Analect 2.332x

22 August 2008. Sparkling sun. Islander mom with two daughters in hair salon, their dark locks courtesy of Roratanga, Makatea, Gauguin. The Society Islands--as they should be, in something approaching a mumu, here on Solano, her heavy contraposto frame, bare arms, holding up a catalogue or magazine with brightly-colored haircut samples... "Like this..."

Middle of the night: red tail light gliding slowly down the street, great ship in search of a mooring. The guests from afar--Brooklyn, Las Vegas, LA--tired but radiant after long meander up the coast. Stopping somewhere for a picnic--tables outside, in Santa Barbara, by the sea...

Whirl of time, older and newer...and older again. Shegiyot mi yavin...

Love of the world...

Analect 2.331x

21 August 2008. Milky gray, skirting the hills, revelling in blue. Thinking of Stillwater, where mists give way to cliff and sky... Forms of clarity, almost harsh were they not so grand...

Balzac, too, with the strength of his neck embedded in a fine linen blouse--white on white, small moustache, precisely placed, in the manner of the French, and the wild, precise pompadour...

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny--is that not the phrase--where the eye of the lizard, or the mouse, reaffirms itself 'neath our own. What chance then, when Nicola, her morning meows outside the door, would in...? Open wide, scamper and rush...salvation...

Analect 2.330x

20 August 2009. Gray doves at dawn, and before, first instance of light. Flickering speckles on windshield. Jin: "Is it raining?"

Questions and ponderings--middle-of-the-night kinds of questions--spaces and times--unanswerable there in the dark...

The family in Tucumán, Chugo's daughters, and Deborah, their mother. The d'Onofrio girls, waiting with patient anticipation in a plain but gemütlich pizza joint, each a little tired from their long hours in the small white car. Vagabonds--no, explorers rather--with dad in the lead, standing now, smiling, his arms spread wide, before yet another vast and arid landscape of the quebrada...

Here, in the foreground--the matted lambswool collar of Chugo's coat, draped carefully over the back of a chair...

Analect2.329x

19 August 2008. Gray light before dawn. Muffled sounds of on the roof--not the scamper of a squirrel, but something more substantial--raccoon steps, maybe, swinging over from birch tree limb.

Five seagulls aligned on mansard edge, faces to the east. Chilly wind, signs of fall.

Here, a drawing of Ayelen, Chugo's daughter, sitting at a table, breakfastime, somewhere in San Miguel de Tucumán. Glass of white milk against her dark hair, dark blouse, run of weathered cornice just outside--gray--techos de la ciudad colonial, siempre mirando al norte--the old views--Humahuaca, Cuzco, Potosí...

Each morning a beginning...

Analect 2.328x

18 August 2008. Gray mist over gray hills, lapping at the edges. White cotton shift, tossed and rumpled, sleepworn...

A group of boys, gathered together in a field, el Campo Don Oreste, somewhere beyond Santa Rosa, Provincia de la Pampa. Life of the campesino--each intent on manhood--scrub trees and dust, wide wide blue skies over baked earth. Argentina, meaning silver--from the intricate metalwork of the Guaraní. But that was in the north, where fragile Spanish ships on an immense brown stream...

Un mundo entero...

Analect 2.327x

15 August 2008. Gray hills at dawn, misty beard. Single black crow, wings wide, dipping. Ying at pool, wide smile, "It's Friday..."

But Friday? Sounds of bus and truck continuity, up and down the hill. Lee in straw hat, sprightly, pushing her remnants cart, bumpy roll. Resolute figure on old bike, lower lip pushed forward, curly hair with gray... An urban algebra...

Opening to the sea...

Analect 2.326x

14 August 2008. Morning sun. Shiny Dodge pickup lurching slowly into 7-eleven lot, cab rocking side to side as small dark-haired driver negotiates white asphalt speed bump.

Long lines of off-shore break. Glassy waves, darkening towards the center, curling outwards, cutting on the diagonal. Low-flying ocean birds, clusters of five or six or seven, their smooth meandering lineup just along the crest. The gray pelican.

Return.

Analect 2.325x

7 August 2008. Gray morning light, four crows, the nearest with ragged wings, but dipping fiercely nonetheless. Woman alongside in the blue-green pool, small reddish fins, churning. Color and light.

