Analect 2.716x

11 May 2010. Sun again, chilly dark... Nicola curled alongside, minor purrs...

Nikolai Rostov, camped in an Austrian wood... Tall horse with injured hoof, and a purse with gold coins--old and new...

Sebastopol, Russian family by the sea. Galich--his home town...

A version of Oceanside...

Analect 2.715x

10 May 2010. Gray clouds, scatter of rain on hatchback glass...

A Russian officer, as drawn by his own hand-- Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Geroj Nashego Vremeni. Figure of Pechorin--the "superfluous man," an existential character avante la lettre.

And Prince Andrei...? His irritability. Razdrazhenie, a kind of impulsive dissatisfaction with the world as is. Dreams of a hero set against bedrock of shame. Pozor. The loss of 40,000 men--Austria's folly--and for Kutuzov, the greatest challenge...

A century hence (my father, quoting Lenin): "Freedom is the recognition of necessity..."

Analect 2.714x

7 May 2010. Workaround Analect--after the mac's internet demise. A clear and sunny morning, nonetheless. Squirrels delighted on the appearance of their peanut supply--as are the towhees, with small pieces of last week's challah. Smaller birds at feeder, too. On Monterey pine...

Last night's event--music and art, with a luxurious table of food. Quietly good moods all around... Mauricio, with guitar in hand, and David's arrival, after 9--with violin, played in the old way--a pure and responsive evocation...

Late night streets, 1:30 am--young couple crossing Oxford towards campus--the girl with small bag of chips in her right hand...

Vperyod...

Analect 2.713x

6 May 2010. Bright morning after gloomy afternoon. But is any afternoon truly gloomy? Lermontov, for example--po ugryumomu lyesu--through a dark woods...

As with Auden, in the downtown apartment--Manhattan--a mad exile, repository of wisdom... Brimming...

Social history of the cigarette--in it's commercial form. Of the Russian kind--papirosy--tabac set off by a paper tube, squeezed between thumb and first finger, first in one direction then the other--a kind of Volga filter. Truck driver's head, leaning out window of cab, on a Siberian road, in a storm...papiros...

Or Galich (an acronymn)...scene at table, younger people close around, listening, smiling at his words...

Becomes a poem...

Analect 2.712x

5 May 2010. Drawing only today.

Analect 2.711x

May 4, 2010. Glorious days, early May... We moved in at just this time--in 1976. Miramar, "behold the sea..."

Aleksandr Galich, as a younger man. A playwright, and recognized figure in Soviet letters, who in the late 1950s found himself writing and performing his own songs... Something opened, memories included--often of a darker kind--and the need to speak. Matroskaya Tishina--Sailor's Dusk--banned for Galich's "distorted view of Jews in the Great Patriotic War..."

But why go there? His songs, passed by magnitizdat, from hand to hand...

Video of a performance, after his exile, filmed in Norway in 1971--he greets the audience a in tentative English. Aleksandr Ginzburg. The song-- Ya vernus'--I will return...

* * *

Image of his burial place--the Russian cross, the Russian name...

Analect2.710x

3 May 2010. Warm sun, early. Filtered light though camphor leaves. One low-flying crow swooping down the street, under the canopy...

Everyone's stories. In this case, Sergei Nikitin, with his white hair, kindly voice, holding forth to an audience of Muskovites--their attentive and intelligent faces--almost self-consciously so--as he tells of his mother lifting him up as a little boy, standing him on the wardrobe so that he can hear a song by Aleksandr Galich--the one being played by their neighbor just over the partition. (I think this was the gist.) His mother's face, just below, weeping...

Speaking in a quiet, even pensive way. To share, to relive...



* * *

And a recording of Galich singing...

Analect 2.709x

30 April 2010. Backyard, early. Green ivy leaves in beginning sun... Nicola, insistent, darting down the stairs, rounding corner into kitchen, heading for back door...

