Analect 2.445x

26 February 2009. Rain wet steps, gray clouds. Chill pool air.

Café Strada, the morning crew. Dark haired girl with large eyes, una lenta paciencia, preguntas...

Y los músicos en Corrientes--Puente Pesoa, rasguido doble... Nostalgias de mi litoral... Beginning with the guitar, to set the compás, slow and even, como el río mismo, to be enjoyed. Of three ages, the youngest on bandoneón, sitting quietly, without affect, until the moment of entry.

Muchas veces cantado, sobre los años...

Analect 2.444x

25 February 2009. Unexpected shower, clearing to blue. Seabirds over inland hills...

Chubasco. Rain storm on the pampas, clouds gather at the horizon, first drops...

Como a pesar de la hora temprana sintiéramos calor, fue más bien un goce aquel tamborineo fresco. Algunos empezaron a acomodar sus ponchos; yo esperé.
Mirando el cielo colegimos que aquelo era preludio de algo más serio.
La tierra se había puesto a despedir perfumes intensamente. El pasto y los cardos esperaban con pasíon segura. El campo entero escuchaba...

(Don Segundo Sombra)

Analect 2.443x

24 February 2009. Wet streets, sun. Smiling faces at bus bench await G ride into town. All-weather vehicles, as with PG&E Terex truck across the way--the folded white ladder. For a moment: Deepak's youngest daughter, with her grandmother in sari, climbing carefully into back seat of the family's small gold-bronze SUV...

River life...

Analect 2.442x

23 February 2009. Warm gray sky, hovering rain. Pooled water on 7-eleven lot, yellow curb stripes prominent in the half-light. Glowing morning neon--same day, open, alterations...

The stuff of trade, as with Walters, years ago. Credit Clothiers, Style Center for Men, where $5 a payday guaranteed layaway rights for emblems, knives, forage caps, dress blues. A Marine Corps town, season by season--the Nehru jacket, the short-sleeve suit. Ned Fink, veteran of them all, working the floor from 10 to 10, taking the young men in arm--under his saleman's wing--fitting them out with purple shirts and greenish pants--all manner of the impossible...

Buzz cuts and basic training, use of the M-1, the bayonet. The G string from the guitar--disappearing too quickly--a garrotte. Wooden rifle shanks, shape of the hand, the tree. Full-grained red walnut, steel bolt, lug.

Military lore, Oceanside...

Analect 2.441x

20 February 2009. Late night, early dawn. Natasha's curled heap in white wicker chair, Nicola the sphinx impassive at end of bed...

Girl's figure in pool, flailing--where grace becomes will...

O al revés--as in Spain, again--Federico García Lorca. Los Cuatro Muleros. Sueños de la guitarra--pathways to a kind of truth...

* * *

De los cuatro muleros
que van al campo,
el de la mula torda,
moreno y alto.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al agua,
el de la mula torda
me roba el alma.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al río,
el de la mula torda
es mi marío.

¿A qué buscas la lumbre
la calle arriba,
si de tu cara sale
la brasa viva?

Analec t 2.440x

19 February 2009. Dark dawn, eighteen crows heading east. Ripply blue-green pool, marble walls, wavery line of black... Guard on lone metal stand, orange cloak, her head dipping down...

The plutocrats will out--we live by their largesse. Or call it gen-e-ros-ity. A neo-classical marvel on lowish slope, with urns and columns, long halls, where more windows to the north, factory style, milky glass in hovering light, one clear pane with view to Sather Tower--the Campanile--a touch of Venice reborn on western hills...

Analect 2.439x

18 February 2009. Moments of sunshine follow days of rain...

Rumbling approach through layers of cloud, windows sprayed with diagonals of rain, port channel with gantry cranes and gray water, flooded fields...

