Analect 2.230x

12 February 2008. Sparkling sun, early spring. Puff of white smoke against pale blue sky. The older neighbor couple lumber by--a Mexican shirt and a blue smock, holding hands. Narrow figure emerges from 7-eleven , white hair, dark clothes, graceful stoop, opening door of dark red car. Woman with leopard-skin shawl...

Song with many O's--feeling follows sound. The pleasure of... Smallish gray squares, painted with infinite slowness, a wainscot room. Who are we? Frayed wire on white wall--abraded--and a camel/ship vision. Desert door. Words for drawings: fast, free, legal...incommensurate with gesture, sense of touch. A sly but serious way of knowing. A path. Treacherous reward...

Analect 2.229x

11 February. Gentle sunlight at dawn, the world store is opening a little earlier these days. Almost daylight walking down the steps, pool again. "The water is 77 degrees, but we're open.."

Stories and songs. A small settlement on the edge of the Pampa, Provincia de Santa Fe. Monje--the name abrupt, almost blunt, a noun--imported, plunked down in the middle of a vast field. Ganado, potro, ternero--bombachas on a certain señor who will ride his horse to the local cafe, spend the evening with friends--algo de vino--climb back on in the moonlight--un poco emborrachao--lean forward, half-asleep, and wake up in front of his home...

En frente de su casa. La toldería de los Ranqueles. An Indian man rides standing, upright on his horse's back, jumping off at full gallop, jumping back on...

We sit at a small table in the ark of a large white room, soaring. Cuentos, cantos, historia... "Soy parte Guarani--de mi Mamá." Ojos negros, vivos. "De nuevo en los tuyos..."


(para Laura)

Analect 2.228x

8 February 2008. Foggy morning, winding through back streets to Happy Cleaners, double yellow apparitions in the mist--an oncoming car. Oncoming car, fleetingly, in the mist, as in posted video on life of Jorge Cafrune--a set of stills, in black and white...manhood, boyhood, youth. Strong face with mop of hair and wide beard, dark heavy-browed eyes, like some kind of landlocked pirate of the interior. Jujuy--far to the northwest: Francisco de Argañaraz y Murguía, who erects a small settlement in 1593, fighting the Calchaquíes and Omaguacas for what is of course their own land. Later, all becomes song: "En las sendas de Tapí...."

Wan's face, ni hao ma, smiling. I wish her a good new year--gung hay fat choi--as she reaches just below the counter, brings out an orange, offers it to me with both hands. A time of gifts, blessings, good wishes. As the night before, The Great China-- up dingy stairs and backroom paraphernalia, smiling, to a brightly lit upstairs room, filling again with smiling faces. Platters arrive, the table is suddenly overflowing. Hueying, smiling, holding a narrow bottle of China wine, smiling, pouring, in delight...

Analect 2.227x

7 February 2008. Calm sun, touch of haze. Hazaña, late last night. Estevan Echevería--El Matadero. Founding stories as history--or history as a founding story. Matasiete. "Qué mueran los salvages unitarios." Remnants of faith, reapplied--the vicious blade. Celebration of--pure strength--to crush with gusto. Lo peor, todo lo peor...

Al justo aquel por piadoso y sincero,
la Humanidad lo clavó de un madero...

Russian-ness as well. Alexander Skidan, late afternoon. Jumpy hair, taut face, narrow, expressive mouth with flashing momentary smiles inserted into a stream of densely compelling analytic glossalalia. His own words-- "Poetry the only free space." "Lacan, ectoplasm, whose center is e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e." "Very big and very crucial change." "The word as such is useless and ineffective."

Uglich.

Time of troubles. And yet, also hidden within, manifest in flashes, a great hope--like the rumpled surface of a frozen Siberian lake--or the Aral Sea, a wrangly and decrepit motorbike three-wheeler, rough boards and the Pleististocene rock weight of a Central Asian fisherman. The winds, the endless plain, the steppe...

Analect 2.226x

5 February 2008. Sun, maybe even a warm afternoon? Coffee glass spills everywhere on stove, phone missing somewhere, insistent woman in background now with unnecessarily detailed queries on electronic transmission. Voting day--the poll room door is closed. Pharmacy shut till nine. Etc.

But in the course of things...

Nathaniel's four paintings, arrayed on the wall. One suggestive, after Courbet, another idyllic--"figures in a dream." Another from the past, remembered with help of snapshot, and the last a row of abstract trees on wavy grain of clear plywood--perhaps the most naked of all. Four ways of telling, four moods, four kinds of experience, variety, belief, even. Engaging, the looking. "I like to see the paintings up close." Until something--everything--comes into focus...

Note from Dick, serious, but on the mend. Later, one from Kit, read late in the evening, after class.

Our animals, asleep in the rain...

Analect 2.225x

3 February 2008. Gray cloud mass with tiny plane--fuselage and wings, ghost of Werner von Braun. Yellow pulse of sun, wishing to push through, two flap-wing swallows lead the way.