Or, a scene from Zhuravli--The Cranes Are Flying (1958)--the score in 12/8, for that beautifully ponderous Russian touch... Paired (in my imagination) with Mark Bernes again (he later recorded his own version of the song). Still lost in Tri Goda Ty Mne Snilas' (For Three Years I've Dreamed of You)...

A younger man, in an earlier time...

Analect 2.708xs

29 April 2010. This morning--an empty table where my copyshop computer once sat. Dust and scratches, Plan B...

But what is Plan B?

Listening to a Mark Bernes song, seat by the window, view onto Solano. The year is 1946, from the film, Bolshaya Zhizn II (A Great Life). The song-- Tri Goda Ty Mne Snilas'--Three Years I've Dreamed of You. Bernes face filling the screen--cap tucked back on his head, simple guitar just behind. A Soviet everyman, but with thoughtful face... "I keep my dream of you..." Minor chords, hinting at the major, something brighter, then returning...

Both strength and tenderness...

* * *

For the song itself: Три Года Ты Мне Силась

Analect 2.707x

28 April 2010. Sudden shower at dawn, steady downpour--then sun...

White helmet of construction worker, far across the street, his gray sweatshirt with touch of red ochre, heading up Solano, 7-eleven bag in right hand...

An older woman from the Ukraine. Posture universal? Pulled into her chair, shoulders of dark coat molded to her own. Becoming noticeable--the strength of her arms and wrists. Somewhere the meaning--and result--of a lifetime of labor. Set against filigree curtain--a floral print with folk motif, the swirled curves of a dusty Soviet-era drafting template, even the tassles below no more than one thin layer of ink...

Shum vremini... The sound of time...

Analect 2.706x

27 April 2010. Rain, insistent. Umbrellas and frowns...

Nikolai Bolkonsky returns to Lisye Gory with his new wife, Liza, who is expecting... Encounter of Liza and Princess Marya... "who although they've met only briefly, one time, at the wedding, now immediately clasp each others hands...and burst into tears." Hands abandoned, for a moment, then rejoined, again with tears. Prince Nikolai frowns... Entire universe in one moment of feeling...

An Odessa street. Na Deribasovskoj. Pelican's view. The Russian sailor and his girl, "like a proud Grechanka," or so goes the song. The shepherd, without his flock, and a woman from the past, Ottoman times, cloistered in the ways of the Prophet. The Pontus even before...

Mariupol, Odessos, Tira...

Analect 2.705x

26 April 2010. Early, April light. Nicola heading up bed, step by step, curling into her preferred position, high on my chest.

And, of course, Vasya-Shmaravoz. Na Deribasovskoj Otkrylasya Pivnaya (On Deribasovskoj There Opened Up a Bar), a song from the late 1920s. Author unknown--and there are many variants. The one here, recorded with appropriately louche Soviet-era backup band, each instrument sliding in almost unannounced, adding a subtle but necessary touch of the declassé. Which was, after all, the whole point...

Also: an Odessa "anekdot"... (The great cities announce their radio broadcasts...)

Attention! Moscow speaking!
Warning! Here speaks Kiev! (in Ukrainian)
Achtung! Hier sprecht Berlin!
Sha! Odessa needs to say a few words...

* * *



In the original:

Внимание! Говорит Москва!
Увага! Говорэ Кыив!
Ахтунг! Хир шприхт Берлин!….
Ша! Одесса имеет сказать пару слов!

And, naturally, the song itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdkFes0Guwg. To the tune of El Choclo, an Argentine tango...

Analect 2.704x

23 April 2010. Sunny April day, arms churning at pool...

And why so obsessed by a song? Shalandy Polnie Kefali, voice of Mark Bernes. But something else as well--harder to pinpoint--the Russian-ness of the melody line--the particular ups and downs in a sequence of tones. Having to do with the shifting tones in a landscape--an Odessa sky...

Here, a zaftig lady, sitting alongside. My Russian instructor (this I'm inventing), in long dress, dark shawl with amber broach. Her smile--also a set of shifting tones. And why not? She comes from there...as do we all...