Pedro Infante in "Los Pobres," standing forthright, with his señorita, on a street in the perennial Mexico pueblo, this time in the clothes of a young workingman, overalls, snug t-shirt featuring his upper arms. The peacefulness of the camera eye--framed just so--as in the YouTube clip in which he sings Cucurrucucu Paloma, battery of tender mariachi lined up like a Greek chorus in romantic overdrive, his momentarily petulant girl in the casa above, stirred from her bed by this public performance--for her alone--in the street just below...

Analect 2.438x

12 February 2009. Cold, with sun. Damp streets, yellowish cat tucked under nearby car...darting out, runs ahead...

En route from the cancha de fútbol, La Plata, 1961--dusk--a wild parade. Hincha de Boca celebrating victory, rampage through city streets, buses commandeered, figures in sleeveless t-shirts and dungarees, perched on running boards, hanging from open windows, fifty-five gallon drums aflame along the way--all included--something borrowed, misshapen even--from carnaval--a grotesque twist if not the love...

Colectivo...

Analect 2.437x

11 February 2009. Chill at dawn, blankets in a heap, Natasha's pearly curl in wicker chair...

Artifacts of existence. And their parallels. A sleek cell phone, for instance--something nice, from Finland--or was it Malaysia? The Bristish grip, fanning out from Kuala Lumpur...

A leafy park in the spring, Palermo, perhaps. Constructed on the ruins of a tyrant's retreat--a master of bookkeeping who could handle the gaucho tongue. Modismos--figures of speech, moving slowly into town, where the langorous Paso Doble of the estancia assumed a louche slide, witness the arrabal--lugares sueltos, a media luz, opportunities unknown...

Analect 2.436x

10 February 2008. Quiet sun, Nicola pausing at back door...

Images of the Riachuelo--looking again at old book from Buenos Aires, from 1962, creamy yellow stock with small inexpert color plates tipped in... Painters of La Boca, Quinquela Martín and all the others. A blocky picturesqueness...the world simplified, made innocent. As if the local dockworkers and fisherman would be forever at their mild toils, seen against green waters and dappled sun. The bridges of the river likewise--their iron hulks becoming pennants of connection...

Mixed in throughout--the mountains of Salta and Mendoza, a balancing "imaginario..."

Analect 2.435x

9 February 2009. A day's progress, milky sun, cloud or two, with bank of gray to the west...

Adrián Gorelik, from Buenos Aires...the Riachuelo revisited, a social document embedded in the landscape of the past... The Genovese, los zeneizes, playing tonight en la Bonbonera...while Adrián's tall form bends forward over sleek screen in a small Berkeley room high on the eighth floor, each click revealing "una atmósfera de fracaso..." The history a failed dream. Smoky waters in a thousand tones of gray, the forged iron bridges, derelict, set against a weighted sky...

Mataderos, Parque Patricios--the dark remnants of la barbarie, balancing Palermo, the legacy of Rosas to the north. City unfolding, as encouraged by Torquato de Alvear, el turismo, viente por ciento, with the canvasses of Cunsolo and Quinquela Martín... "Lo pintoresco y la modernidad..."

He gets up on a trick knee, stumbling slightly en route to the screen, to point out a detail with his hand--his antiochos, that is--a narrow and well-thought-out pair, held precisely in the scholar's hand--sudden golden orb on white expanse of light....

To show the world. "Siempre podía caminar por alla; ahora no..." Caminar. Must needs change...

Analect 2.434x

6 February 2009. Rain, blue-gray skies, green umbrella passing... Two cars, side by side in forlorn lot--a sedan and van, origins unknown. Girl with pale skin and dark dark hair, bending forward with folded laundry held close, reaching with her other hand to unlock door...

As in a dance. The zamba, perhaps. Una vuelta entera, arresto, medio vuelta. El campo de baile--an arena of meanings...

Analect 2.433x

5 February 2009. Rain in the night--a smattering. Streets damp, whirling gulls. Layers of gray cloud spread wide.

Folclore in the supper club, "Recuredos de Salta," a zamba, filmed in maybe 1962. Louche figures seen at table, from behind, while in the aisle, an impeccably done-up pair of dancers appear, in local dress. Man's hand reaching behind his back to adjust the ceremonial facon--unfelt before, a kind of fumbly prop--while the meal progresses, under ceiling fans. Back of room, leaning against hallway wall, two figures--a man and a woman--kitchen help, pausing to watch...