And song. As in a screen-flash message from the middle of a continent: "Greetings from Olavarria, Buenos Aires, Argentina!" That would be Chugo, his Ibanez (or was it a Stratocaster?) leaning against the edge of the varnished plywood worktable, worn bass right alongside--the nicks and dings from half a lifetime of playing, somewhere out there on the pampas, city of concrete, beaming in the licks of a grungy bare-topped Eddie Van Halen... A generation of students as well--their letters of hommage on a black-ground blog, penned in hope...

Thanks and aspiration. To what more can we aspire? Maybe a few good waves...

Analect 2.324x

6 August 2008. Calm gray morning sky, woman on wide green field bending over bouncy black dog. All else still.

Note from Andrea. Sameer Makarius--his book of photographs--Buenos Aires y Su Gente--all from the 1950s. A recent immigrant from Cairo, Laica in hand, the city revealing itself to him in all ways--de nuevo--grainy black and white rotogravure street vendors, an awkward billboard, truco by the docks. Smell of an impromptu parilla--chorizo, morsilla--on stone-curbed side street. Figure in slouch hat, wide belt--los tipos viejos--del pasado...

Medio-porteño, dices. Posible, boludo. Pero medio-criollo también...

Analect 2.323x

5 August 2008. Gray morning, white truck. Girl just alongside, subtly arched nose, dark hair. She leans into monitor, fluttery yellow note pad akimbo, checking one or another piece of information: times for morning meditation, Craig's List cars (?)... Movement of her hand on mouse, then pen, then mouse again. Touches side of her face. Quiet. Bath soap, too...soft, of some kind...

A field in the north, near Tucumán... Alazán, a sorrel. Reddish coat, high withers, narrow legs. The lure of horses. White patch on forehead, a smallish triangle, flat side at the top...

Many years back: Language, truth, and logic.

Beauty, too...

Analect 2.322x

4 August 2008. Cool gray sky, woman in beige pants suit, adroit, reaching for door of Navigator Escrow. Distant trees--a poplar and a birch. Ocean waves on broken coast.

La Quebrada. In the far northwest--almost Bolivia. The Altiplano. Two Indian boys in dark capes, woolen hats, walking to the mines. Spirit of the mountain--nor to be feared, but instead respected.

My friend Chugo, family in tow--his wife, his three daughters, posing here in the town square of Humahuaca, to the north of Tilcara and Tumbaya. Indian names, embedded--as if the hills themselves were a form of speech, un idioma de piedra...

"Y en el misterio de las quebradas, vaga la sombra de mis abuelos..."




(And in the mystery of the highlands wanders the shadow of my ancestors... Atahualpa Yupanqui)

Analect 2.321x

1 August 2008. Sun behind hills. Rafts of mist--gold and rose--just over the ridge. Two crows, one swooping down like a stone, wings spread in the last instant.

Pierwszy Sierpnia, Warszawa. The first of August, Gabryela's birthday. Fine birch trees in a grove, garden with patio stones, this way and that. We sit outside the old sloping country house, its high windows, white curtains billowing in the breeze. Just inside, someone at a piano, hidden--a Mazurka, or a Polonaise. Country dances from long ago...time of sadness, time of joy...

"If the bird above is flying towards you..."

Analect 2.320x

31 July 2008. Gray morning, touch of wind. Return from the north coast--this from Tuesday:

Mist over the headlands at Stillwater Cove, early morning, cliffs veiled, revealed, veiled again. Gull on dark waters, white, an act of God--or man--sound of crow from high above, in the pines on the hill. Lapping, glistening, smooth--only the beginnings of a breeze. Black wings arc through the mist, feathers spread wide at the ends as he turns in flight. Bull kelp--knotty gold-brown bulbous protuberances massed across the inlet--that particular smell--ocean's edge. Continent's even. A single winding silver path opens to the sea...

Analect 2.319x

28 July 2008. Gray day, chilly winds from the west, possibility.

Our great and compassionate good-spirit, the much-admired Alyosha. Namesake of goodness--of all the brothers, this first. Even if a few squirrels suffered his mighty attentions, --it was simply in the blood--the great open-ended flight, racing across fields, head to the wind, careening, joyful...always...

