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...

Analect 2.795x

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

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


Ni Tsan...

Analect 2.793x and 2.794x

Analect 2.793x



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

A silver bowl...

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


* * *


Analect 2.794x



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

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

Grzyby, or some such...

Analect 2.792x

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

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

Escalon...

Analect 2.791x

8 October 2010. Autumn sun, beatific.

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

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

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

Analect 2.790x

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

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

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

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

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

Home...

Analect 2.789x

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

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

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

Granite crags high above...

2.788x (Analect almost without at drawing)

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

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

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

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

* * *

(mac and scanner down for a while)

Analect 2.787x

27 September 2010. Another hot one.

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

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

Analect 2.786x

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

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

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

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

Analect 2.785x

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

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

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

Analect 2.784x

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

Hope...

* * *



James Wright

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

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

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

Analect 2.783x

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

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

Silk Road...

Analect 2.782x

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

Guitar balanced effortlessly, oriented...

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

To forgive...

Analect 2.781x

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

Analect 2.780x

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

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

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

"Do not forget him..."

Analect 2.779x

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

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

* * *

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

* * *

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

Analect 2.778x

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

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

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

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