Analect 2.594x

15 October 2009. Golden float lines on luminous blue, rain mist pool...

Chamamé. And this is what happens when you bring the polka to the Paraná... A close embrace, each bending forward to press cheek and chest, as if everyone in this world were small--in stature perhaps, but grand in spirit. A willingness to attend to the requirements of the dance--a necessity even, each morning, where the brown waters sweep slowly by...

Analect 2.593x

14 October 2009. Gray morning, after the storm, lacy and intermittent hints of blue.

Dance of the stars, as led by Lee, with Safeway cart, winter hat, no-nonsense boots. Her frail form, bending over 7-eleven bin, collecting. A chance for the Reed's Black Cherry to live again...

Clark, portable radio in hand, sidewalk mambo...

* * *

Ramsay's face, bending near, "May I ask a favor?"

Analect 2.592x

13 October 2009. Pouring rain on pool water, drips on drops... Lifeguard hunkered down against damp stucco wall, bent forward in poly hood...

A blaze of chickens, nonetheless. Houdan, Old Hungarian, Wynandote. Golden Montazah, and the lone Araucana... Araucana, from somewhere in the south. El sur, as with Lucio...riding to meet Mariano Rosas and his Ranquel band. Also Araucana, at least in part. Having adopted their ways. Tolderías, tents of wood and hide, cooking fires within, well hidden, ample flocks and herds...

These final moments, when two worlds meet, each one gathered into the next...

Rain...

Analect 2.591x

12 October 2009. Gray clouds piling, oncoming rain...

Lila on sidewalk, her head covered with a muted pink scarf, leaning forward as she pulls aside the large gray German plastic recycling container. Moments later: seated in their new tiny Honda Fit, electric blue... Equivalents (Victor Schrager to me, in 1978: "See them.")

Toscha, as a young man. A student of Mischa Auer: "Heifitz, that angel, Toscha, that devil..." Or so came the family story. As told in San Diego, a Navy town, with its parade of sailors up and down lower Broadway, white caps at a maritime tilt...

Beached there, along with a handful of Russians--Dad, Uncle Howard, Jimmy Toback--Stelly, and Toscha himself. Eddie Janowski and Aunt Mae. Do I remember scampering along the back of the built-in dining table bench--all freedom of movement, everything permitted--with Toscha's irritation mounting...?

"But Professor Auer develops a natural bowing, with an absolutely free wrist, in all his pupils..."

* * *

For the Toscha Seidel references, see Fredrick H. Martens, Violin Mastery: Talks with the Master Violinists and Teachers, available as a Project Gutenberg eBook:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15535/15535-h/15535-h.htm#Page_219

Analect 2.590x

9 October 2009. Low gray clouds, churning...

Talk of colors, adjustments and compensations. A row of oak trees on a Palo Alto Street, removed of a morning...

The history of loss. And the words for longing: añoranza, anhelo, saudade... The latter from Beatriz, sitting with me in the window on Solano, a little more than a year ago. Of Portuguese fishermen, setting out to sea, their wives alone on the beach, some of them weeping, as the boats disappear on the sea...

Succoth, a time of joy, autumn moon...

Analect 2.589x

8 October 2009. "Morning low clouds and fog...," reassuring radio voice, while just outside, morning low clouds and fog. Impatient Saab directly behind, swerves right, then left, then right again, careening past onto narrow side street at high speed...

Where we are going. As in the pueblo of Huanguelen, tucked away in a remote corner of the Province of Buenos Aires. Miles and miles of wheat--dimpled clouds against a late afternoon sky. Community center room, bare, the ubiquitous modern plastic chairs and a single table on one wall, with a bevy of older women at antiquated monitors. Our computer class...

Or a gathering of children, in the public square--this from many years before, in fading black and white, their uniforms and pinafores arranged just so, arms around each others shoulders in a protective way--tiny gestures of dignity and anticipation...

José Larralde--Un día me fuí del pago...

Analect 2.588x

7 October 2009. Gray light over hills at dawn, a single bird...

El Alma del Payador--the soul of the story-singer... Santos Vega, a gaucho from around 1830 who lives on in myth because of a challenge from the Devil in human form--the figure of Juan sin Ropa. "Una sombre triste que vaga por las lagunas de la pampa..." A somber shadow that wanders amidst the lagunas of the pampa... Playing upon any guitar left forgotten nearby a well--aljibe, the old Moorish word. Constantly associated with water, and an invocation of the wind...

José Larralde in the film version of Obligado's classic--half-western, half-Whitman--from 1971...

