Analect 2.615x

20 November 2009. Clear to east, high storm cloud wall coming in from the west...

Cold November mornings, closely trimmed head of Eritrean man behind counter in 7-eleven--shades of brown and gray. An immigrant's smile. School kids piling off city bus--arriving from who knows where...

A backyard garden--personal victories of a sort. Rutabega and chard, millet, a few Idaho potatoes. Miniscule harvest in the blowing rain...

Analect 2.614x

14 November 2009. Late fall, red leaves--colors of the earth, worn round the arm... Adam, adamah...

A truth in sadness--the bending bow. Judgments and conclusions of human kind--with all reasons invented after the fact. The world as plan. But no...becoming instead one grand river of delight--moments of challenge, love, tenderness--the feel of a cheek, a mother's breath. Two young birds, side by side, beginning anew...

Ongoing...

Analect 2.613x

18 November 2009. Awakening to clear skies, after yesterday's drizzly rain. A few cold nights in the woods--manzanita and madrone, white pine, fir. Home fires in a black cast iron stove, meandering flame through tempered glass. "Water is more beautiful than fire..." An assertion, even as we sit transfixed by the warmth, the snakey light... Outside--the Leonids, sparse... The Pleiades...

En route--a market in Cloverdale, hidden away on a frontage road. Spanish surname over the door, tall man with awkward teeth standing just in front, conversing with a friend. Their postures--from afar. Music inside--corridos--and a young girl at rotating counter, her shoulders bare, bright eyes...

Leaving for home: wild turkey in brush at side of cabin road--a mother and two offspring--their careful one-after-the-other steps, backward glances, disappearing in the gray rain...

Analect2.612x

12 November 2009. Clear with bright sun. Emery high on his stand, black balaclava pulled snug--an ageing terrorist of the lifeguard line.

Gaucho indumentaria. A history of clothing--but, of course, it's more than that. The tellingness of gesture--la chinita, for instance--homespun skirt at once graceful and plain, wrapped around her strong waist--opposite of stage-attire elegance. Long to the ankles, feet turned out with a hint of charming uncertainty. Flat on the ground--cloth alpargatas--hard to draw in just their plainness. Two braids and maybe a flower...

For the chango--as with the birds. The male plumage. What's downhome here is the hair--more front-to-back than up and down. A kind of connected solidity that belies the fanciness. Also something slightly rumpled as to the hat--worn true.

Cosas así...

Analect 2.611x

11 November 2009. Pale sun against mantle of gray, pushing through.

Choice and resolve. A wandering line, figures emerging as if from two pieces of cloth--held in the hand, released in the air. Their separation a measure of commitment--as if the bekoning were all.

The zamacueca, first danced in Lima, in 1824--la liberación, Gral. San Martín. "Su denominación como 'zamba' se aplicaba a las mestizas descendientes de indio y negra (o vice versa). La danza esta diseñada para seducir a las zambas, y de alli su nombre, tanto en Perú como en la Argentina."

Agitando Pañuelos. "...bailando esta zamba repiqueteadita..."

Analect 2.610x

10 November 2009. Half blue sky, bundled guard, change...

La firmeza, danza de galanteo... A dance of courtship, the two figures separate and independent throughout...

Moving through their steps with a poignant sureness, bending bough...

* * *

Coreografía:

1. Cruz
2. Vuelta
3. Giro (de espaldas)
4. Primer paseo: hacia la izquierda de varón
5. Segundo paseo
6. Tercer paseo
7. Cuarto paseo: apoyo de codos
8. Retroceso: con la mano izquierda en el oído
9. Avance y retroceso: con los dedos índice y mayor de la mano derecha en la cabeza
10. Avance y retroceso: en el 2ndo compas, las manos en el hombro
11. Avance y abrazo: el hombre intenta abrazarla a la mujer y ésta se agacha
12. Avance y abrazo: hacen lo mismo; en el 4to compas, el hombre le tira un beso a la mujer
13. Zapateo y zarandeo: el zarandeo se realiza con gestos de negación y de vergúenza
14. Media vuelta
15. Giro final

Analect 2.609x

9 November 2009. Cool November morning, all nines.

Margot and Daniella, a birthday gathering, on a hillside at the edge of a great park. Circle of trees along the ridge line, just behind another circle of gathered flowers and boughs. An offering--heather and rosemary, California sage. Other young people, and a mother with two bright children. Talk of Portland, a French teacher, the rain...

One of the younger women with spoon in hand, carefully ladelling chunky apple sauce into one of the children's bowls. Slow and precise movements of her hands--just so. As if all the care in the world...

Analect 2.608x

6 November 2009. Ying at pool window, notebook of college studies. Elbow arms of swimmers, back and forth, hint of sun...

Story of a puma in the Oregon landscape--Thalia, near the Dalles. "All orchards and fields." Her brothers wouldn't believe her till they saw the size of the tracks. Big smile, both arms in the air, straight up, a contemporary hooray...

Or Christine, telling of musicians in the Austrian country towns--local folk, each person involved. "You don't buy a drum, you go to the man who will make you one; he makes the other instruments, too..."

Carmencita, filmed with el Cachafaz, mysterious bit of footage--unique, from years past. Then, dancing again, at ninety-five...

Derrick and Lisette... Adiós, arrabal...

Analect 2.607x

5 November 2009. To the northeast, island clouds--St. Thomas and St. Lucia...speckled and spotted, mandrake root...

A man alone, heavy wool on an ancient plain, his hands bound in iron, head down, eyes inward--contemplating--no, just first imagining--the long-term history of a noble refusal--in this case his own. To reclaim a kind of justice, yes, great horned owl of the Dakotas, prairie wind, also his own...

