- slippery and sincere--John Yoo. First thought: seems so young. Second: we work within 300 feet of each other. Third...

But wait, there is no third, in this binary world: up, down, good, bad, inside, out...

Outside. Yes, a kind of absolute. Acknowledgement of a source. And where did we know they came from--those distant sets, imperceptible at first, just invisible bumps and humps on an equally distant horizon... Act of looking--searching, contemplation--but always with the taut threat of action--anticipation, joining in--each steep new wall, a green mass of sea, heaped up, Poseidon's fist, bounding, smashing the cliffs, lapping the shore...

Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas...Australia even...

Maybe the moon...

Analect 2.300x

25 June 2008. Beautiful gray morning, chilly wind, birch tree branches on dark window.

Milton Resnick: I'm not older than anyone else and I'm not younger than anyone else. Blunt formulations from the hand of a master...standing before an acre of canvas on his light loft wall, so wide he couldn't see the ends, only tubes of white, a hundred at a time... throwing each new tube on the floor, stepping on it to open, dipping in again with the brush...

The brush, en todo sentido. To brush her cheek, to brush with fate. Gates of heaven opening in a Jujuy quebrada, la musica de la montaña, vigüela, charango, peludo... A small creature with a hard shell, soft to the inside, rolling itself into a tight ball when threatened...

Fears, ungathered. Time, change, lo necesario...

Four women--las viejas--climbing a hillside path. Heavy skirts, shawls, goods carried in cloths wound round the waist. Humuhuaca, maybe--centuries ago...

La noche del peludero...

Analect 2.299x

24 June 2008. Smoke orange sun against haze at dawn. Fires in the north, county to county. From Loren: "The hills have disappeared into the smoke. A chopper loaded with retardent is passing as I type. We're OK, cough, choke..." Laytonville.

Conjunctions.

Familia Bemamán, 1930s, Villa Cañas, Provincia de Santa Fé. Don León Bemamán, fundador de la Tienda "La Liquidadora". De izquierda a derecha: Alberto, Salvador, Antonia Socías de Bemamán, Mercedes, Isaac y Don León en la antigua casa familiar.

La Liquidadora. The Wet Spot, maybe, or The Watering Hole. Or even (as in Oceanside, on Mission Street, a hemisphere and half a century away)... Suds and Spuds.

La Lopez Pereyra. Tony and Peter.

Lo todo es anhelo...

Analect 2.298x

23 June 2008. Gray morning breeze through elm tree leaves... Chinese stalwart before blank bank wall, full and open against gray sky. As compared with woman preparing to swim, compact, standing on opposite rim of pool, moving her arms back and forth in short gestures, rumpled dimple of a middle, suit pulled round, graceful legs, strong...

A pampa pony, were there such? Likely no. Horses instead, introduced by the Spanish--los caballos--raided by the Araucanos soon enough, moving east from the cordillera. Words becoming them, trunks of speech. Pastern, fetlock, hoof...

A standing figure, mounted, riding at full gallop, face into the wind...

Analect 2.297x

20 June 2007. Sun, once again, milky air...

Bruno Ganz this morning--but why? Der Europeische Freund, and at all times, his veiled melancholy, willing laugh. The experiences--"los experimentados," as they say--an explorer, of sorts, even as the Swiss sailor--lost in Lisbon, his ship steams out of port. Dans la ville blanche, with Teresa Madruga as Rosa. Madruga--somewhere, dawn...

Así se pasa. Se mueve el corazon. Las canciones, las miradas...

Dicen. Yo no lo digo...

Analect 2.296x

19 June 2008. Sunny and warm. Jerusalem mornings, heat of the day, already a presence in the dawn air.

Sound of doves. Yonah, the word containing the form--a cooing, a cucurrucucu... Paloma, said under the breathth...

Pedro Infante and his band of musical companions, on a quiet narrow street, in the evening, just below the señorita's window, waiting for her to appear. Hidden, then revealed for a moment, then hidden again.

Mansilla, last night, late, on Argentina. "Dios estaba triste como ella, y aunque hasta su tristeza tuviera que ser disimulada, la hora del rescate se acercaba..."

* * *

(God was sad, just as she was, and although even her sadness had to be concealed, the hour of rescue was drawing near...)

Analect 2.295x

18 June 2008. Sol y sombra, mañana de Junio...

Two creatures--pajaros grises--se encuentran. Mirando, mirando en los ojos, ojos de castaño, ojos verdes. Words, as in the old songs--always something given, something taken away. Or rather, let to go, like a bird from its nest. Su nido. The tiny branches interwoven, gathered from here and there, a kind of home. Open to sky above, and the spring rains.