Bajo un algarrobo...

Analect 2.587x

6 October 2009. Beginning of fall. Cold rounded poolside edge, blue water...

Stories. Named by her father, her mother still calling her Marta. Tucumán, cuna de los sueños. To Mendoza, a marriage and a son, then alone. Her voice--a gift and an impediment. "Para mí cantar era una tristeza..." This as a girl--again, the wishes of he father, but singing left her aislada--alone...

Soledad...y compromiso. Solitude and commitment--interwoven...

The concerts in the Opera, 1982--a sudden opening after the years of darkness. Her grand return...

"Un puente sobre todos los abismos..." Her openness, maybe to a fault--and her crazy friendships. Charly García, for one. Tall, skinny, outrageous. Her own view: "A veces cuando habla es tan inteligente que uno sólo puede admirarlo..." The two of them: De mí

And with the Chalchaleros, en la Rural, Buenos Aires: Zamba por vos...

Analect 2.586x

5 October 2009. Morning darkness, autumn chill. Masters team in changing room, talking laps and times...

That old phrase--chewing the fat. Hearthside, or kitchen table. As in the note on NPR--the nation swept by a sudden interest in craft. Richard Sennett in the lead--with words, that is.

A just shaping. The sense of touch, a feel and a turning. The pine bow, stripped of bark, white wood exposed to winter's air. Bite of the knife, along the grain, each fiber an opening.

Entire worlds...

Analect 2.585x

2 October 2009. Beautiful fall day, damp pool edge...

"Ojos limpios cómo un chingolo..." From José Larralde, La Noche del Peludero. The meaning of the words in a song, given such particular focus by the necessity of their ongoingness... Figure of Victoria's bisabuela--as a young woman, in the dress embroidered with a Mapuche design. Subtle, white on white, a remembering in the cloth itself, as with her beautiful elongated face--the dark eyes...

Reflections on a life.

I play for them La Fernanda, accompanied by Diego, seated upright, alert, just to her side... Attentive to the song--present and past, made one...

Cómo siempre...

Analect 2.584x

1 October 2009. Morning pool light, sun...

Indumentaria--but not simply old clothes. Well, yes, old clothes--but in the sense of very old clothes--those worn a hundred years ago or more. That's old, isn't it? Bombachas, pañuelo, chiripá... The Indian names--Tehuelche, Mapuche, Pampa... Restitched for an immigrant clientele... One sees it on their faces--hard and unsure--like the horizon itself, always at a certain distance--to the west, al poniente del sol...

Unknown...

* * *

Yamhill Market, Portland, 1964-- a pair of beautiful brown woolen trousers, pin-striped, and very long-waisted, with suspender buttons and 1-1/2 inch cuffs. Another life...

Analects 2.583x

30 September 2009. Gray light over hills, how many ways...

Two Polish girls, on the hard side--Hotel Polonia--armed in black, rayon... The pose revealing more than the pose--a kind of tough vulnerability--clutching purses--or maybe not even so tough, the veneer thereof...

And within? Mokotów, Praga, the farms beyond...

Childhood of dreams, ads, enticements--the bounty of the west, crashing down... An unsuspecting populace--muddy fields, Częstochowa, the Pope...

A hidden unity, half-remembered--named in ritual--Body of Christ...

Solidarność...

Analect 2.582x

29 September 2009. Pearl clouds with intermittent sun, wash of grays, whites, pale blues...

Two Indian gentlemen in pool changing room, conversing in the old way, a morning in Delhi, the Jumna, despite all...

And a violist, whose autumnal sound, deep voiced and calm, soars in middle register, straight to the heart...

We have no word for this. The quality of tan in Taoist thought... "A semblance of impoverishment...should conceal an inner richness, serve as a plain garment which covers the embroidered robe."

Reb Zusia...

Analect 2.581x

25 September 2009. Sun at this moment pouring through gray--early fall.

Wyspianski's Wesele--The Wedding Party--in Wajda's film of 1973. Bronowice, a village near Kraków. The poet who marries a peasant girl, Lucjan and Jadwiga. Rachela. the young Jewish woman who appears unexpectedly at the celebration--"a victim of her own euphoria"--inviting in the chocholy (bound grain sheaves in the fields after the harvest) and thereby an opening to the mysteries of the Polish past.

Wyspianski's painting--figures of grain, in an autumn landscape. Van Gogh's space, Van Gogh's trees... Night, and a sense of distance...

They become real...

