Analects 2.668x

2 March 2010. Gray gull against darker gray clouds, swooping low. Rain...

Masterskaya. A workshop or studio, but here more on the order of an office, in a provincial town from the time of Chekhov. Shelves oveflowing with books and pamphlets, stacked this way and that--records of a sort. Moody light. Young woman on lower rung of ladder--imagined as Aunt Ruth, while closer to us, Osher, my father--the cap, the Russian shirt, a characteristic forthrightness, time of uncertainty...

Standing by the counter in Walters, decades hence, in a California beach town. Orders for shirts and shoes, Stacy Adams, Van Heusen, their sizes running this way and that--broken lots--fitted carefully onto varnished plywood shelves, small white cardpaper tags on the outer fold: trousers small/medium/large. Pulled one by one with a deft tug, the stack unchanged...

Doves under the eves, evening call...