Temporary, of course, and forever...

Analect 2.294x

17 June 2008. La vida es sueño, morning sun.

A scene from Brueghel--one of the seasons. Summer, perhaps, between the sowing and the harvest. Twelve such, around the walls of a single room, Netherlands, long ago. To make the world whole, rain, mist, snow. Each turning as it arrives, like the low clouds over the roofs of Amsterdam, fleeting, gray, late afternoon. Appearing suddenly, scudding, a presence of the world--the divine--and then gone...

Analect 2.293x

16 June 2007. Gray gull day. Gray sky, gray street, floppy breeze in sidewalk tree. Should know what kind--Schuyler's specialty, among others--ties, paintings, books, shirts. Brooks Brothers, for instance, or a lounging living room on Long Island where the piano is played for hours a day. One enters as a neophyte, leaves through the conservatory door.

Entering and leaving, that's it. An opening, wide as a mile--fires to be made, kindling gathered. The fogón--it's evening, somewhere on the Pampas. Water in tin kettle with half-turned spout, gold-orange gourd, silver rim--sienna of the sunset. Feelings to match...whistful, maybe, sometimes amused. A little tired from "esperando..." Always right there, in the middle, between wanting and wanting again...

The great circle--geograph, and of the heart. Algo triste. We reach out, embrace, reach out again...

Analect 2.292x

13 June 2008. Milky sun, yellow light from the east. Javed's face over 7-eleven counter, worn and alert. Night shift, twice on the Haj. "We haven't seen you," the words somehow makeshift, provisional. "No paper, no banana..."

Before dawn--appearing on small screen, in the quiet downstairs dark. As if out of nowhere, Los Chalchaleros. Arked across a stage, each figure on a black disk, elevating their presence. Golden guitars, elaborate allusions to native dress. Theatrical and self-satisfied, but their voices engaging. "Paisaje de Catamarca." Overly smooth rendition of something from far in the past.

Meanwhile, Nicola, with a penchant, beats her own small paws against the living room door, stretching up, not in time, white and black and gold. Insistent. Oblivious to all but her own pursuits. That's how it is: we love, we go our own way...

Analect 2.291x

12 June 2008. Summer sun. Ying's face at pool, intelligent, intentionally impassive. Use as few syllables as possible, yet always be present.

A present. Flowers, as an example, offered in the freest of spirits--white, lavender, midnight blue, freesias on a sea of green. In a single glass vase, set on a wooden table. Instantly at home...

A bottle of Tío Pepe, from some decades back. Warsaw, Amseterdam, que se yo. Tucked into a backpack, and produced in a flash--as if the world might revolve around such gestures of immediacy. The ones that can be lost, as well--as in all the songs...

Si la tortolita llora
porque le han quitado el nido,
cómo no he de llorar yo,
si me quitas lo que es mío
Cómo no he de llorar yo,
si me quitas lo que es mío.

Analect 2.290x

11 June 2008. Very warm morning, sun pouring...

Aguas dulces--una laguna alegre, de tiempos pasados... patos, cisnes, cigüeñas... Aves migrantes de colores bajos, oscuros...

Yesterday, late afternoon: la anciana Guaraní, from a moment of sadness. Almost not drawn, the forms emerging from dull gray-brown matte as from the muted earth itself. Small smile as she grasps the olla--a jar, of clay, holding it in her lap, embracing...

Pale blue sweater of a modern sort--or was it pink? More the lines on her face, the life lived in her shoulders and waist, the small smile...

Entre Ríos--between the rivers...

Santa Fé...

Analect 2.289x

10 June 2008. Sun shadow on long diagonal across red-gold Corona Extra truck. Girl with red-gold curls, bending forward to unlock bike at busstop pole. Activities.

Earlier: Lee's face, narrower and narrower, eyes straight ahead, gleaming. Shopping cart of perpetual what-nots--neighborhood gleanings.

Immigrant family on a steamer, Buenos Aires 1908. Inmigrantes. Tiny daughter in floppy fur, her mother's face intransigent, hardened. Brother already looking off to the side. Minor curl on father's moustache--marker of youth, under burden of family belongings in nondescript pack, tied with narrow cords, boosted on his shoulder.

One black crow, wings spread wide, slowing slightly as it glides up to land on nearby roof. Lives, old and new...

Analect 2.288x

9 June 2008. Summer morning sun, as if there were no other kind.

Shavuous...