In some sense real, if only because of time...

Analect 2.432x

4 February 2009. Milky light, sun. Man with with checked coat and widow's peak, walking a sheepdog on long leather leash, just behind pale blue of PG&E truck. Laundry and crows to the rear.

Abysinnia--the good doctor's farewell as he steps through the portal. German folksongs on occasion--when in the mood, or two-part carols, pulled from a bank of sometimes fading lore. All seems to fade--what we take in, what we forget. A vehicle with goods sliding out the back...

But not Alice--her every jot intact. A telephone number from 1932, for instance--ready at the go--or the recipe for fatiman, folded diamonds with the ends tucked back in, dusted in powdered sugar... at Christmastime...

Analect 2.431x

3 February 2009. Sun over low roofs, avenue sounds. Doritos van charging up the hill... Three gulls alert on 7-eleven eve... Everywhere...

Re-reading Mansilla, beyond Aillancó-una parada en route to Leubucó, the place where the horses were stolen. Si perdieron unos caballos? Always the same question--befitting these plains, where a horse is a ship, an eagle, a saving grace. Cloud of darkening gray-brown dust on the horizon, whipping this way and that, now larger, now smaller, re-emerging. The scout: Indios, mi colonel...boleando, guanaco...

"Si no ha perdido caballos..."

Analect 2.430x

2 February 2009. Sudden shadow of green bus, now rumbling off down the street. Yellow sun on faded blue sky...

One creature and another. Encounter and detente. "A young bull elephant," although no elephants are truly young. You can look this up anywhere--absolute age: Pleistocene, as shown in Smithsonian-style gouache, trunk raised in defiance (even then), while a Bert Lahr lion paces angrily just in front. Concocted, of course, the scene--our presence more in the form of a late-model tondeau pickup, or the small copper-brown SUV, oversized off-road tires, in which Lina and her daughter arrive, smiling, smiling, in delicate sari, almost from Nepal...

Analect 2.429x

30 January 30. Beauty day, sun...

And this morning--accident, inadvertancy, mistake. That old conundrum--redressed here in white-on-white--the paper's edge another world, following Bill Midgette-- "a whole other kind of space," where the realm of imagination runs chock-a-block into the contingencies of the ding-an-zich...

Or do I overstate the case? A poorly drawn horse, rather--and a misplaced bird... But can a bird ever find itself misplaced? More perhaps a sense of doubt--the alignment of the host, paralax and lines of sight--getting a bead, the perfect view...

For we don't shoot here, no, long live Ni Tzan...

Analect 2.428x

30 January 2009. Warm wind at night, dry, blue skies, sun...

Choroshie otnosheniya...good relations, entre Indios, digamos--or simpy between each other. And how to begin? An open boat on a narrow sea, the worn wood, each strake bent just so around the forms of ribs, also formed, according to their pattern--the breathing, as it were, where chest and lungs expand to fill with air, holding, releasing, then holding again. Curves will follow, a matter of delight, each one tender, necessary...

As with a hand or an arm--caress...

Analect 2.427x

28 January 2009. White smoke, vapor trail, blue sky. A trifecta of sorts--choosing the first three finishers in just that order. So often in threes--the possibility of choice, a fork in the road, paths not taken...

Late afternoon in the fall, smallish room, high windows. Song from somewhere on the plains, Texarcana to Wyoming, cattle on the trail, and a request...

I ride an old paint...
I lead an old dam
I'm goin' to Montana
Just to throw the houlihan...

Analect 2.426x

27 January 2009. Heliotrope, blue sky, and flash of cyclist's cobalt sleeve, his polycarbonate helmet wedge, streamlined white...