Las parejas. Two by two. The Honda coupes, for example, on a quiet Sunday lot. One black, the other deep maroon. Patient. Couples walking--side by side--mittens and ear muffs on this brightened day...

Rain and the past. Layers of wet mulch under dripping pear limbs. Alyosha's hide-away. His leonine form also in the wet, moored in slumber along back wall of house. "He wants to." What other response? This being his wish...

Analect 2.224x

1 February 2008. Gentle winter sun, after days of rain. Golden light from eastern hills. A white van zips up the slope--El Cerrito Electric. A line of gray Hondas follow. Morning patience of each buddhist chauffeur. Just in front: a young man with desultory walk, face hidden in gray folds of cotton--smiling to himself. A story, perhaps--or something recalled. Do the young remember? Wajda's film--at 81--Katyń. Another vision from the east. Byelorussian woods. Engraved on each conscience--the names--matka, ojciec, brat. Stack of rough bunks, heavy timbers, four high in a darkened room. The weight of time. Pokolenie, Popiół i Diament. Kanał. In the words, the fields, in each living soul...

Analect 2.223x

31 January 2008. Pearl gray skies with whisp of cloud hovering over rooftops of the cotidienne, one silver line separating the heavens. Halfmoon awaits over lost beaches--something from Lorca--the lonely solitude of September, unvisited...unredeemed.

A conversation--those that we might yet have. Touch of raw umber mixed in with ultramarine, titanium white. Bringing alive. Tiny figure, dark shoulders, facing the east. Or west? They both matter. Yesterday evening: a circle of backs, seen from the hall. Joe's class, gathered around. He's down there, somewhere, floor level, doing his thing--an inveterate magic. Primate behavior--to test and smell. Asian girl in loose white top, black tights, perched on a table top for better view. "Joe, Tony's here." Nod of no--don't tell him--I step back--don't break the spell...

Analect 2.222x

29 January 2008. Grumbly gray morning, bits of rain involve themselves at every step. A poncho perhaps...? Life of the pampas--los crudos y los cocidos, rojos y azules. Wars of old. A telephone conversation with ATT--the infinite slowness of the new DSL service. At the end: where are you located. Latin-America. In what part? Argentina--Buenos Aires. Ay, un Porteño--pero no me di cuenta...!

Twenty self-portraits circle the the room. Julia standing just in front of brown wood wall, holding painted wedge of cardboard with three holes, lifting it up to the light, then to her face--a window, a mirror, a mask. Her intricate explanation, in English from afar...

Dark green letters on a high light-colored wall: Tsim Sha Tsui--the Star Ferry. Wan Chai, Central, Sheung Wan.

The fishermen's shacks at Tai-O...

Analect 2.221x

25 January 2008. Cold, rain. A lighter gray against the glistening dark wet asphalt, two parallel yellow lines, the rules of geography, and one rickety state law sign, tilting to the south: yield to pedestrians. Forlorn.

Verloren. Sabina, yesterday evening. I try to explain--to account for--my torn and humbled scraps of brown corrugated board--painting on air, as it were, on time itself, as present as one can be possible, and yet, the problems of eternity. Eternity, yes--a line from a song. Just down the street: a curio shop, dry goods from Maroc, a Singapore sling. And pinned to the wall: photo of a single wave on a glassy morning, next to the Oceanside pier. Bait house half-way out, man in red Macintosh--or was it a faded flourescent orange safety vest--with hooks and lines and sinkers--balls of lead, clipped to a length of silver line...

"We'll lower him down on a golden chain..."

Just ask Chuang Tzu, next time you see him...

Analect 2.220x

24 January 2008. Luminous band of yellow-white tops off expansive mass of even gray cloud. Filigree branches laced just in front. Two small birds. darting, very high. Almost lost...

Yesterday: recalcitrant and engaging. First class. Chaotic jumble of last year's things--we move them out. A new beginning. Setting out the colors, Cadmium Red Medium (hue okay), maybe Cadmium Orange (important for me). Then Alizarin--a bluer red, but fugitive, followed by the earth colors: Yellow Oxide--pasty off-tone gold, and Raw Sienna--Italia in the making. Raw Umber, too (why always so humble and so valuable?), then Burnt Sienna--Italy again. Burnt Umber--deep, withdrawn (you'll need a good brand of pigment here), followed by Ultramarine (the queen of blues). Prussian Blue--optional, reborn as Pthalo, leaning toward the green, with a patina of copper, but watch out--very high in chroma. Then, Jenkins Green--not too yellow, not too sharp. Also, two whites: zinc (for tints--always transparent) and titanium (covering all)...

Across the room, Nirmanpreet--backlighted against the north windows. Her chestnut hair, very dark, maybe with a touch of red, and a soft high-necked blouse--blue verging on crimson--a red from within, veiled but insistent--impossible to measure...