Analect 2.580x

24 September 2009. Gray morning, gray gull over pool, glimpsed for an moment...

Marcello Mastroianni, bringing his charming Italian je ne sais quoi to the wintery environs of Torino--the Fiat factory strike, sometime after 1900... Image of the worker as Genovese extra--the café faces, clenched fists, worry and doubt, but a willingness to listen, maybe even follow. His narrow-rimmed university specs--the student--better with Schiller under his arm than Plekhanov or Marx...

François Noël-Babeuf--a society of equals...

Mourant de faim, mourant de froid...

Analect2.579x

23 September 2009. Sun like always...

Scabbard and standard, prepare for battle. Dark woods and dripping stream, Lancelot du'Lac--Bresson's vision, where the knights appear only as a sudden flash amidst the undergrowth--glint of armor and braised cuff... Or, a peasant girl from the east of France--the Maid of Orleans, as in the song...

Limousin, d'Auvergne...

Analect2.578x

22 September 2009. Sun over hills, all promise. Young woman from last week--Sondra--on bus bench with her daughter, Sisiki. "Tiene un nombre indigeno..." Small,wild curls in morning light...

The lute player, musician of the court, M. Charles Mouton, with ever so slight a smile, esconced in winter wig and thick brocade, from 300 years in the past. A draughty hall, inattentive hosts...Couperin...

Glassy waves at dawn, salt ocean air, single gull grazing the crest...

Analect 2.577x

21 September 2008. Mist against hills at dawn, Campenile's ghost. Single runner, turning for an moment, then gone...

Candombe, in the Barrio Sur, Montevideo, a century past. Recorded by Pedro Figari--who began these paintings only in his sixth decade. From childhood memories--the Bakongo Kings and Queens, crowned on new shores, in hidden rooms... Later, drawn from life--in friendship--his skills as a lawyer, marshalled in their defense...

A people's past, revealed in the sweep of the dance. A hand held just so--palm down, in peace, or raised to the brow--a warding off. Incorporated, in the most literal sense. Lives re-lived--remembered and wished for...

Legacy of earth...

Analect 2.576x

18 September 2009. Sun-filled pool, golden and blue, California...

Hills overlooking the bay--San Diego, Convair plant and eucalyptus, Mission Brewery in brick, curve of water towards North Island, Point Loma and the sea... This same time, ten years back--a September morning, Avery and Peter, in a kind of repose... Their two forms, in life and after...

And today: a mother and daughter waiting for the bus, again September, with a gathering of fresh flowers in an open green bag, tucked in between. Their luxurious curls, an ebony ring, Minerva's scroll...

Song...

Analect 2.575x

17 September 2009. Gray skies, gray pool. Gray guard, gray wall. High, to the west, a single line of reddish brick, set side-by-side, in a wave. A motif...

The recurrence of the Baroque-- Age of Watteau, same dress, same song. But no, not at all his age, rather a brilliant kind of pretend--the ruff, the starred rosette, the arched thumb, the flowers and shoes... a kind of seeming...as if...

Where veracity reveals only the truth of longing...

Analect 2.574x

16 September 2009. Sun through morning clouds. Tall and gloomy swim coach, with notepad and pen--a racing form, perchance, or the morning's ve-ge-ta-bles...

As in a play--Twelfth Night, where Malvolio makest sense of things that be, a lady's wish, prediposed o'er parchement gold...a letter, indeed, and all it might reveal...

"By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's. It is, in contempt of question, her hand."

Analect 2.573x

15 September 2009. Sun light in the fall, blue pool waters, silent swimmers seen from afar...

The University in crisis--a forum in 160 Kroeber--my own room, filled to the brim with Berkeley faces--students in the main, eager to hear Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Tim Clark, George Lakoff, Charlie Schwartz and Laura Nader each hold forth with a personal overview of what the institution--at its best--continues to represent. Education as a public good, not a commodity. Producers of doubt--of questions--to broaden our sense of the world. Not the narrow interests of class--a maintenance of privilege--but the dreams and the aspirations of a much broader class--the children of the people of California--more than a million of them, over the years, graduates of this public institution...

The threat: "a warping and closing down of intellectual horizons." (Tim Clark) * Question of "who is going to be educated? Those with the most money--or (pointing to the audience) you?" (George Lakoff) * Thorsten Veblen got it right in 1908: a public good. "Society's conscience." (Laura Nader). * Accountablity to this vision on the part of the administration--and the Regents (Charlie Schwartz).

Whom do we serve?

