Analect 2.742x

2 July 2010. Cool July morning, sunny breeze...

Bakers Beach and the grand tour, beginning with De Young and the Impressionists--and a dense press of onlookers, admitted in batches, crowd control. Overdose of media, too--the photos and photomurals and video screens and walking tapes and pocket charts on wall--however, nothing can touch the beauty of even most fleeting of the Renoirs...a woman's veiled face, the black spots of lace each alive and different--or the red line on the ribbon of Bazille's slipper, tucked in at the bottom to fix and enliven a narrow S curve. Or the intense light of Algiers--Valley of the Wild Women, all heavy reds and browns and brown greens--pushed color in middle value range, moving towards darker clumps. A gathering of pools of light, or dark, not a distict edge in the bunch, pointing towards the later paintings. Pissarro, too--the shock of the paleness of his colors--so high key, the price of a vibrant immediacy (Hoarfrost, first, and then the Self-Portrait from 1874). No surprise that he wanted pale frames as well...

Later, the ocean, white strokes on gray-green--windswept. Young family on the sand, mother and two youngsters--who dig holes in the sand and lounge about. Young couple reading, books propped up on the diagonal. Elmore Leonard and Michael Chabon, stretched out side by side. Lithe figure of a man running full tilt on wet sand--his small dog struggling to keep up...

Stow Lake, and other old spots in the park--paddle-boats on placid green water, gulls and pigeons and Canada geese, all hoping for handouts on nearby grass. Then across town on Vanness to the Bay again--Aquatic Park, late afternoon, beautiful northern summer light, slow distance swimmers in their patient back-and-forth--two kayaks on sand at foot of steps, and a crew of young people in half-donned wetsuits, getting ready to enter the water...

Thoughtful man, thirty or so, carefully dressed, walking a Wheaton terrier...

Back along the Embarcadero--old streetcars borrowed from Milano, Birmingham, the castoffs of another age, lovingly repaired and repainted, city as theater...

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Late last night--Austerlitz, Nikolai Rostóv...