Analect 2.352x

23 September 2008. El Lucero--the morning star--poised in the branches of the mariposa sometime before dawn. A luminous embrace--as in the legend of Huanguelen, son of a Mapuche chief--who fell in love with her...then became himself a star, to follow her forever...

Gambles and predictions. Smokescreens of fate...

Comó se inclina la flor
hacia el tallo que la guía,
así se inclinó mi amor,
sin pensar de tu falsía...

Analect 2.351x

20 September 2008. Two dark bird shapes against pinkish gray sky, heading west. Dawn. Ying behind pool counter, already smiling. Her ancient block-like Lincoln moored at curb, corroded grays in early light.

Llanura. A man of few words. Qué no dice mucho. Lo quería conocer, pero no se paraba de hablar... I wanted to understand him, but he just kept talking. Better to offer a smoke, see how he accepts it, lights up. The gesture. As in coiling a rope--something simple, revealing...

La cosa es así...

Analect 2.350x

19 September 2008. Sun and shadow, for once. Push of dawn, bank of opaque pool windows to east--now glowing gray. Javed at eight, dark jacket on bike, watchcap, glower...heading home.

Los cuatro vascos, otra vez. Dependably themselves. But why? A consciousness, perhaps, of something tight and old--like worn brown shoes, or a wooden wheel in a deep rut, or the clasp of the foot of a sparrow on a twisted branch. Agarrar: to seize. An old word. As in Ipousteguy or Abarrategul--chunks of sound, like the rocky cliffs in northern Spain--peninsular--limestone and chalk, buried deep in the earth...

¿ Dónde está mi corazón,
que se fue tras la esperanza?
Tengo miedo que la noche
me deje también sin alma...

Analect 2.349x

18 September 2008. Gulls whirl above 7-eleven roofline, gray skies. Larry's brown truck lurched in at an angle, moored in fact. Welted silver tool box propped in place, mute red tail lights waiting...

Morning's return. Forget the banks--insurance bets to the tune of three trillion--or so Javed, with his bags of almost stale bread--the gleanings, in reverse--a source of wealth, scattered over asphalt, as they wheel in, wings spread wide, from Richmond, Hercules, Pinole...

Analect 2.348x

16 September 2008. Gray, simply gray.

The hodge-podge of hedge funds. Bonds. Narrow poll shows financial analysts ahead by a head, as they come 'round the curve on Hanover--Nassau, Pearl, Moore--all the alleyways that add up. Let's examine in terms of chiaroscuro--the deepest tones following always, later in the afternoon...

Sun behind mountains--the concerns of the highland people. Because they hear the echos of their own voices. Moon rising in the east, then gliding over the highest peaks, "a su muerte," so goes the myth. And what else a vanishing...?

La luna alumbraba el canto,
el grillo junto al camino,
y yo con sombra en el alma
pensaba en la ausencia del bien perdido...

Analect 2.347x

15 September 2008. Gulls guard gray, all facing east on pale 7-eleven cornice line--or is it simply a strip of aluminum molding along run of roof? All take flight but one, grayer than the rest...

A Russian tale, somewhere in the Crimea. Koktebel--a place of myth--the stone house, dry hills, wind-blown sea...

Girl in white--early Soviet, or a t-shirt maybe--BVD--where the touch of soft cotton, a strand of hair, milk...

Analect 2.346x

12 September 2008. Gray, and just now eight. Javed, shoulders hunched forward, heading out on his bike. Young latino guy, back on 7-eleven curb, t-shirt, hands in pockets, leaning in with all the rest...

Leaning in, as with Vicente Huidobro, from Chile, here perched in Spain on a bit of photographer's property--the short run of the baroque, balusters and newel posts, aimed at the sea. At the sea... "Vientos Contrarios"--contrary winds--the endless horizons of the south, lo Pacífico--where leagues become sound--phrases, words... An expansion of meanings, groundswell and kelp, beyond jetty's end...

Y si yo soy el traductor de las olas
Paz también sobre mí...