Reading Alberto Gerchunoff: Los Gauchos Judios. Immigrants from Podolia, Bessarabia, 1880s, supported by the Baron Maurice de Hirsch, in Paris, who bankrolled the endeavor. First in la Provincia de Santa Fe--Moïseville--then Entre Ríos. An agrarian paradise. Description of a scene at dawn, morning mists still hovering over the fields, everything green and lush. Rebeca, one of the daughters, tanned, with heavy braids, seated outside, milking a cow. Older figures appearing in the doorways--men with beards. On their lips-- "las benediciones de la mañana..."

A red cloth marker set a distance. First coursed furrow with the oxen--los bueyes--then the first return.

Gerchunoff later an editor at La Nación, in Buenos Aires, after the 1920s. These his own memories...

"Estamos con el campo..."

Analect 2.287x

6 June 2008. Sunlight everywhere, glorioso. Oso de gloria--the shining bear. As if out of the selva, loping gate, maybe with a fresh salmon in his mouth, straight from the stream, hungry, pensive...

Pine trees and palms. Truckee Junction and the highway north--after Norden and Soda Springs--the winding 89 to Sierraville. Cabin at end of empty road, storm windows and a ship-shape roof. Lingering smell of wood-burning stove, pervasive through all the rooms. Windows open wide to outside air. Gnats and flies in barn shadows, stillness.

Two horses near a long fence, wandering over to say hello. Or do they say hello? They certainly say something, slowly, though, with sloping shoulders and lanky haunches, nuzzling these strange new temporary beings...

She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.



(from James Wright, The Blessing)

Analect 2.286x

5 June 2008. Gray light of dawn, gentle over distant hills. Quiet. Girl at side of pool, pouring clear liquid from white gallon container as she makes her way along the edge. River banks, riparian...the Stanislaus. Photo from Briana, yesterday, her face in profile against green-gold delta shore. "The day that we were married..."

Last night: Mansilla again, his book on Rosas, Juan Manuel. "Tuvimos que matarlo," the words invoked as a kind of explanation for one of history's darker turns. Then, a century later--Jorge Cafrune, the same phrase. Exactly. A nineteen-year-old thug--or was he?--in a light truck, careening over some provincial road...taking aim at the single figure on horseback...

Subcomandante Marcos...the place of song...

Analect 2.285x

4 June 2008. Dappled sun, dimpled turquoise pool water. Two swimmers in brimming form, churning alongside in same lane. Their rapid words in Spanish between each lap. "Desde la cuarenta...

One year ago--Leonard. Sometime in the night, he departed. Or a part of him departed. "Restarting the World," perhaps. As he'd have said it. "Creatures of Distance," too. Always in that sense--of things necessarily understood at a remove. An acknowledgement, of his own subtle kind. Not without a raised eyebrow--or shoulder (very slightly) on occasion. The El Monte touch. Printing plant, also in mid-evening, about to set out for a Tango lesson, brown rum bottles standing guard, somewhere near the door. Fathers and Sons...

Analect 2.284x

3 June 2008. Silver gray blink red tail light brown truck, shiny black three-quarter car, maroon henna mouth...

Hawk and dove, tiny bird on parapet flash, dull gray dot on endless sky... Gone now, flapping crow with overbearing wings, prehensile feather tips--indicative. Hopping sidewalk creature, splash of sun. Pigeon roost, under escrow eve. Corona extra on its side--golden illusion, la cerveza mas fina...

Go figure...

Analect 2.283x

2 June 2008. Sun through gray, incipient. Winds at night, birch tree branches scraping upstairs glass. Songs of the Argentine, that sliding movement--transladando--an invariable surprise. Un Día Me Fui del Pago--una milonga surena-- de don José Lerralde, from the publo of Huanguelén. Middle of the pampas, Provincia de Buenos Aires--dry lands, cattle, wheat. Echoes of the rural--as in gaucho, so hard to use, that word, the layers of attitude, even when first written down.

And yet, a love of words. Language might be going too far. Matungo, for instance--an old horse. Or matucho--the same. Bagual--also a horse, unbroken. Baquiano--a scout, someone who knows the land. Asombrao--surprised, astonished. Peludo, pescuezo, retobao...manotiar...toscas, yerra...derrotao. Twists, turns, deformations--angles and reclaimings, limbs of the algorrobo, or the roots of the ombu--growth of the soil, and native smarts. But there weren't any roads, just the rastrilladas--and an expanse of parched land stretching into the distance--a la cordillera, to the mountains, and then the great sea beyond, where, following Negriazul, the sun each evening goes to bathe...