Analect 2.219x

22 January 2008. Xolodno, xolodno, ochen' xolodno, gospodá. Fellow citizens, it be chilly. Twinkly gray in the sky, threatening sun along the southern horizon, touch of rain. In the living room this morning, wicker basket on an old trunk, a cooing sound--at first a dove, but no, Natasha, her fluffy curl, entwined and esconced in some furry dreamland...

Through the window: two red tail lights on a midnight blue Chevy truck--everything looking good. Then, Richard's voice, in a downward slide: "Well, there goes our retirement...," proclaimed with cheery resignation (the stock market). Nonetheless, he chugs out the door...

Dubliners, Ivy Day in Committee Room. "Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome was thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself to fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall and his face slowly reemerged into light."

The ode to Parnell...

Analect 2.218x

21 January 2008. Gray with rain with sun. With rain. Greg running up sidewalk, small camera in hand. Even today, possibilities...

Sergey Zadvorny. Anchored gracefully just to the right of the Blüthner, parlor of Princess N. Low-lit sconces, a bank of candles. He nods subtly to Tatiana--Tatiana--seated alongside, and there Leporello comes alive: voglio fare il gentiluomo...e non voglio piú servir... His basso cantante--singing--a mathematician from the drafty dormitories of Dnepropetrovsk, via Kharkov, Odessa, the conservatory.... A young boy on the edge of the Black Sea, swimming in the churning tide. Thracia, Scythia, Tauris. The Borysthenes, flowing south. Chersonesus, Theodosia. Un mondo entero--all within reach, all forgotten...

"You must know everything..."

Analect 2.217x

18 January 2008. Gold sun for just these few moments, pouring down Solano. Round about eight. Image of Javed, on his bicycle--what at first look like headphones over his ears, gray orbs with a horizontal band of white--but no, simply muffs against the cold. Think of Lahore, in winter--or Peshawar--topcoat and shalmar-kameez. Hard to reconcile with the counter at 7-eleven, where rolling franks on their continuous electric grill, or cigarettes in the overhead rack, or lotto boards, or cellophane pies... A whistful glance towards the street, touch of consternation on his face, tired...

Life and life only...

Analect 2.216x

17 January 2008. Clear and beau. Following Bonnard, always the note, in pencil, somewhere on a daybook page, along with the snatch of drawing that catches the light... The edge of a balustrade, perhaps, from one of his walks on the hillside at Le Cannet. To hold the motif...

And so the French--a cravat, tied just so, or the turn of a phrase... "To drive 300 kilometers for a piece of cheese," a love for what is, the luxury of being...

Winter morning, Oceanside. Ocean temp. 59 degrees, noted in chalk, on a worn signboard by the pier... Gray-tan sandstone cliffs, all along the coast... The materials...

Analect 2.215x

16 January 2008. Sunlight on yellow broom, tucked into grillwork of large white truck. Man in black with shaven head, just a sliver, pops into cab of Pacific Heating & Plumbing vehicle across the way. Y lo demás...and all the rest. Like the woman in blue hood, just alongside, tilt-up dark glasses over her specs, a pair of red mittens tucked into her right pocket. A long time before I glimpse her face...

Idumentaria del gaucho. Para el especialista? The word itself, from the Quechua, "huachu", an orphan or vagabond. Or the Arabic, "chaucho," a variety of latigo. Or (from another source) the Araucano, "Gachú"--camarada o amigo, hombre de origen español que habita las llanuras de la América...

Chaleco, ceñido, tirador. Calzoncillos, bombachas, facón de plata. Espeulas, botas de potro. The latter cut from hide, the lower leg of the animal itself. Cruel. Fitted to the rear of the foot of the rider--un jinete...

Las llanuras de la América...

Analect 2.214x

15 January 2008. Gray with fog, yellow lights against the mist. Tradesmen's trucks with welded racks, smokey shapes, gleaming. Two figures walking side by side, an ebony woman in light blue, her left hand raised, palm up, in a gesture of agreement. Her
companion, much older, in black hat with wide wide brim...

Mom's birthday today. Jane Austin at the foot of the bed, what she was reading. Listening to, that is. But she always spoke of it as reading...

Alicia...

Analect 2.213x

14 January 2008. Golden light on camphor trunks, stucco walls, parsing the east-west driveways... Mid-January, a taste of spring before the rains. Jack at 80, curvature of the earth, another horizon, the plane flying almost fast enough to keep pace with changing light.

One in the morning, SFO. Singapore Airlines for Hong Kong. A line of villagers from the Philippines--Cabanatuan, Tarlac, Dagupan--live chickens in slatted crates, bales of clothing, over-sized vinyl luggage bound with rope. A single Indian man in a white turban, his whispy trimmed beard, also white, and western coat, long scarf wrapped around the shoulders and lower face--pulled in, as it were, a portable world...