Analect 2.572x

14 September 2009. Voluminous clouds on blue, remnants of last night's storm. An early fall?

Young woman from Clean Living Cleaners, out in the parking lot with dust pan and broom, her desultory swipes at this and that, scattered across asphalt after yesterday's Stroll. Merchant's holiday, towards an imagined wherewithall.

Prayers for rain...

Analects 2.571x

11 September 2009. Beauty morning.

Even by email, with sun-dappled sidewalks just outside. Right down to a slanted Free Chips sign--and the Come and Get Me iced-coffee banner across the way. "I'm good...," an American response...

Anoche. Smiling and singing--a bird on the branch of a tree--el zorzal criollo, made real in wobbly blue pencil on thin sheets of trace. A nest. Importante. And two narrow footprints, as in Indian classical dance--and just behind, a pair of shoes made entirely from gathered husks of corn--rustic and imposing, "aquí estamos..." Set within a ring of leaves and clay.

To know the earth... Canción de la tierra...

Analect 2.570x

10 September 2009. Foggy streets at dawn, swimmers in the mist, sun pushing through to blue-gold.

Some days like this, as when bevy of high school kids crowd into the Eritrean 7-eleven on Stockton. Get-ups and gear--flowing curly black hair over dark-gray top, hugging one girl's narrow shoulders. Sparkly something-or-others on the straps of her shoes.

Two lonely bottles on the dark-green top of recylcling can. Wrap-around label in transparent blue--a washier version of the sky, now that it's cleared--and a puffy orange lid. The civilization that can produce such--a focus of commercial energies...

Tejon Ranch, high in the Tehachapi's, soon to become Tejon Village. Luxury homes and a pool--the beautiful barren hills...

Analect 2.569x

9 September 2009. Gray becomes gold. That's how it works, sometimes. Girl from distant lands in lane alongside--the emperors Yao and Shun--her skimpy suit slips sideways, and she swims with breast revealed, a mother in churning strokes...

Face at the window of a bus--for an instant, all that can be known...

Analect 2.568x

3 September. Sun pushing up over the hills at dawn, pool figures in blue-green, watery elixir.

Last night --the Maude Fife Room, early evening, poems, anticipation. Each new reader a unique voice--offerings of worlds--plaintive, instructional, insistent. The sky right after--dark Wheeler trees against cobalt blue, a jumble of tender clouds--up, down, sideways--scattered across the heavens. Cell phone shot records the instant--a read on the universe, at that moment, at that point in time and space. Always so. Walking back to Wurster, the grass route up faculty glade--a hill, basically, covered by a field--and then at the top, through the archway, a new full moon in the east, rising, rising...

Cecil--Dayton--his mother and his father...

Analect 2.667x

2 September 2009. Milky fall light--beginning of the season. Clunk and creak of recycling truck--spanning almost the entire street, silhouette of driver, one finger in the air, making a circling motion, urging us to pass...

Custom and accomodation. Jorge Cafrune on horseback, "...de a caballo," somewhere in the countryside of Argentina. That was his want--to encircle the land--la tierra querida, bringing song. A passionate act so outside of time--fuera de su tiempo--a reliving in the being, just as each note...

And it must pass, in strength, in tenderness...in love...

Analect 2.566x

1 September 2009. Another veiled morning--gray skies. Emory bundled up high on the lifeguard stand, red jacket, scarf, stocking cap--a Santa Claus of the waters...

High school kids collecting in front of Stocton 7-eleven, The El Cerrito High contingent--smiling girl with flowing dark hair, gray tights, glancing up quickly at her diffident companion--all times in one.

Or the painter Prilidiano Pueyredon--son of a general from the days of the Independencia--his studies in Europe--the Barbizon School, Corot--returned to the Pampas as a kind of ethnographer from the Rive Gauche... As with Watteau--a vision of one world becomes another...but where Watteau's tenderness, or the grace of loss? Maybe more the figures in Renoir's the Cabaret of Mm. Anthony--the white table cloth, rumpled apron, pinch of tobacco, stack of cups and plates--rough country shoes and a resting dog...

Always the dance...

Analect 2.565x

29 August 2009. All gray, fall. Back to home base: an old car--venerable--moored on the edge of 7-eleven lot. Lee K. in the distance, hood up, decals attached, bending forward over borrowed Safeway cart, picking rapidly through cans and bottles. In one a hand: a white plastic bag. Streetlight stancheon, sans gull, white globe against the sky.

Smile of lifeguard girl, bundled up behind the glass, open book held in both hands--the name Franz in bold, with wide pale surname just behind.