Just before: Beeping bleat of golden bus, empty now, parked askance in 7-eleven lot. Children all in or all out, somewhere along the run, a curving lane in Kensington, uphill slope, redwoods and firs, mockingbird in a crooked branch--or hint of the phainopepla, Leonard's bird, "silky robe", hidden in marsh mist, and diving now for something small and on the wing...

Analect 2.425x

26 January 2009. Sun this morning, bright like spring. Quiet air in the palm branches...

A teacher in Buenos Aires, seen for an instant, Spanish girl within the matronly form. Maybe the shoulders, or the boyish hair, pulled in close to the sides of her head, flowing below...

"El pelo, sí. Cada vez distinto..." Ringlets maintained like an exotic crop--an orchid in the arctic...

Olavarría, otra vez...

Analect 2.424x

23 January 2009. Rain on street. Older woman in dark shoes, dark coat, looks up slightly as she walks by. Tim in hair salon--pointing emphatically through window--then once again, followed by gesture of lifting a cup to drink. Coffee jar balanced on gray Honda roof...

Re-animation, all the rivulets and streams. Mississippi John Hurt, his beautiful knobby hands, left thumb loose as he slides the chords up and down the neck. Story of how he learned--his mother's beau--the fellow with the guitar. Approached in the middle of the night, trying the notes--almost in silence...

Resistance and deluge, a conversation re-begun. Somewhere in between... Maybe more a song...

Analect 2.423x

22 January 2009. Gray rain. Wet pools on dark street. Black car nosing along. Cloud shapes of Huang Zhou...

Words of Po Chü-i, a thousand years: Midnight lamp I sit by the south window...

And this one, our own...

Analect 2.422x

21 January 2009. Gray layers of cloud, warm air. Late in the evening: golden interior of sardine tin, three small fish, crosswise. A caper and an artichoke heart. Something right...

The Hypnerotomachia Polyphili--rediscovering Antiquity through dream, Poliphilus, his narrow column of type ending in the characteristic wedge--meaning and it's disappearance--or, at the least, it's dissolution into form. The word divagate--something of the same--to wander or digress--from the river's truth. But does not the stream itself wander?

Steps for a dance--something definite. "Cada figura se iniciará con pie derecho."

And then...?

Analect 2.421x

20 January 2009. Ooooooooooooooooh....

Red truck in morning light, white swirl of American ingenuity...hope, opportunity...

Maybe even grace...

Analect 2.420x

19 January 2008. Seemingly unending sunshine. Natasha on threshhold this morning, her pearly dark face, questioning eyes, looking back for a few moments before she scampers across the yard...

Tiny creature moving in the evening. Plump field mouse, but indoors. Studio surprise--the miniature roundness, also poised for a moment, then darting back to safety under the shelves...

Movements towards feedom. La Pasto Verde. A song named for a woman named for a field of green grass...

Brava gaucha en los fortines, sureños
bella flor del jarillal,
mil soldados te quisieron
pero la tierra te quiso más...

Analect 2.419x

15 January 2009. Sun, no question about it. And peek of distant hills, seen against the sky, wedged between blank beige bank wall and empty escrow concern. Shadow shape of the Navigator escutcheon still present on slumpstone facade, its curved top, four bolt points, unmanned...

El zorro gris--that was the phrase, learned in large gray car of the Kraiselburd clan, en route from Ezeiza to La Plata, maybe 1961. YPF--yacimientos petrolíferos, how the words attach themselves to consciousness--with constant pale flame pale against even more pale sky. The clouds, too, smallish and ruminant--sweeping in from off the Argentine planes...

Carlos Romaní, singing with Juan Carlos Barragan--the Jockey Club, porteños all...

Today--Alicia as well...

Analect 2.418x

14 January 2008. Clear sky, bay to hills. Lee in woolen huntman's hat, at dawn, pushing her cart of salvaged odds and ends...

Or Beatriz Ponce, here in the wee hours of the Argentine--Arrebalera--another song...

Analect 2.417x

13 January 2009. Warm wind in the night, branches flying, with gusts from the northeast... Safron light at dawn, pouring through curtain into downstairs room...