Analect 2.318x

25 July 2008. Creamy tan pink sky with lip of sun just appearing over hills to the east.

Chugo, an Argentine friend--well, in a vicarious kind of way. Pictures on line--"por Chugo", posing in front of small, battered white car, against the dry hills of Tafí. Travelling with his family, apparently--wife, three daughters, we follow them through rest stops, motels, a plainish little pizza place in Tucumán, the one with wooden tables, straw placemats, everyone sitting close together. It's wintertime, his wife never takes off her hooded parka, light blue, like her pale blond hair. (¿Lydia, quizás?) Then it's morning: one sloe-eyed daughter, the oldest, in black, at table with white cloth, wide glass of milk in hand, her hair damp from the shower, looking back at her father...

Analect 2.317x

24 July 2008. Sun over misty hills, dawn. Four crows working the street, pairs again, friends... Two boys in track clothes, early, crossing in front: ancestors from Ireland, Senegal...heads thrown back, laughing... In the evening--doves.

La quebrada. The broken places--vally of Humahuaca, the ancient route from east to west, from Inca times, over the cordillera, vertebrae of a continent, the road to Potosí. Stone houses made of mountain, mountain made of stone, arch and searing. A Spanish church--a haven within--dimpled walls, tiled roof, blue domes of the Moors... Córdoba, or Damascus--here reaching for a heaven of their own, the arid parched distant cobalt skies of Jujuy...

Analect 2.316x

23 July 2008. Sun at dawn, golden cast to the sky, misty hills. Pale stands of eucalyptus to the west, arking. * Aislado, un pobre zorzal. A black-billed thrush, color of the earth. * The earth, in handfulls, pulled forth, tossed back, made deep, open. Covering.

* * *

"Y sobre el nogal, centenario ya, un chalchalero ensaya su canto..."

Analect 2.315x

22 Julio 2008. Gray morning, four black crows on a single streetlamp stanchion, high above. Two by two, it seems. Moving closer, the ones on the left, each reaching out to touch the other's beak. A perfectly normal way of being: tendresse among the corvidiae.

Dos hermanos, Tafí del Valle, Tucumán. Their cast off clothes, hand-me-downs, the older one already with the stance of a man, jacket arm draped around his brother's shoulder, small hand exposed. Eyes askance--the hour, the setting, the world? Rubber boots for an awaited rain, dry hills--arroyos and vados--en las sendas de Tafí...

* * *

Qué mala será mi pena,
que sólo sabe penar.
Cómo me duele esta pena
de irme tan lejos de mi tucumán...

(Atahualpa Yupanqui)

Analect 2.314x

21 July 2008. Cold and gray, California mackerel boat out of Half Moon Bay. Monterey hull with child-like cabin perched aport, bobbing in the groundswell, green...

Solano morning, three typers in a row. Chess-game amidships, the board gone electric, while at the far end, Mr. Fast, his fingers in an impossible review, too urgent, too quick...

Last night: Los llanos, the empty plains. "El latino--vino solo con su cuerpo, su cruz, su espada..." (Mansilla). Or simply a farmer--a paisano, from somewhere in Calabria. Nicotera, perhaps, or the Golfo di Sant'Eufemia.

But now a single figure also... La llanura... Openness, a new expanse...

Analect 2.313x

18 July 2008. Chilly and gray, November in July. Bouncy jogger in cerise top on Portland at dawn, arms akimbo at her hips. Ying along green edge of pool, walking slowly, graceful in her own solid way. Head bent forward, meditative, counting her steps.

Cafrune on horseback, retracing the Argentine lands. Lamento Salteño--Calchaqui, Coplas de Baguala del Valle, Verde Litoral. Zamba para Mi Rancho. Preguntitas. El Ultimo Zapucay...

Years ago: long view from window of train, valley fields. Power poles and sidings, endless run of blackened tank cars--crude oil, manganese, creosote--hoppers and gondolas. Stock cars, reefers, Modalohr road trailer carriers...

Signposts and dusty roadbeds... Hercules, Modesto...

Lo que se puede ver, lo que se puede comprender...