Analect 2.344x

11 September 2008. Gray gray skies. Seven years. Changing room at the Martin Luther King pool, just after eight. A voice on the radio, coughing between phrases--Larry Bensky--sense of unease. The hyper-real announcements--facts?--one after the next, beamed in from Washington, New York. Unfathomable...

Reading about a baby goat. Cabrito chico. Open volume held in both hands, before a group of school children, vaguely attentive. White tufts of fur--or were they gray--tucked behind each ear, or under the chin--a farm animal story--as if there were animals, as if there were farms...

More, miles of steel cable, girder and joist, raised up after Harte Crane, intent and mindless--mindless in the classic sense, mindless like Babel, like Cheops--more an assertion than an idea...

The two men in the tango room, pibes in perfect suits--city garb--their confidence and slicked-back hair--gomina--leaning towards each other, un desafío, a challenge--all before the first beat...

Analect 2.343x

10 September 2008. Gray clouds roll in, muted dawn. Lights on the hillsides at night--a quiet jewelry store, twinkling.

"Los cuatro vascos locos..." Phrase from decades back--depreciative, of course, but not without a zigzag of admiration. The square in front of the cathedral of La Plata, capital de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, it's high severe facade of brick, etched in the cold... The very first days of spring (Septiembre)... and gathered there in "national dress" a group of Basques--all alone--folkdancing in the icy winds off the river...

Río de La Plata, silver and unseen...

Analect 2.342x

9 September 2008. Gray from Albany to Port Costa, rolling banks of cloud edge in over the bay, sweeping low over the hills...

The purpose of description. Two figures on horseback, from the north--Salta or Jujuy. White horse chests, prancing. Wing shapes of leather to either side--as in the time of Güemes--cuero de vaca, por el monte--vela mayor, de un barco viejo--trinquete, velacho, juanete de proa. Seas of land. All but that other guy, who somehow just won't go away--a bystander on a dusty streetfront, next to Mary's despensa, alongside the dented pickup truck of heavy build, the narrow elm with missing limbs...

Age of imagination--boundlessness, huellas sin fin...

Autumn...

Analect 2.341x

8 September 2008. Autumn gray, bay fog laps hills. Ying's six o'clock smile, beaming through the dark.

Or three sisters, their own darkness, from somewhere deep in time. Ancient braids, bound in home-spun, cotton shifts prevail--whiteness--and a certain modesty, but purely from within.

Or Cézanne, crossing the schoolyard to greet an outcast--the young Émile Zola--who next morning brings a gift--a wicker basket filled with apples--each one green...

Analect 2.340x

5 September 2008. Sparkle and sun, mid-morning now, interrupted, after animated talk with Beatriz, sitting by this window on Solano, Toyota Tundras and all...

The word from Portugal--Lisboa, Oporto, Coimbra, (a university town, "like Oxford or Cambridge, scholarly and old...") The three schools of fado, each one distinct--"Lisboa of course being the saddest." A kind of deep melancholy, or longing... The Portuguese word, saudade... without translation. The quality of a particular place, a particular time... Like the fisherman of the northern Portuguese coast--launching their boats out through the surf, their wives remaining behind, on the shore, alone. The women's feelings at this moment--the immensity of the sea, the unknown... "Some already weeping..."

Or Ercília Costa, in Lisboa, 1930s, casa de fado... A girl from the countryside, simple--almost entered a convent, but instead, the fado bars of this ancient port town. Fados--songs of loss and lament--she sang them always with her hands pressed together, in front of her breast...

Saudade...

Analect 2.339x

4 September 2008. Sun again, luminous air...

Un ritmo elemental--de negra y dos corcheas...un óvalo oscurecido, silencio...

Words for music, hidden in the traces of the cordillera. Laguna Brava--an Andean lake, high above, rippling with sea waves... Linked, as legend has it, by underground caves reaching all the way to the Pacific...

Baguala--mountain song...

Analect 2.338x

3 September 2008. Clear sky, shadows from early sun--warm grays on creamy tan wall.

* * *

Coplas de Baguala...a lament from the highlands of Salta. Coyas--pueblo del norte:

Para cantar a bagualas,
la música está de más,
cóntale tu pena al viento,
y el viento las cantará.