Los Gauchos Judíos, Alberto Gerchunoff... Between the rivers, Entre Ríos...

Analect 2.212x

11 January 2008. Magnolia dark against luminous sky, grays and storm blue. Two gulls whirl low to the street, dipping and turning, white on darker gray. Yesterday: tiny man in Hollywood manifest, self-proclaimed--he vanishes into a world of animated dragons. Best to avoid.

Sun now on white side of nondescript Toyota, sky picks up light from the east, flooding under the clouds. Flicker of absent-minded fluorescent on cleaner's ceiling: eight o'clock. Javed upon his ancient three-speed, leaning to the left as he makes his way across the 7-eleven lot, heading down Solano...

Russian wolf-hound on darkened beach, arched against southern winter sky...

Analect 2.211x

10 January 2008. Rain in the morning, damp leaves, dark wood--song of the north. Yesterday: young woman on the subway, Fruitvale stop, slumped in parallel seat near door, hand over face. Thick white sneakers with black nylon running pants overlapped, sloping to the outside. An inadvertent identity along lines of class, gender, ethnicity--all those words that tell us so little about who she might be--like the young couple, a week before, in the Oakland airport, narrow-faced girl in similar garb, her lanky boyfriend alongside, also slumped, lap-box of pizza and something else that I can't quite make out, giant sodas--she takes one last fierce bite from a corn chip, then they snooze, his head way over on her shoulder...

To draw all this, in some way... Or, perhaps, two trucks in the rain...

Analect 2.210x

4 January 2008. Sheets of rain on soaking streets. Chunky woman in heavy dark coat, whisp of blond hair flying, scurries from door of 7-eleven to late-model car. Red brake lights against sea of iridescent gray.

Lluvia sobre el Mar. Yesterday's painting--small square of carboard. A summation? The most indistinct, perhaps--rivulets of surface, falling, warmer and cooler, to an inadvertent horizon, lost, really, against distant sky. A single tree, well to the left, branching above, also disappearing into air.

It's the size and quality of detail that creates a sense space--even on its own.

Looking out the window, in Oceanside, Alberta Street, maybe 1960. Far, straight horizon again. Implacable. A freighter (Marine transport?) well in the distance--charcoal-toned smudge--heading north. Along the coast...

Analect 2.209x

3 January 2008. Arc of storm cloud moving in, dark grays to white against small patch of blue. One fine line of light along upper edge. Three gulls race across, heading west... Opposite: incandescent globe of Navigator office, tucked away under slanted roof. Fleecy puffs...

Atahualpa Yupanqui: Camino del Indio. Recorded in Buenos Aires in 1942. Doubly distant. His narrowing face seen in shadow, two dark eyes gaze past us towards another horizon. Vidala del silencio...tiny embellishments brought down from la montaña--things past, carried within...

Analect 2.208x

2 January 2008. Glassy green pool, wobbly black lines, morning shimmer. A few veterans plow back and forth, the boustrophonic principle in action, herdsmen of old, a white ox, a pair of lambs...

Las cosas criollas. Santefesinos y los de Tucumán. La familia Ferreira, iron mongers, perhaps--la Giudecca--and their daughter, Nélida, "la mas bella en la provincia." First letter arrives: a search party for a downed plane, brother Raúl wandering in the mountains, the altiplano, makes his way to the Chilean side. "It's hard for me to explain about my being dead..."

Las cosas criollas. Expanse of the pampa, reaches of dry grass into an even drier distance. Silencio. A streambed through local stone--its own particular feel, also dry--narrow run of cobalt, out of those same hills...

Analect 2.207x

31 December 2007. Mild winter sun, ripply shadows in dark windows, Kathmandu reflected in reverse, white letters on a red-oxide field, twining narrow branches of sidewalk tree overlapping, grayed-pink wall above. Unrequited.

Adentro. The stories of Mansilla, set on the Pampas. Cacique Ramón, Mariano, Baigorrita... Tierra adentro, o quizás el desierto. Today, in the north: two engaging substitutes: El Dúo Coplanacu. Guitarra y bomba--the large hide-covered Argentine drum, held at the side of the waist, played with pungent tamped-down sound: muffled feet in rustic shoes on an earthen floor. Their faces, half-smiling, eyes alert, touches of gray in their beards...

Half a century before. La Plata, a theater stage, worn wooden boards, dust clouding the air at each pounding wave of footsteps. Dark boots of the dancers--baile folklorico--a warm-up act--naive and good-hearted, the best of intentions...giving it their all...

The past re-enlivened, the dance...

Analect 2.206x

28 December 2007. Warm gray sky, night rain. Latino paperboy in baseball cap with flat white plastic bags hanging in a roll from the back of his waist. Colombo truck skewed in at an angle, red lights on an even beat, woman in red parka crossing the pavement just behind. White smoke against luminous sky.