The Jockey Club, Buenos Aires once more, with Tinita, una anciana...more so than I'd remembered. Her fragile outward form--long dress, pale blue scarf (la Argentinita), rings on several of her fingers. Eyebrows arched over veiled gaze...

Then: standing, seen from farther back. Long dress all the way to floor, just her face and forearms and hands...

Was she famous once? Only the sparrow knows...

Analect 2.416x

12 January 2008. Gusting winds from the east, sun, cirrus clouds and blue sky.

The Jockey Club, Bs. As., where on Friday nights, late, the microphone is open--Tango...y algo más--and the porteños sing out their hearts--for each other, and for themselves alone. The songs are old--and deeply known. Francisco Rizzi, a distinguished man in a gray suit, No veremos más (the words still true). Or Titina, Nada más, her flowered blouse and fine pearl-gray hair. Carlos Romaní as well--the master of ceremonies--who joins in with his own modestly insistent bit of mitteleuropean theatre--Agitando pañuelos...

Amar y callar, El amor desolado, Yo no sé que han hecho tus ojos, Ventanita de arrabal...

O Marité, cantando, Nostalgias...

Analect 2.415x

9 January 2009. Cold winter sun, frosty wet on garden window, Nicola curled at end of bed.

Cuchi Leguizamon, su música-- folklore del norte--hasta Erik Satie ("este viejo hermoso a quien tanto queremos un grupo de salteños.") Trained as a lawer, but the practice didn't suit him. As his son Juan Martín explains, "terminaba defendiendo gente que nunca pudo pagar nada, como algún indio del Chaco salteño, algún cuatrero del Pilcomayo."

Instead, they became a part of his songs...

Almost no recordings--he had no use for the industry. "Y él tenía una idea de la musica como un producto artístico que provocara la sensibilidad del oyente, estaba por fuera de cualquier relación mercantíl."

Very late: a tour of Europe in 1991, "el clima casi hipnótico que iba construyendo solo con su voz y su piano, entretejiando relatos y canciones y capturando la atención casi religiosa de una audiencia que--al menos en parte--seguramente no entenddía sus palabras."

Juan del Monte...una chacarera...

Analect 2.414x

8 January 2009. Pale yellow morning sun, pushing through the gray...

Mapa de las cumbres de Aconquija. Los Varela, Huaycama, Andagalá, El Manchao, Rosario de Colona, Cumbicha...

Unos viejos on a quiet bench, Casa de Abuela Celia, Colpes, emblems of eternity, or our nearest route thereto. Kelly and Pablo, running everywhere, his tiny rambunctious smile. Thank you for apple slice. Un mundo entero...

Analect 2.413x

7 January 2009. Gray winter's air, white smoke puffs against pewter sky...

Un zorzal--su gran habilidad para el canto. Lo argentino--the pampas thrush. And a figure seated at a table, hands raised slightly, in thought, or in a moment of conversation. Jaime Dávalos. As in the café in Córdoba, decades ago, with Atahualpa Yupanqui and the others. Las canciones, winding their way through the hills...

Ahora que estás ausente
mi canto en la noche te lleva.
Tu pelo tiene el aroma
de la lluvia sobre la tierra...

Analect 2.411x

5 January 2009. Gray skies--furrowed clouds. Surcado, as in fields--the dark plow lines on loam.

Figure on horseback, Cafrune perhaps. A man of the people--del campo--chambergo folded back, his long reins. A vial of earth from Boulogne-sur-Mer, he was carrying to Yapeyú...

Zamba, de mi esperanza
amanecida como un querer
Sueño, sueño del alma
que a veces muere sin florecer...

Analect 2.410x

2 January 2009. Sad gray rain. Muted reds across the way--open, same-day service, Marlboro sign... And a man in green slicker walking small fine-boned dog. West Coast sounds...

Natasha at top of steps to back-door--her puffy pearl-gray luxury--looking back over shoulder--the door, the door...