Analect 2.312x

17 July 2008. Soft gray sky, black crow careens past blank stucco wall, feathers spread wide, distinct... Truck rumble--flash of the number two train--muffled squeal on downhill brakes... Cast-iron pillars with rivets the size of steel apricots, a vertical dotting that stitches the whole business into one, massive hidden cave-built world... As opposed to mild Solano, acorn gatherers, reed baskets, finely woven grasses--a culture of patience, more than anything, where the cycles of fog and sun and rain bring almost all...

Boleadoras, stones of a certain weight, wrapped in leather, seams stitched by hand. The smell of horses--pasture--"grasses eaten by cattle," from the old French. See "pastor," 1242--a shepherd. Also, "spiritual guide, "shepherd of souls." "To lead to pasture..."

Quién te llamó pasto verde fresquita
tal vez tu aroma sintió,
poema de los desiertos
versos de un coplero que pasó...de un coplero que pasó...

Analect 2.311x

16 July 2008. Also gray, inviting wool blanket of a quiet Saturday morning--but it's Wednesday, of course, as woman with floppy brown hair clambers out of sloping late-model white car, gum in the side of her mouth, hand loose in sweatshirt pocket as she fumbles with keys, eyeing the avenue up and down before bounding across on the diagonal...papers in hand, heading our way...

Or, a makeshift wicker corral somewhere on the Argentine plains--after Prilidiano Pueyrredón, whose attentive grasp of each costume gesture--the tilt of a panza de burra, or a good pair of calzoncillos...or the figure with lazo in one hand, leaning forward on the balls of his feet, a blur of charging cattle in the background, snorting, mountains of dust, pampa sun at midday...

It's about 1863--even before Mansilla's excursión into Tierra Adentro. To the Ranqueles, the Araucanas... Cacique Mariano Rosas... Baigorrita...el Indio Blanco...

At the ege of a world...

Analect 2.310x

15 July 2008. Gray all the way, moofy blanket of almost wet, puffs of cleaners smoke, whitish, drifting upwards... Children's voices now--two little ones near the workbench. They've got the yellow highliter going... Mother swoops in, cheerful but insistent, "Get the lid back on, you did a good job...let's go..."

Let's go. Bueno, che... Circle of the unexpected. A small guitar, on the shape of the vigüela, close to the ground, gathered. It's evening. Cebando mate. Brewing mate. A calabazo--golden-yellow gourd--dull silver band around top, filled with aromatic gray-brown leaves. Yerba--Cruz de Malta. Insert bombilla--hollow silver metal tube... Add water, not quite at a boil, from small dented kettle... almost to the top.

Unexpected presence: Alyosha and Nicola. Qué boludo. What the hell are they doing here...? Out on the pampa, far beyond Huanguelen, night approaching...

Only the songs, the stars...

Analect 2.309x

14 July 2008. Gray Monday, solid mass of sky, wedged over roof of 7-eleven, light from above. God's photography studio: seamless, good strobes, bracketed exposures, all high-res...

Earlier... Sylvia in her Subaru wagon, a nice dark green, bending forward over morning paper as she awaits aerobics. Pool filled soon with older veterans--all sizes and shapes, splashing the water back and forth with their hands, with poly-foam wands... Sprightly beach-ball coach, also splashing...

As do we all, in one or another pond...

Analect 2.308x

11 Julio 2008. Dia de cielo gris-amarillo, algo de sol viniendo de las colinas. De las colinas--algo cierto en la vida. Un montón de piedra, barro, tierra misma.

Una joven india--Guaraní. Ojos de morocha, ámbar, con fuego adentro. Monte, llanura, rio lento y paciente--como las aguas del Paraguay, los arboles de Corrientes. Leyendo Shakespeare, parece. Lo de King Lear. "Mejor me gusta Edmund," dice. "Ve las cosas como son." ("Why bastard? Wherefore base?") Agarra a lo vivo--eso--de los hombros, del cuello. "...una loca que no entinde nada de la vida..."

Cosas del campo. Rebenque, chambergo, tipo tosco. Con miradas del lado, quemado por el sol, por el viento. Entendiendo nada, entendiendo todo...

Yo soy arisco, como tus breñas,
y así te canto, tierra querida.

Andaré por los cerros,
selvas y llanos, toda la vida,
arrimándole coplas
a tu esperanza, tierra querida.