Voy andando por el mundo,
lo miro al cóndor volar:
¡ malhaya, bicho dichoso,
tus alas me has, ¡ ay !, di dar.

¡ Malhaya con mi destino,
caminar y caminar!.


(Juan Carlos Dávalos, Atahualpa Yupanqui...)

Analect 2.337x

2 September 2008. Golden morning, hint of fall--Indian summer, rather, with blue skies in all directions. Albany High kids already returning, half-grown gulls with puffy gray plumage, nothing fits quite right. Girl with dark hair hopping out of car on one foot, loaded with books, Sierra pack, swinging door shut with free hand while nudging an inadvertent goodbye in the direction of her mom, the driver, whose hands grip the wheel like out of Le Mans, or Bakersfield, maybe, an all-night truckstop on Highway 99--as the big metallic Honda lurches off down the street...

Payador. Where story becomes song. "Re menor," the key of D minor, different somehow in those southern climes--la llanura--the untouched plains, an endless expanse of open land, incommensurate--

Cómo no he de llorar yo
sí me quitas lo que es mío...

Analect 2.336x

29 August 2008. Same van, same place, same sun. Woman on bicycle with covered baby trailer, yellow pennant flying high, streaming into view... Complexion of the day...

The Governor of Alaska who shot a moose--a badge of distinction. Not by the moose, however. But suffrage in our realm remains incomplete. So let's get on with it--give the vote to insects--the katydid and the firefly. Things will be decided in no time: mind the bushes, furnish the fields. Food for all, leaf by leaf...from each according to his ability, to each according to his need...

Oh yes, and keep the darkness dark as well...

Analect 2.335x

28 August 2008. Glare of sun on Plymouth hood. Lee's hat appears--straw with tiny knockouts, as she bends over green recycling bin to rescue this or that. Over-sized dark glasses to shield the gleaner...

Gleaning--to gather remnants, the stubble after the harvest. Poignant because...

Story of Ruth, in the fields of Boaz. The harvesters’ disdain, unconscionable to us, who read in reverse. A social order, in recapitulation--top down. But still the bending--as if over a game of cards. Fast-forward to Le Nain, 1612 or so, with his solemn gathering of boys. A barrel table, rough hands. Truco, mahjong--slights-of hand...

"Un patio ancho como una luna llena..."

Analect 2.334x

26 August 2008. Late summer sun, glowing red on long side of Cola truck. Flash of chartreuse, cyclist en route downhill, tiny rear-view mirror at her temple.

Temple--sien in Castellano, perhaps from the German, influenced by sentir--to feel.

Story from Atahualpa Yupanqui. In the quebradas of Salta--the arid backcountry slopes of the Andes Cordillera . A German mining engineer, rough sort, living out of a tent--in which he has installed an old upright piano. Enjoys inviting up the locals for an evening of food, comraderie--in which he launches into vintage renditions of Wagner. Then Don Atahualpa, with his zambas and vidalitas--todo lo criollo. A Salteño, worked up by spirit of the latter, and having downed a fair amount of Argentine wine, appears suddenly with a large revolver, pointing the barrel directly at the German's head--at his temple... No one moves. But slowly an older criollo appoaches, "Pelao, toda musica tiene su valor..."

Analect 2.333x

25 August 2008. Light just at dawn, treeline of hills, tiny filigree sentinels etched against sky. Quattrocento.

But guarding what? The new day will mind itself. Voices from pool steps--the early crew, locked out--no one's showed to open up. Gear bags over shoulders, towels, hunched and leaning--bluster and indifference, on and on, leaving finally one by one...

Seabirds over the North Pacific Gyre, a giant green swirl, twice the size of Texas (whatever can this mean?) Where polycarbonates find their home. Dunkin' Donuts, Matel, Park and Shop--our favored conveniences brought to rest, tidy and half-dissolved on miles and miles and miles of sea...

Better sing...

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...