Messages and meanings. They arrive in trust, with an element of hope. Sometimes sad--and we hope again.

Chanan...

Analect 2.564x

28 August 2009. Myrtle sky, white streamers on pale blue, more heat in store...

The Imperial Valley, 115 in the shade, miles and miles of cantelope, honeydue, no one's home. Aunt Sis and the bar in El Centro--a long, dark affair, even at noon, smell of alchohol from the night before, and the night before that. The growers--close up to a cold beer, a Jim Beam, a whiskey sour. Desert drinks--gripped--to break the spell...

Alfredo Zitarrosa--an Uruguayan prince. His commanding articulation, no matter the song. Dark suit, bien gomado, muy formal. He delivers a copla, hands emphasizing each shift in meaning--a definiteness even when the mood remains lighthearted--as if the price of sorrow were a smile...

"...y no pasen los franceses..."

* * *

(gomina--the old-style hair wax used by men in Argentina and Uruguay. "...y pasen los franceses...," a fragment of a line from the song...)

Analect 2.563x

27 August 2009. Mild California morning sun, even the driver of immense 7-up truck (pulled in just across the street) relaxed, texting away, high up in his cab...

The driveway in Oceanside, Fowles Street, ten years past. These same mornings. San Diego light, soft and filtered, raking the jacaranda. No one there but me. My father's garden, below, in the canyon. His trees a kind of testament-- avocado, fuerte and hass, the meyer lemon and bartlett pear... All the names. Wearing his old shorts, tied with a rope, the worn short-sleeved shirt (Walters Mens Wear) and a towell over his shoulder. The monarch butterfly appears--hovering--and he holds up a finger as improvised landing spot, all the time with eyes on their shadows on the ground... A kind of knowledge, material and irreplaceable...

As with Atilio Reynoso--his estilo viejo, from the plains of Argentina...

Sureño...

* * *

(Sureño--of the southland...)

Analect 2.562x

26 August 2009. Filtered sun--another beginning.

Sitting with Lisa and Michael at small table outside--inquisitive conspirators in a late work by Michelangelo Antonioni--filmed on a California afternoon. Students and students and students. Young man with Asian face holding single canoe paddle as he makes his way across Piedmont with a bevy of new friends. Two girls in shorts, smiling at one other. Another with narrow, pensive face, deepset eyes...

Another beginning...

2.561x

25 August 2009. Gray, like fall. Warm face of lifeguard girl, smiling, coffee in covered paper cup and what looks to be a delicious bagle with cream cheese and lox. Luxuries of seven am...

A glance at email. Misplaced personal belongings--as in tenderness, or affection. Indelible commodity, with clumsy fit in the public realm. Acts of pulling back--families become surnames, relatives facebook accounts, friends a set of initials. Not single ones, as in "m." but doubled, in capital letters, instrumental and efficient, inserted at the end in miniaturized act of defiance. Like the wearing of coat and tie--or the armor of a three-piece suit. Impervious...

Bureaus and bureaucracies, things slipped into drawers, the mystery of the paper process, the rotary file, the spell check...

A man and a horse, in a field. "La yegua es la mejor amiga del hombre... ¿Qué duda cabe?

* * *

("A mare is a man's best friend..." What doubt could there be?)

Analect 2.560x

24 August 2009. Cloudy gray, with hint of sun, early fall. Grizzled man in soft orange ski cap, heavy work clothes, clear wrap-around shades, his gloved hand on diagonal truck lever--raising and lowering the toter cans. Humanizing a landscape of industry, if only for an instant...

Then--sudden sound of crash--heads turn up and down the street. A dark American behemoth with silver grill backs full-force into waiting guard rail of the old Navigator Escrow building. An unintentional attack on capitalism at its very root...

People gather, watch, silent, arms at their sides...

Political theory of the pampas. A chestnut colored mare--yegua--muscles taut, coat distinct, racing ahead. Exhilaration of unboundedness.

"...entre los camalotes de la corriente zaina..."

* * *

("...amidst the floating camalote roots of a horse-brown current..., " Jorge Luís Borges, La Fundación Mítica de Buenos Aires)

Analect 2.559x

21 August 2009. Chilly mist at edge of pool, almost fall. Later--sun pushing through gray. Mo with his back turned, behind 7-eleven counter, stacking cartons of smokes. The order of commerce. Yesterday--a basket of figs--dark velvet blacks, tiny gold-red seeds within.