Analect 2.703x

22 April 2010. Open lane, wavery lines deep below...

Cheremukha--the bird-cherry tree--as in Chekhov--or Mark Bernes, blooming over an Odessa fountain...

And the Ryabina--also in an old song. Tyonkaya Ryabina--the Slender Mountan Ash, longing for her oak tree across the way... To cross the river, and press him close amidst her branches...

Lands with horses...to travel over a long distance. Rolling fields and wind...

Analect 2.702x

21 April 2010. Gray morning, some rain... Old Chinese pines off Moeser--now gone...

Mark Bernes, his strong face, close cropped Soviet hair, brushed down a little over the forehead. Singing to a Russian woman, blond, just alongside--the camera holds on her impassive face, questioning eyes... Shalandy polnye kefali... The Black Sea skiffs are filled with gray mullet... Much too prosaic in English, where the Russian has all the lilt that arrives with years of inhabiting and enjoying a particular place. Lore of Odessa...the shifting tones...

Ya vam ne skazhu za vsyu Odessu
Vsya Odessa ochen' velika (here the tone modulates up a half step)
No i Moldavanka u Peresyp' (back to the minor)
Obozhayut Kostyu-moryaka... (and then the major again...)

I won't tell to you about all Odessa
For all of Odessa is surely very grand
But in the Moldavanka and Peresyp'
All adore Kostya the fisherman...


* * *

(Shalandy with Mark Bernes singing, 1939)

Analect 2.701x

20 April 2010. Gray clouds, racing high. Rain though the night...

Struggling drawing--that's how it is, sometimes. Too many glimpses of too many figures from the past. Aunt Ruth for one--but more on my mother's frame. Here--girl at edge of screen in Lyubimy Gorod, at the very end of the song... Turning away, thoughts of what's to come...

Mark Bernes--his jaunty face, at the piano, filmed in 1939--singing of home...

* * *

Tone of the different stanzas. First, in the voice of a crooner--major-minor, with an American lilt. The second, a Russian folk march--launching in, even and upbeat, ending on lyric note. The third--positive and unforgettable 2/4 bounce--the folk march with even fuller spirit--again resolving into slower, more lyrical, sadder, maybe even darker, finale...

Lyubimy Gorod.

Analect 2.700

19 April 2010. Slow takeoff for local aviation--Nicola up on her back legs, extra long stretch at front door. Open, please... Natasha's approach--more slinky, the lovely fur ball slipping down back stairs, darting into side room, waiting...

Requirements and requests. The stuff of life--Smuglyanka--infill runs and trills. Schematic score for the garmon--Russian accordion--tiny numbers below each note. The mystery of where each finger goes...

Girl's face, the Bravo cafe, Fergana, Eastern Uzbekistan. Ancient mountain town high in the Fergana valley, original source of the great Chinese horses--as given form in T'ang dynasty pottery, where they "resemble the animals on the golden medal of Eucratide, King of Bactria..."

Kara Darya...

* * *

(Note: Smuglianka Moldavanka--the name of the song from smuglij--Russian for dusky. And Moldavanka--the Jewish Quarter in old Odessa (later the setting for Isaac Babel's stories.) And so, a Fergana girl, whose snapshot is labelled "Ax, Smuglianka Moldavanka." The Kara Darya--Black River...flowing though that same valley...) 2.700x

Analect 2.699x

16 April 2010. Nicola heading up the bed at dawn, her small head and delicate ears, leaned towards my own... Rapprochement...

As with Natalia, yesterday evening, singing Smuglianka, the partisan song with Ukrainian roots. Pure liveliness of each line, an even start, quickly building. She's inadvertantly demanding--no way to slow down here--no "wait for me's." You're in it or you're not, dancing with a country girl in the Podole, flaring skirt, flashing eyes... The maple tree--memory of something brilliant and vast...

Narrow paths, disappearing into the marshes...

Analect 2.698x

15 April 2010. Quiet spring sun, almost to those mornings in early May when the world feels entirely remade...

"Here the birds don't sing
The trees don't grow
And only ourselves, shoulder to shoulder
Rooted here on this ground..."