Songs of innocence. Tiny settlements on the Argentine plain. Ushelo, San Felíz, Leubucó. La pampa--el desierto. Your choice. Stretch of wild landscape over miles and miles--an inestimable distance, the scrub grass parsed out on patches of dry gray-brown earth. There: figure in floppy hat, white bandana and wide belt, a characteristic nonchalance. "No me vale pa' nada..." But what does he mean to say? The long horizon, a beautifully brushed horse, his facón with the intricate carved silver handle...

At the ends of the earth...Atamisqueña...

Analect 2.205x

27 December 2007. Clear cold sun. Winter surf, battened down and buttoned up. North Shore of El Cerrito--the creek break, glassy waves, 3-1/2 feet, north swell. Water something like 49 degrees--in the shade, and that's not counting wind chill--of which, today, very little. Calm.

Heading down Tyson--summer now, past the Weseloh Chevrolet dealership at Wisconsin and Hill--reflection in glass--then on over the Santa Fe tracks--thick palm trunks and scattered gravel--creosote brown of the Rorick houses--peaked roofs in the old way, more palms... Steep walk down to the Strand. Aging guard tower and dull stucco hut--Betty's Beach Cafe. Was that the name? Leaning against sun-warmed south wall after morning in the water, songs of a sort--Santo and Johnny, fins on the '59 Plymouth of Chubby Lopez' dad--inscribed in sign-painter's script: Costa Plenty. Before the coral-wash of subdivisions lined the hills...

"Well it's cryin' time again, you're gonna leave me..."

Analect 2.204x

24 December 2007. Sun, with a few pearly clouds. Pockets of mist in the hollows--Albany Hill. Local presence. Yesterday: run of valley land, dry winter earth, sycamore and oak. Stands of cypress guarding a barn. Church doors and tractors, tended fields. River Road--riparian wilds down to the Stanislaus, woodchuck, field mouse, deer. A cooper's hawk, silent above.

Evening: with Zoya at ninety, her bright bright eyes, small intense face. American songs for a Moscow girl. "Maskvoh," Yael reminds me, insistent. "My grandmother was demanding." But Zoya listens, her ears up, hint of a nod, a frown, a smile--the feelings wash over her face--a streambed in Byelarus--all the way to the Pripyet, that same run of land--family turf--Gomel', Mozyr--far far away, long long ago...

Analect 2.203x

20 December 2007. Winter light, sun, long shadows, streets wet with last night's rain.

Ahn Dong Ni, hermit painter of the Lijiang. Perhaps you know him? Osmanthus blossoms in late fall, water buffalo and phoenix-tail bamboo. The cormorant dipping for fish in silver green-gray waters and the mountains of Guilin hovering in the mist. Fields with remnants of the harvest--wandering rows of rice on browned earth, the stalks tended and tied, each by hand. A child's braids. Effie just ahead, on her bicycle, turns suddenly and smiles, as she shows me her home. Do you know the poems of Po Chü-i? His small house with pond alongside--just as it is here, perhaps. Hint of winter in the still-warm air, farmer's smoke at dusk...

Thank you, Mao-Yun, for the name--which can mean everything... "For water clarifies the spirit, no less than a perfect friend..."

Analect 2.202x

19 December 2007. High sunny morning sky, phalanx of fleece bits--a widening V to the west, but otherwise, as they say, clear... Claro qué sí, dice el diccionario de modismos Argentinos. No simplemente las palabras vos, o che, sino frases enteras--la pucha, vamos a morfar, qué querés?

Following Mansilla: the gaucho--a man with an open visage, high cheekbones and a narrow, somewhat aquiline nose (algo aguileño). Thick brows, straight across, with pronounced vertical lines in between--dark brown eyes behind heavy lashes, and a face burned black by the sun--el sol del desierto y el aire frio. Narrow hands, strong, with the flesh separated well from the bone... Translating aloud, late at night, flat on my back in a narrow bed, white upstairs room, paintings on flaps of loose canvas all around, also whitish, with brushy touches of white again, distributed in an even but irregular pattern over unbound folds: las pampas, perhaps, the beginnings of snow...

Analect 2.201x

18 December 2007, Tuesday. Gray wind through the magnolia, constant rain. Golden leaves against an even grayer sky--dull emergent browns. Homey emblem of the 7-eleven, emblazoned on milky slumpstone parapet. Marlboros: 3.99. Miller Light--red blinkers flashing, patient behemoth. Hooded driver leaning into handcart--dark blue cast iron--stack of plastic crates. A sliding economy with sketchy lyrics--something about Engelbert Humperdinck, or that unending version of "Delilah" (Tom Jones?) blasting forth from the speakers of a Bulgarian amusement park in Warszawa, 10 floors below. Vision of the future--1968--something raw, untamed. Or today--an elephant, constructed of vertical Venetian blinds, black-ribbed plastic ductwork and a gathering of artificial flowers. The authenticity of detritus. What is our choice?