"I want to be a farmer," the girl, Valerie, in produce aisle, El Cerrito Natural Foods. She leads me to the tofu case, smiling--"this one is really good"-- the jalapeño smoked from Tofu Yu. And who could refuse?

The ways of the world, as of old. Two Tahitian maidens, side by side. Their veiled eyes averted--in modesty and dream. Gauguin's carved wooden platter of crimson-orange fruit, a pink bouquet. Single pale earing--a bit of coral.

From the sea, as are we all...

Analect 2.558x

20 August 2009. Chill bay winds, gray skies. Empty lanes in pool as early swimmers scurry to the changing rooms. Ripply black lines along the bottom...

Or another kind of pool--"en la pila del bautismo." Words from songs, taking on renewed meaning each time they're remembered, or in the singing. Atahualpa's version--el canto del viento. Hilachitas--threads of song, picked up by the wind from all over the land--cerros, montes, ríos--carried up into the heavens, then let go again, one by one, to be gathered by those who listen...

Analect 2.557x

19 August 2009. Beautiful gray morning, scant car or two up and down San Pablo, dawn. Studio light, early. Reading of work in the California woods...a set of tools laid out just so on open ground. Sabina. Draw knife, axe, branch cutter, slege--tools for labor of an intensive sort, carried on in solitude. Solitude and sweat, no doubt--the single ladder moved from spot to spot, the domestic squabbles and re-sitings, new layers of granite skirt to accomodate--all in the lived moment, later in thought. Unable to speak for months after, as if to hide--but no, a matter of patient waiting, till all comes pouring forth...

In one sweep, like Gauguin's wave on the Tahitian beach, long ago--lithe figures on horseback, another sort of accomodation--beauty in the fit.

Building...always building...

Analect 2.556x

18 August 2009. Gray morning. Eritrean youth in Stockton Avenue 7-eleven, behind the counter, just before eight. "A small coffee?" His slight smile, and then, after several weeks of visits, a subtle thumbs up as well. "Have a good morning."

Today--desert sands, a camel by request. Taking a close look--this ungainly lass. But the length of bone, and in-pulled hide, back legs splayed wide over padded feet. Narrow ridgebone of back line, wobbly knees. But wait until she walks, or begins to run. Kneeling, even. The essence of a certain kind grace. Forelegs tucked under chest and neck, head up, outstretched in eager gesture. All attentive. Then she rises. Hump up first, forelegs follow, a few gingerly steps. This nimble balancing...

As forever...

Analect 2.555x

17 August 2009. Mid-afternoon, flash of Oceanside on a summer's day. Salt breeze, warm sand, glittery sea. Endless wind-tossed waves, rolling endlessly in... Pepe (now this a long time back)--mop of blond hair, surfer's build, leaning forward over worn guitar--the narrow Spanish wood a pathway to other places, other times.

Infallible, maybe--like the palm-fronds plaited into beach hats--tropical isle--or blocks of whitish parrafin scraped across width of polyurethane board, peppery rick-rack for a better grip. Yes, power of the toes, turning left off the face of smooth green wave--five feet and glassy--powered higher and higher by some current unknown...

Analect.2 554x

14 August 2009. Late summer, cool morning. Pool girl in ski cap girl slides open office window, smiling. Three swimmers, under water, chests up, fins, dolphin surge...

Insistent and unexpected... A milonga campera, played en homenaje... Family photos in faded black and white--a little girl and her father together on a bike, she sits just in front, between his arms. Group of figures in front of a truck, leaning back on the hood, arms akimbo, their sons piled on just behind. A trio of men, standing straight, before heavy burlap bags of Argentine wheat, stacked high over their heads...

"...a vos Viejo, que hace 7 años te fuiste para el silencio, pero tus consejos son palabras que orientan mi vida a cada día. Te mando esta canción que siempre cantabas y tocabas tan lindo, 'Gracias Benjamín Buisi por haber sido mi Papá.' "

* * *

"...to you, Viejo (old man, always said with a combination of respect, endearment and just a touch of the younger man's need to challenge) it's now 7 years since you left for the Silence, but each day your words of advice continue to orient my life. I send you this song, the one that you used to sing and play so nicely. 'Thank you Benjamin Buisi for having been my father.' "

Analect 2.553x

13 August 2009. Golden sky, cool blue green pool. Lithe figure next door, tiny red toes...

Atilio Reynoso--a triunfo (my transcription in progress):

Mi caballo atado
alla relinchando, 'lla relinchando
Dejelo que relinche
yo estoy cansando, yo estoy cansando...