Brooke, somewhere in the East, winter's cold...

Analect 2.409x

30 December 2009. Foggy streets, up and down. Yellow disk of sun, veiled in gray...

Reading Shumway--his last word. Sarmiento, Rivadavia, Mariano Moreno--the heroes unravelled--brought low. An imagined communality--and yet another Yankee pronunciamiento. How things should be: José Artigas, Bartolomé Hidalgo. Thanks, Nick, but check it out--our Paris of the South, where a figure in heavy coat, standing at the narrow counter of Café Brasil, tips back a small sweet black espresso...

Bartolomé Mitre, winter light...

Analect 2.408x

19 December 2008. Rain water on porch, dark red in wavery amber light. Ying's face this morning, smile plus doubt. A river traveller's farewell...

Dance, foot turned back to steady the hip. La Argentinita. Encarnación López Julvez, de España, arms pulled high over her dark hair, a white flower tucked in behind, solid frame arched to the compás. Which is all.

White smoke over wet roof, drifts against gray sky...

Analect 2.407x

18 December 2008. Icy dawn, whoosh of Bart train on distant rail, earlier than early. Ice on all the east-west streets. A touch of Chicago comes to the East Bay.

Last night: the mathematicians. And Chizu Omori, a girl from Oceanside--from before the war. Now, her long gray-white hair, small frame, composed posture. All visible in just the way she occupies a chair. They were strawberry farmers, on leased land, "like a Japanese village."

Then: the Arizona camps, Rabbit in the Moon, dispersion. So she came to Berkeley--McCarthy period, loyalty oaths, Nixon. "Seems I spent my whole life voting against him..."

Chickens on Sixth Street, a feathery redemption.

Analect 2.406x

17 December 2008. Icy dawn, crinkly grass, glittery shards at edge of street. Pool bodies and shower mist, comraderie.

Last few days until they close--the Albany Pool--a monument, of sorts, gone...

The Szechenyi or the Rudas--baths of old, Buda and Pest, brought by the Turks, or the Romans before. The Gellért--green waters and marmol--four Hungarians of a certain age, submerged to the neck, gathered around a chessboard, or the Napi Gazdasag, financial news, held in two hands, eyeglasses perched on nose--calcium, magnesium, potassium--stocks dive and soar...

Analect 2.405x

16 December 2008. Rain on the streets, luminous, slanting. Indoors: the green pool, veiled in fog...

A mysterious Hungarian bath, even from Roman times--Sylvia Plachy's world, reeds and sows, all white, carved wood, stark turns against the snow. A figure, bundled in furs, totem of the dark, leaping now, with curved horn--winter's dance...

Golden flames...

Analect 2.404x

15 December 2008. Rain at dawn, Nicola with paws high on living room door, hoping for a quick exit. Natasha, the slinky blimp, in back, hoping for same. Then Ying, her wide face, sleepy eyes, a pool girl in the half-light. Watching over the living.

Photo of a man clinging to wall of rock. Normal colors--as if everyday, but we're two days out and 2000 feet up--on the face of Half Dome--kodachrome notwithstanding. A party of three, one tenuous line snaking down from above--the Roof. Another heaven...

Or mallards, in the estuary--Martinez perhaps, a bit of wetland amidst the powerlines and petroleum. Faithful in the dark waters, forever...

Analect 2.403x

11 December 2008. Sun. Lee's sharp laugh just outside. Then Lina in dark maroon sari, white five-gallon pail with thin layer of suds, pouring over curb. World needs a wash-up...

Nothing much to say, really. Driving home very late, curving street through a few redwoods, wash of headlights on Berkeley homes. Silent thoughts, here and there, one by one...

Lima beans with turmeric, peppered gold--a peasant king's repast...

Analect 2.402x

10 December 2008. Even and clear, two crows--make that three, turning and diving, white chalk dash of jet trail low on the southern horizon...