Un equipo de gauchos, mateando...

Analect 2.200x

18 December 2007. Dull pings of rain on window at night. Cold wind off bay, clouds and fog. Waking to scatter of golden-red leaves on dark asphalt, touch of sun. Rolling amber light on curved back of moored WM refuse truck--an efficient nondescript yellow and green--color in the service of utility. "He made the trains run on time." And who'd want to be kept constantly waiting? Like a spurned lover, or aging golf-coach with fewer and fewer attendees?

Wide run of the Pampas. The Río Cuarto, somewhere below Córdoba. The gaucho: facón y boleadores--un chaleco con botones de plata. Rosas, Quiroga, Sarmiento. Bartolomé Mitre. A nation's names. But also--los caciques--Mariano, Ramón, Baigorrita...

Aquí me pongo a cantar
Al compás de la vigüela;
Que el hombre que lo desvela
Una pena extraordinaria,
Como la ave solitaria
Con el cantar se consuela.

Analect 2.199x

14 December 2007. Vapor trail to the east, over glowing patch of nascent sun. Above: whispy crescent of puffy cloud return against cobalt morning blue. Larry just on his way out: Nancy Pelosi conspiracy theories. (Each one of us is implicated). These are the risks...

Like a pair of shoes slightly too large. Or an unfinished book, lost somehow en route. Two hooded workmen with doughnuts and coffee--steaming in the chill. One gestures upwards with a mittened thumb. Again last night: Lucio Mansilla. Lo Argentino-- the qualities of a human being. "Reserva y lealtad."

Analect 2.198x

12 December 2007. Cold morning speckled clouds: winter trout over lost hills... Last night: unparalleled adamance, even with tears--a dangerous combination--but for whom? To the mat on every jot and tittle--with the subsequent claims of bad faith. Bad faith. Is there such? Large woman in the copy store, with her teenage daughter--serene magic of Africa and a South Carolina American Baptist church. Peering steadily at wide horizontal color image of ice flows in the Antarctic, mounted on foam-core and adhered to the wall. She inquires about preparing certain words in the same way: trust, truth, honesty, faith... These appear, one by one, in a dignified serif script, hovering over the wilderness, then vanishing...

Leslie Lerner, for the time he was here--visions out of Brueghel--an unending imagination...

Analect 2.197x

11 December 2007. Cold, golden morning. Four birds over bank roof, clustered swoops. Tiny plane with reddish tail high above. Then a gull, ocean bound, proficient. Sunlight through vinyl letters on glass--colorado--carried across the floor as a shadow, right reading: Copy Ce... Girl in floppy turquoise watchcap and brown-toned hoody, loping across the street on diagonal, papers in hand. All of a sudden: driver of the 18, long light red braids (dreads?) streaming down the left side of her face.

Lucio Mansilla: Los Siete Platos de Arroz con Leche. Time of Rosas. Rozas, as he spells it. "From rezar--to pray..."

Analect 2.196x

10 December 2007. Gleaming winter sky, low angle sun. Black Toyota work truck in 7-eleven lot, side panels like Greek fire, wirey lumber rack on top, styrofoam coffee cup balanced precariously near the edge. Last night: I reach to pick up Natasha, but in her desperate feral state one long nail hooks my wrist and forearm: long narrow line of red, then more...

Passions and fears. Line of trees in winter mist, somewhere in the eastern part of the valley. Stearns Road, running north to the Stanislaus. Grays and dull gray-greens, empty branches to the water's edge, summer splendor turns winter's ruin. Residents and guests: wood duck in the shadows, golden-crowned sparrows... Lapping of the river, quiet damp air. Marshlands and melancholy...

Analect 2.195x

7 December 2007. Golden morning after a long night's rain. Glistening on gray streets. A long spider strand holds the light for just a moment--gleaming against dark mansard roof across the way. Delivery truck in low gear, passing. Man with high forehead, hand to chin, propped in cab of double Dodge truck, dark dark green, moving uphill...

All views possible. Like last night, with Benjamin's wall of scrawly drawings, ear to ear, gears and faces, made personal by a particular unexpected intensity. A table of food--Nathaniel's cheeses, chocolate--a respite of luxury, alongside (my) plebian wine. Las Españolas, their whispery voices, quizzical, enchanting--a sea bird flying up the face of a cliff, wings spread wide. Ptarmigan, gull. Hanukkah candles--the third night, on a homely cardboard menorah with tin-foil doily, which I see lighted suddenly from across the room. Hojin's embarrassed smile--"It was me." And why not? Three candles, each one waiting. We make the blessings. How could they not burn?

Analect 2.194x

6 December 2007. Yellow lights against gray, golden leaves on dark sky. Man in heavy coat and tired jeans, standing under 7-eleven eve to light a smoke. Lee at her work nearby, bending over metal-topped refuse box, gleaning: the dented can, the twinkie wrap, aluminium foil. On roof above: narrow whisp of wire, straight up.