(for Leonard Peltier)

Analect 2.606x

4 November 2009. The gray skies...

And Tennessee Ernie Ford, with all his polished eagerness--the closely-trimmed moustache and those artfully wobbly teeth--sitting onstage together with Odetta, her presence, also artful in her own way--singing Woody Guthrie songs--the apple pickers' union in the Garden of Eden. A feigned spontaneity--or something more? Not that it matters, really, when they're so clearly enjoying each other's company... And the chance to do again what they truly love...

Analect 2.605x

3 November 2009. Early pool, blue sky, golden jet sliver on long diagonal, upwards...

The claims of Corot. A woman reading in the landscape, by the side of a modest French pond. Barbizon School... Hand to cheek, book in lap, and in the distance, a boatman, partly hidden by rushes at water's edge. Here made wide, the horizon out of Homer or Inness, perhaps--a seafarer--the Coming Storm...

That expanse, a patrimony...

Analect2.604x

2 November 2009. Gauguin morning, two figures at pool, rounded forms, dipping, smiling...

"Her Name was Vairaumati," and so the question remains--Vairaumati then, Vairaumati now, if only for this glancing moment, in the line of a shoulder, a flower, a young breast. Turned to the side, after the Pharoahs' wives, on dark blue cloth...Prints of flowers--frond and swirl... White petals...

The sea...

Analect2.603x

30 October 2009. Morning sun, clear and bright--not yet that late autumn mist.

Hablando de puchero y calabazas--Victoria arrives a little late, with cloth covered bowl of home-made empanadas--dulce de membrillo, quince jam--and a pitcher of tereré...that hot-summer variant of yerba maté... Nos encuentra cantando, our first pass at Tierra Querida...

And visiting from New York, Heather's grandmother, Edith, who appears with a spry smile at the classroom door...

Then: a black and white photograph of California land--darkly shadowed foreground with rolling hills, two rounded granite boulders, and a scattering of live oaks... where also appearing, mysteriously, at the far right--a small and convincingly incongruous rider on a rearing horse--borrowed, no doubt, from some long-forgotten yerra down Uruguay way...

Face of don Ata--a merging of worlds...

Analects 2.602x

29 October 2009. Face peering up from pool, "This lane's free..." Christina's voice...

Mate pava on office floor--small bright metal kettle with narrow handle, balanced precariously on plug-in hotplate, a little water spilling on brown linoleum, our version of the outdoors. Victoria's grandmother, in the countryside near Luján... Enlaces...

Or Melissa, a few minutes later, sitting with Alice. "Do you think Mansilla (she uses the traditional soft elle, not the raspy Argentine pronunciation) actually lived the way he writes?"

To ask these questions, for the first time...

Analect 2.601x

28 October 2009. Clear and cold, wind raking pool, guards huddled under laters of red. Ying's smile...

Vitello Abalos, bailando una zamba con Elvirita, just two years back. Born in 1922, "estrenando sus primeros 'pantalones largos' como miembro del conjunto de Los Hermanos Ábalos..." who first recorded Nostalgias Santiaguenas in 1939...

Pañuelo de la gracia, corazón de la vida...

Analect 2.600x

27 October 2009. Brisk wind on pool deck, small penants horizontal, cirrus clouds, just a few...

With Chugo again, somewhere in the northwest of Argentina. Breakfast with the locals, a reprise of Cezanne, Fanta-sipping cardplayers at small tables, the non-descript landscape calendar high on tan wall, digital tv monitor on old wooden stand... A single wire providing the horizon...

Evidence of travel--time, space, sympathy...

Analect 2.599x

26 October 2009. Sunlight slicing through blue-green pool. Vigorous types in two-piece suits, flip turns... Swim coach on deck, head down, sorting through cell-phone mail...

The modern age. Le plus sa çhange... Payo Solá, seated, many years ago, somewhere in provincial Salta, his narrow fingers and dark lapels, bandoneón pulled wide across his knees. Flaring hair, also from another age--both wild and controlled, as with Toscha or Cavafy... An island personage, yes, stranded on the coast. Alexandria, perhaps--another backwater town--theodolite of the past...

Analect 2.598x

23 October 2009. Natasha curled in easy chair, lamplight. Early sun through white cotton curtains...

Of people and birds. A white-crowned sparrow, on a narrow branch. Gorrión, chingolo. Rufous-collared, too. A small and lively spirit, building it's nest "round farms and cities."

"...such a good-looking wee bird..."

Analect 2.597x

22 October 2009. Solano before dawn--yellow lamps in the mist.

Atahualpa Yupanqui as a young man, seated, in front of four accompanying musicians, each dressed in white, guitars at the ready. His presence the focus. Early recordings, in 1936, for a company that distributes yerba mate... Recital Indígena por Radio Fenix... Caminito del Indio (Odeon Mangruyo)

Preguntas sin respuesta...

Analect2.596x

21 October 2009. Cool and gray, autumn.

Ying behind the sliding window of pool booth, page of science under incandescent lamp. Lifts her head, smiling.

"I watched you grow up. In a chrysalis, at the old pool...". Open look. "You know, what the butterfly's in before it becomes a butterfly..." Another smile...

Silver light on October waves, reflected on wide low-tide sands. Two figures walking on the beach below, in the distance--one of them in orange. Slight breeze. A woman's weathered face appears at top of stairs--the bather.

Faces and lives...

Analect 2.595x

16 October 2009. Beautiful sun...

October light, Pacific swell. A summer's morning, I don't know when. Gray at dawn, tucked up in hooded sweatshirt, Schwinn, board under one arm, ocean bound... Down Alberta Street hill, over to Wisconsin, across Hill Street, the tracks... First glimpse of morning's waves--about three feet, breaking glassy, gray-green...

Ojalá...

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...