Este es el triunfo, triunfo
de las mujeres, de las mujeres
Que bonito lo vayan
cuando ellas quieren, cuando ellas quieren...

Una gallina vaya
y un gallo vero
Son las primeras etapas
de un pueblo nuevo...

Este es el triunfo, triunfo
cantar de mi alma, cantar de mi alma
Hacia más dulce la muerte
que la vida amarga...

* * *

My horse is tied up
neighing and neighing
So let him neigh,
I'm resting...

This the triunfo, the triunfo
about all women, about the women
How nicely it goes
when they wish it, when they wish it...

A chicken makes her way
and a real rooster
They're the first steps
towards a new pueblo...

This is a triunfo, a triunfo
the song of my soul, the song of my soul
where death becomes more sweet
than this bitter life...

Analect 2.552x

12 August 2009. Sunny, maybe warm. Broken clouds, shimmering pool...

Alfredo Zitarrosa... El chogüí--celestino común--the sayaca tanager, from the litoral... los ríos del Uruguay...

"Habita generalmente los matorrales, muy rara vez están en el piso. El nido lo construyen con mucha prolijidad en las ramas más altas de los árboles, con palitos entrelazados y hojitas secas. La parte interna tiene líquenes y pastos finos recubiertos de musgos. Se los encuentra en parejas o pequeñas bandadas. Al comienzo de la primavera se juntan con las otras aves que migran."

Al compadre Juan Miguel
no le pagan el jornal,
y aunque no haiga de comer
lo mesmo, hay que trabajar
Pobre compadre Juan Miguel
la vida le ha toca'o...

(from the beginning of a chamarrita--Coplas al compadre Juan Miguel)
* * *
(Inhabits brushland primarily, very rarely seen on the ground. They construct their nests with great elaboration in the highest branches of the trees, made with interlaced twigs and dry leaves. The interiors have lichens and fine grasses covered with moss. Encountered in pairs or small flocks. At the beginning of spring they join together with other migratory birds...)

To my compadre Juan Miguel
they don't pay him his daily wage,
and even though there's nothing to eat
all the same, you have to work
To my compadre Juan Miguel
Life has given him a knock...

Analect 2.551x

11 August 2009. Gray skies, even all across...

Coplas de carnaval--Tilcara, Salta, in the far northwest of Argentina. Verses at the time of Carnaval. A woman's voice, chanting. Steady beating of a drum...

Solita soy en el mundo
solita como el cardón
de noche me da la luna
media' me pega el sol...

El carnaval es un río
y andamos mojando la vida
los que seguimos creyendo
que la tristeza se olvida...

La naranja nació verde
el tiempo la maduró...
mi corazón nació libre
y el tuyo lo cautivó...

Las sabanas de mi cama
toda la noche las lavo
con lagrimas de mis ojos
al ver que me has olvidado...

Si me querés dímelo
y si no, dame veneno
que yo prefiero la muerte
que verte en brazos ajenos...

La pena y la que no pena
toda es pena para mi
Ayer penaba por verte
hoy pena' te vi...

* * *

I am all alone in the world
all alone like a cactus plant
in the night, lit by the moon
in the day, beaten by the sun...

Carnaval is like a river
we go along, getting our lives wet
those of us who continue believing
that sorrow can be forgotten...

The orange was born green
time made her ripe
my heart was born free
and yours made her a captive...

The sheets of my bed
all night long I soak them
with the tears from my eyes
on seeing that you have forgotten me...

If you do love me, tell me so
and if not, then give me poison
for I prefer death
to seeing you in the arms of another...

Pain and even the which isn't pain
all is pain for me
yesterday, I was paining to see you
and today, pained that I did...

Analect 2.550x

10 August 2009. Sun, warm day. Blue green pool, churners...

Piedra y camino--Atahualp Yupanqui. Born Héctor Roberto Chavero, in Pergamino, a railway town on the open plains of the Provincia de Buenos Aires... His father had lived as a gaucho, but took a job with the railroad for the security of his new family; they moved often from stationhouse to stationhouse, across the llanura...

"Mi padre era poco amigo de explicaciones. Pienso que tal vez prefería enfrentarse al paisaje, a los hombres, a las cosas que pueden ayudar a entender la vida, para que poco a poco yo sacara mis propias conclusiones. Tenía, sí, el buen tacto de no ofrecerme espectáculos. Muchas veces, con una mirada o una palabra, me ordenaba alejarme de gentes que él no consideraba oportunas o dignas para mis ojos... Me cuidaba sin que yo me percatara. Jamás tuve mejor baquiano que mi padre, en la pampa y en la vida." (El canto del viento)

* * *

(My father was little friend of explanations. I think that he preferred to confront the landscape, people, the things that help one understand life, in order that little by little I might draw my own conclusions. Yes, he had the good tact not to show me vulgaritiers. Many the time, with a glance or a word, he would order me to distance myself from the types that he didn't consider worthwhile or dignified enough for my eyes... He looked out for me without my noticing. I never had a better guide than my father, on the pampa or in life...)