"I felt a sense that this is an awakening of the people." The subcomandante, rumpled shirt, lime green wristband and pulsy macro-chronometer, in a guest appearance in Sonora--a pueblo in Río Yaquí. Dusty brown pickup, men in work clothes and desert hats, the Indian woman alongside, all reds and maroons, a pink skirt, set against the light blue cloth at her neck--colors of awareness, her high cheeks in shadow--midday light--hands folded, eyes full of inquiry...

"Yo tenía el sentido..."

Analect 2.401x

9 December 2008. Cold night, bright dawn. Laura the pool guard, wrapped in headband, sweats and scarf...huddled on couch in between sets...

Voice of the governor, his thick a's and o's--that östereicher touch, radio days. "There will be cuts," gash on side of leg--as with Stefan, the swim team coach, hiking up his cuff as his workmate winces. Her round face, all this way and that--dismay as cure...

Antonio Gramsci--the hegemony of culture. Words from a harsher--and clearer--time. La lucha, the struggle... Letters from prison, the one to his mother...

"La vita è così, molto dura, e figli qualche volta devono dare dei grandi dolori alle loro mamme, se vogliono conservare il loro dignità di uomini..."

Analect 2.400x

8 December 2008. Jumbled gray shelf of cloud. Colder, then warmer, then colder again...

Question of pirates--Somalia, this time, not the Caribbean. A Johnny Depp with a purpose--forget Vanessa Paradis in her two-tone pumps--here hunched barefoot, speeding across a choppy sea, perched on the prow of a heavy white fiberglass launch. No Hollywood bandana, but an assault rifle, grenades--something to write home about, seen vaguely from the brige of the ship, five miles off, a blip on the radar--trawler, most likely-- tuna, jackfish, silvertip shark...

Analect2.399x

5 December 2009. Sun in December, no complaints. Wind from the hills, palm fronds.

Bonnard. His impressive smudges, nudged along a vector of patience and true belief. Belief, yes, but in what? Quiet, perhaps, and the play of warm and cool--a moment's sunlight on a southern balustrade, spot of warm white and yellow gold illuminating the rose-violet shadows. Who can say--words are nice, but the essential pathways of the optic nerve will out. Was he joshing--the techno-speak, as with Thomas Eakins, the opthamologist--seen by chance, scored prism in his hands...

Learners take note, the horizon beyond...

Analect 2.398x

4 December 2008. Sun through scarves of mist, tracing the hills.

Yesterday--the ancestors. Faces of all ages--kindly and benevolent, peering down from the brightly lit walls, forging a connection through sense of touch. A dignified man with browned face, strong but rounded shoulders, hands tucked in pockets, standing in front of the landscape of Michoacan. A pueblo--Jaime has to check un papelito to recall the name, a place where "the houses still looked impoverished and broken. Despite this, the weather is beautiful and the people are as well..."

Later, gentle room with warm white walls--sitting side by side, la musica, beginning we know not where...

As well...

Analect2.397x.jpg

3 December 2008. Fog again, bridges veiled... Freighters hidden in the mist, their mournful horns...

Odetta, no more. Her wall of sound--entirely from within, stately and at home... a manger after the harvest, pouring forth...

We bow again, the distance--lost...

Friends.

Analect 2.396x

2 December 2008. Nice gloomy clouds with patches of blue... lifting through into tender sky...

An ancient encounter in the cafeteria line, amidst a sea of youth--all milling about, with paper pails of rice and meat, piles of toasted bread... Both in the footwear of the literati class--flip-flops, that is. One-time wanderers on a lonely road. The lost distance--a recognition and a bow...

Analect 2.395x

1 December 2008. Gray fog holding the dawn, yellow street lamps, muted, gone.

Delta roads--rutted and worn--a farm track into valley air. Flooded fields--alfalfa, rice, corn--now standing empty. The Mokolumne, winding low, mournful calls from above--our sandhill cranes, banking in a wide V, calling out to those below. Hidden in ochre against brown fields--pairs, in furrows, gathered.

A dance, wings held high, all awkward leg, but still...their grace...