Yesterday: the red elephants. But why? Fragments of torn paper, jostled into shape, bits of scotch tape. Sabina prints them out--smallish saffron squares, spots of red, stapled onto immaculate and dignified white cards--a little off-kilter--with all our names. "A Modest Extravaganza."

"Please join us."

Analect 2.193x

4 December 2007. Gray on gray, morning rain. Golden Corona bottle splashing into tropical pool (delivery truck), while all around the puddly asphalt sits waiting. A kind of bland and homely anticipation. Lone gull banks left, wings wide, touch of mauve in a damp sky. Another flash of red and gold--boxy emergency vehicle--now gone, replaced by nondescript white panel truck. Signs in windows, orange-red and off-green. Announcing. Gull returns, swooping close, heading up the avenue. Arched and pointed wings...

Last night: pilgrims and penitents. Tuan's work. Narrow column of Vietnamese names, preceded by Dominic, Peter, and John. A church in Hue, half-destroyed, then half-destroyed again. Filling the fields for three-days, dozens of thousands, the claims of faith. Against what odds?

A wayward king...

Analect 2.192x

30 November 2007. Bright chill air, scarves and winter coats on a Northern California morning... Light raking long diagonal on blue-white Pepsi truck, the great yin and yang reduced to its cathode ray tube equivalent, lodged on a dull horizontal. Think instead of Ni Tzan, wandering among the reeds...

Among the reeds... A dutch girl in gypsy shoes--or is it a gypsy girl herself? Nurse? Curandera... Gathering of warm hair under prim white cap, sign of attentiveness, patience, care--all the qualities of value and need. Far off--pouring rain in a dark garden, matted willow leaves, clumped ferns. Remnant blossoms of South-African orange, hugging the fence in misty air. A small lemon and lime...

Gracias a Dios...

Analect 2.191x

29 November 2007. Gentle November sun. Ripple of water at pavement's edge, green hose snaking through overgrown yard. A verdant intertwining. Songs of innocence, songs of experience. Yesterday: a young man in muted red sarong, his blouse an even deeper red, buttoned all the way to the neck. Small hat, dark in color, carefully placed on a round and forthright head. The dress of somewhere far off--a drift of peoples, each one known to the other, fathers, mothers, sons, pictured in part, at a table, before a window, working in a field. Houses amidst trees, gestures and meanings, lived over time, source of story. "The Human Clay," Kitaj's phrase. Always with a certain dignity--as if the endeavor itself were beyond question, to justify each other, to redeem--each touch, each line, each act...

Analect 2.190x

27 November 2007. Gold-gray November skies, light from the east, poring over the hills. Morning. Young man with dark hair helter-skelter, dashing along street to reach bus just as its door is closing--the driver, impassive, pushes a lever and the door re-opens. Across the way, gaunt man in red tee, climbing out of polished gray Prius--bending as he does so.

A tiny boat--white in color--on a dark dark lake, set in a narrow column of black. Next to a rolling field of trees and grain, neither open nor closed. Above--two figures, also dark--a man and a woman--standing side by side, almost touching. Long diagonal of floor--somewhere inside--reaching up and up. At the right--faces of figures from far away. The past? Or simply distant?

A single ear--in chiaroscuro, carefully drawn--to hear the world...

Analect 2.189x

20 November 2007. Hands moving over keyboards, man of middle years working alongside--plaid shirt, watchcap, pointed gray goatee. Weathered face, but not quite Gary Snyder. Rubber flip-flops--Solano de jure--humming occasionally under his breath.

In the front, with crumpled newspaper in hand--Mr. Copes. "How are you my friend?" He smiles in his predictable but always genuine way. Teeth occasional. But his walk is off--he holds the doorframes as he makes his way along the street, gathering materials, returning inside to do the windows, standing on a rickety aluminum ladder from the back room--the corporate ladder, so inscribed--but for Mr. Copes, simply an approach to heaven...

Or the day's wage...

Analect 2.188x

17 November 2007. Slabs of gray, with yellowish underglow--maybe a touch of blue--or is it the tint of the window? Monsanto, House of the Future...

Gold-gray Pathfinder pulling in, Lela and Deepak. Her red and gold leopard floral pattern dress, red cotton blouse, black tights and sandals from Nepal. A girl, a mom, an ancient being. Hair pulled back in taut clump, cotidienne casual... Deepak in his customary black--vest, t-shirt, cargo pants, stubby black hair trimmed to the strong and compact shape of his scull. Sauntering across street on an unplanned diagonal, nibbling on a half-peeled banana. Tough-guy retinue--but for whom?

Last night: Anu visits. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Large eyes in a dark dark face. Precise plans, inner animation. At one point I ask the class what it must be like today to raise a child--living amidst this avalanche of untoward influence. "Anu, you're a mom, what would you say?" Thinking for a moment, then, slowly, "To have a child is a great great pleasure..."