(The Song of the Wind)

Analect 2.549x

7 August 2009. Linda mañana. Open skies to the east, shimmering gold on blue.

An older woman with aluminum cane just to my side in the coffee line, reaches across my wrist to a box filled with bright crimson foil-wrapped chocolates. I approve of her choice. Then she, in a soft and very British English: "I'm not supposed to. I'm diabetic, you know. But I'll die happy..." Again reaching, to almost touch my arm...

"...where the pleasures are few." Lines from a song--Merle Travis, at night, in his car somewhere in LA, sitting under a streetlamp, lady friend alongside--scribbling out the lines to a song...

Or the Argentine, father and daughter together on a stage. His enveloping presence--her wonderfully almost-innocent confidence. To make a place for this in the world...

Analect 2.548x

6 August 2009. Pearl clouds across the sky, opening onto blue-green pool...

Three figures, compañeros... los árboles de la provincia de Santa Fé...

Orlando Vera Cruz...singing the words to a poem...

Y mi amigo es el hombre entre los hombres.
Él y la rosa son lo mismo;
él y la hierba cuando vuelve,
a pesar del cuchillo...

* * *

And my friend is a man among men.
He and the rose are the same;
he and the grass when it returns,
the grass despite the blade that cuts...

(from the poem Cárcel, by José Pedroni)

Analect 2.547x

Pulling out of 7-eleven--latino tradesman in polished black double-cab open-backed truck, the one with the braided silver trim--muy elegante--gives a wave through tinted glass. Glimpse of wide smile, fleeting...

Atilio Reynoso--always a kind of return. Again, un estilo viejo, played in open sixths, the melody shifting from above to below, and back again. But what do I know of this--a sound discovered, really. Happened upon. Fields of grass--all the words--pajonal, gramilla, pastillo--yuyos, cardón-- carrizo de las pampas...

El viento estremece...

The music as well...

* * *

(El viento estremece... The wind makes tremble...)

Analect2.546x

4 August 2009. Almost sun, gray and blue. Smiling woman in pool, arc of even teeth in an ancient Chinese face. Continuities...

Coya, people of the far northwest, spread of Inca lands up and down the Andean chain, including the Argentine provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán. Face of Garcilaso de la Vega--El Inca Garcilaso--his narrow, arched Castilian nose, high forehead, pointed features--that single slice of white collar above the Spanish black... His mother an Inca princess...

Or Santiago del Estero, where a dignified older woman stands before a microphone with caja drum, her hair a gray blond, preparing to sing. Outdoors, sound of people's voices, unseen, children too. A call of encouragement from someone in the crowd: "Bravo, bravo Bajia..." Aware of all this, yet very much in her own realm. A time of song, a lifetime...

Una vidala...

Analects 2.545x

2 August 2009. Autumn approaching. Yesterday--dear Gabryela's birthday, Warszawa. Pierwszy Sierpien´--day of the powstanie, the Warsaw Uprising, from a quarter of a century before.

As with the palm--a rebirth. Rosita Quiroga, seated against a backdrop of empty wooden chairs--Thonet, Loos, Mitteleuropa... but here it's Puente Alsina, and the old Buenos Aires--Riachuelo, La Boca... "Donde está mi barrio--mi cuna querida...?"

"...nuestros vecinos eran los Quinquela Martín. Cantaba milongas, estilos, zambas, vidalas... Después me incliné al tango--pero el tango arrebalero..." "Y quantos años tiene?" "Pero ché, me estas embromando... Soy tan vieja como la biblia... Pero si, puedo cantar este tango..."

Pensamientos insoslayabales...


* * *

"My neighborhood--where is it--my cradle, the one I love...?"

"Our neighbors were the family of (painter) Quinquela Martín. I was singing milongas, estilos, zambas, vidalas. Afterwards I was drawn to the tango--but the tango arrebalera (tango of the outer districts, the rough periphery). "And how old are you now?" "but che, you're joking with me. I'm as old as the Bible... But yes, I can still sing this tango..."

Thoughts, unavoidable...