Analect 2.307x

10 July 2008. Sun, gray, warm.

"Babylon...statue made of different metals...that's in the Book of Daniel..." "Thanks, Robert." "Yes, now your day will go well..." Fragments on the horizon of knowledge: La Teoría del Conocimiento. Book from Eudeba in 1962, gray cover, type with narrow black border--à la française, apparently. Purchased in a bookstore in Buenos Aires--a kind of keepsake, unopened. No, opened in snatches, for a few moments here and there, over the years, trying to make sense of the unending abstractions therein...

A kind of language that listens mostly to itself...thought thinking thought, as Stan Rice might have said. Or better, brain doing brain. Closer to the core. Suzanne Langer: image of early man, standing before a group of trees as they sway wildly in the wind. Standing without words--silencio--only the dance of the snake from deep down within...

Una milonga achamarritada...

Analect 2.306x

9 July 2008. Disk of red sun against smokey sky in the evening, reflected again in smoked-glass bar room window of the Sky Lounge. Memories, always... justo así...

"Tuve un overo rosao,
un alazán y un picaso
que pa’ cualquier tiro ‘e lazo
nada mejor he encontrao,
un malacara bragao
voluntarioso y seguro
y, pa’ salir de un apuro,
huyendo del alvoroto
tuve un overo poroto
un tobiano y un oscuro..."

* * *

"De cabello esparcido..."

Analect 2.305x

8 July 2008. Hazy sun, warm to the north. 108 in the shade. "I came through Sacramento at 7 o'clock, and it was still 102."

Inversion layer--ocean air pulled up into mist, spreading inland along the coast. Artichoke fields in the fog, figure of a man working, pulling weeds out of the earth. Root and clod.

A freeway overpass, seen from the car, years ago, also in the evening. Coastal fog. Shimmery gray concrete mass to the side of the road, apparition of solidity, whooosh, then gone...

Carmen Funes. La Pasto Verde...

Analect 2.303x

7 Julio 2008. Clearish skies, promise of a warm day. Characters before the window--tall guy with rumpled wavey hair, Ichabod Crane; finely-made black leather laptop bag, San Francisco bus. Blond girl in form-fitting skirt, folds of skin on back of her neck as she strains to catch sight of the G. Bag of groceries and supplies, something leafy and green on top...

La Pasto Verde, a song from the south. Neuquen--composer, folklorist and poet--Marcelo Berbel, singing with his sister, their flights and intertwinings, given modern form, but in the elaboration, old, old... Even more so, José Larralde, singing it as a lament--as with so many of his songs. Trayendo Pasados, the name of one album. Bringing yesterdays... or, carrying the past...

Quién te llamó pasto verde fresquita
tal vez tu aroma sintió,
poema de los desiertos
versos de un coplero que pasó...

Analect 2.303x

3 July 2008. Sparkling sun. Gray-pink slumpstone wall, mansard roof with worn shingles, small escutcheon sign, captain's wheel. Wind in the plum.

Dark red leaves, deep velvet, absorbing light as if there were no tomorrow.

Or Corrientes. Single figure on a river--shallow water's edge. Reeds and water grasses, green banks merging with greener stream.

Last week: standing alongside the Brabant--a Belgian draft animal, 19 hands at the withers. Golden brown--a sorrel--gleaming coat and well-trimmed mane. Huge head, patient eyes.

Ongoingness...

Analect 2.302x

2 July 2008. Gray wash of low cloud behind Navigator Escrow to the south. Otherwise clear, chilly breeze. Intent fellow in black sweatshirt to my right, receipts taped to larger pages, leaning into monitor...

Or into the future. As with text from Nathaniel, in Amsterdam, unexpected. "Give my regards to the Nieuwe Prinsengracht...", the Hortus, the Plantaage... The Zwanenburgwal...

The future. As with Nubian goats--two small ones, dressed in black, upturned faces to their mother's breasts, fore and aft. Dressed for success--and hardly dressed at all. Rather a kind of innocent charm, immediate and sweet, built in, like a Wolf range in Borrego, or the Fowles Street closets with sliding doors. Mom's clothes, from years before. Patterns and colors--blacks, gold, olive-green. Touch of red-orange on brown, melded now...

Rose dress with flowers...

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...