Analect 2.187x

14 November 2007. Clean November light. Dark shadows under the eves. 7-eleven lot: chunky strips of yellow concrete at the head of each empty parking space. A single white panel truck, at an angle. Now, suddenly, a smallish dark maroon Toyota...

Germaine Montero: Spanish folksongs. No Hay Quien Pueda. Fisherman's song. El Puerto de Bilbao. Yellow lights on dark harbor waters, criss-crossed gantry cranes over brightly lit decks. Across the way, smaller lights, running along sandstone cliffs and low hills. The Café Iruña: a single figure hunched over curve of long bar. Pintxos calientes: serranitos y morunos. Vino tinto criaza.

The claims of possibility, each new image an opening. Ports of entry. Voyage, viajero...roam...

Analect 2.186x

13 November 2007. Gray gray. Dr. John. Chunky woman in dark blue hood emerges stretching from low-slung silver car. Earlier: Russian girl and her mother at the pool, a Giovanni Bellini in Albany (the doge swim cap drawn high over mound of hair). Yesterday: l'hitrondel: a new word in the Israeli governmental vocabulary: to fly back and forth with little effect. C-o-n-d-i the root... Just now: a teenage boy in old-style baseball-length cutoffs--very narrow build, droopy orange backpack slung low on his shoulders, whitish cap, walking in desultory fashion--one long right arm down with sliver of cigarette. Opposite: Lee's shopping cart, a single yellow plastic bag, among others...

Home...

Analect 2.185x

9 November 2007. Sun on veiled sky, November weather. Whether November... Velzy & Jacobs, veiled obsessions--a darkish room smelling of balsa and fresh resin--the glossy sheen of each leaning totem, silent in dowelled racks... a kind of lore, each shape made real. How so? A question of the ocean--the form of a wave, its particular mass and curl, rate of break...face of left slide at Trestles, through the scrub and Marine Corps tracks, a streambed estuary opening to the sea. Or, the Oceanside pier at dawn, checking the break against just how far out along the pilings--to the fish house median. Winter storms--a roiled expanse of broken white, spindrift foam blown horizontal, cross-current chaos...

Summer mornings, new light on a deep blue-green, no trace of wind. Outside, outside...

Analect 2.184x

8 November 2007. Ta'o Ch'ien. Both straight and bending. Gray on yellow gray. "Very resourceful." Single gull on high pole, a puffy mass on two spindly legs. Colors just like the sky, but with more emphasis.

Edge of a winter stream: the teacher. The listener, rather. Stories from life, Tárrega and Sor, beautifully rendered. A shadow just behind the door: Hojin. Also life.

Suddenly, the sirens at noon: righteousness.

Analect 2.183x

Gray morning, coast to coast--or at least our little part of it. Churning thoughts: first, man's inhumanity to man. A guy in an alligator suit, somewhere in Florida. Go 'gators. But what about us gators? Not to mention Paul Watson, on the Farley Mowat--gold braids and the black flag of a pirate, careening across the southern oceans. Eye of a wounded whale--true and massive compassion--in the Buddhist sense--or is it some larger intelligence that can (finally) bypass vengeance? As in territory, as in unbendingness. Reeds in the wind: the ancient Sung dynasty painting--Early Snow on the River--fishermen in their matted huts, built on spindly piers out over gray water. The wet and the cold. To find some appropriate interchange with the universe. For what IS modesty but a need for the private--and a willingness to listen.

No truth in ideas, however golden. The materials are all...

(for L)

Analect 2.182x

2 November 2007. The Road to Magnitogorsk, on a sun-filled autumn morning in California. An untenable contradiction? The story of Victor Kalmikov, in bast shoes, six up in an early Soviet railway carriage, then, with a 50 pound drill, pounding evenly-spaced half-inch holes into a steel girder. Night school with chalk words on rough blackboard--again, the name of the place of the name. Mag-ni-to-gorsk--City of Magnet Mountain. A Pittsburg in the Urals. Photographed by Max Alpert (credits say 1899-1980). A long life, to tell the story--a Soviet Salgado.

The commissars, in Mozyr, to my father, in 1921: "But Osher, we are BUILDING something here..."
k

Analect 2.181x

1 November 2007. November sky--even and gray. Sidewalk opposite: a youngish man of Middle-Eastern descent, charcoal watchcap, downcast, hands shoved into pockets of short gray coat. Just outside: golden retriever leashed to bus stop pole. Patient gaze in our direction, tail tucked ever so slightly between his back legs. Mouth ajar, alert--he turns his head suddenly, then his shifts right ear. The world--present tense.

An interior by Gwen John--upstairs room. A garret? Suffused with warm and delicate light. High, round-backed wicker chair, a book on a small table--naples yellow and white with a touch of dark. Jane Freilicher, too...