Okudzhava's voice, almost tender--a song from the war, twice distant now. Story told, and retold...

"Someday we'll remember this
And will not believe it
But for now we need a single victory
One for all--
For less we will not stand..."

Photograph, for many years on bedroom wall, in Oceanside--from a friend of my parents, made somewhere in Italy, also during the war. A group of children together in a doorway--one of them holding a crust to his mouth. Written below, in pencil-- "Bread for one..."

To learn these truths...

* * *

(The scene here, again, from "V Boj Idut Odni Stariki," (Only Old Men Are Going to Battle). Hillside, in silhouette--handing out potatoes to gathered children. Filmed in 1973. For the song, Okudzhava's voice: Десятый наш десантный батальон

Analect 2.697x

14 April 2010. Late, late. Bucket bath in back yard--water over head and shoulders in open air... A la Russe (except that the water's not freezing, and it's not mid-winter...)

Smuglianka-Moldavanka. How much better the words look in cyrillic--where the "smug" disappears entirely. A partisan song, as sung here in Soviet film of a certain vintage (1972--Leonid Bukov: "V Boj Idut Odni Stariki.") Man and woman at unseen table, Red Army, musicians (balaika, accordions, a drum and guitar) launching in, spirited director in cossack shirt, expressive gestures (again a la Russe). She turns her head towards him--face in full profile for a moment, then back and slightly down--a touching mix of formality and modesty...

Entire spirit of song as counterpoint...

* * *

As R.B. Kitaj once put it, "Art needs a job to do..."

Analect 2.696x

13 April 2010. Birds calling at dawn, over Solano, Javed's gulls...

To fed the poor, the animal kind. A brace of squirrels, tohee and jay. Their box of seeds, peanuts scattered under lemon tree, wobbly water bowl. Family...

Or three women, small boat, in a Russian woods. Auden's line. Or Okudzhava's--On the Smolensk Road. "Po Smolenskoj doroge--lesá, lesá, lesá..."

The terrible reach of history simply won't let go. Gaby wrote me this morning of someone who died on that plane--"a very very dear friend of mine. I still can't believe it..."

How close we were to all of this, and at the same time, how far...

Analect 2.695x

12 April 2010. Slanting sheets of rain, gray skies, dimpled pool...

Catalina Island, maybe 1955. Girl in home-made summer dress, sitting on stucco parapet. Her posture almost formal--the inheritance of a day when women wore gloves--but veering gently here into the world of thin-strapped sandals and higher hems. Holding in her lap a straw hat--somehow then the rage, with each strand of weave extending out beyond the rim... We never knew quite what to do with them--their floppy and almost useless insistence. More a reflection of the I than the straw itself--as in Don the Beachcomber, or the Tiki Room. Imaginings...

We are here...

Analect 2.694x

9 April 2010. A year's end, a year's beginning. California, sunshine...

The claims of Gauguin, as in deep-sea diver or mining engineer. A room filled with technological gadgets, layed out in long rows like the county fair--Del Mar--where in early summer the horses are brought down to the surf. Large and graceful creatures stepping gingerly in the waves...

A continent's edge--under-sea world--the strands of kelp flaring up from unseen depths--wide, waxy leaves, golden-brown in deep blue-green, a garibaldi's brilliant orange spine--twisting in the filtered light. Sudden massive shape appears--a male sea lion, banking, turning, in his own realm...

The flowered cloth, the rubber fin...

Analect 2.593x

8 April 2010. Window seat, Solano on the world...

Reading at dawn--the house servants gathered at Count Bezukhov's, a German doctor, and a one from France as well. The three princesses, their darkened room, with small lamps placed in front of votive pictures. Candle smoke and flowers. The house servants gathered--their Russian phrases--the boundaries of life...

A figure with a flute, in a clearing. To accept and to soar...

Analect 2.692x

7 April 2010. Beauty sun, spring... Mother with young child tucked to her breast, another on it's way...

Beginnings. Sergei Orekhov, performing informally, in a room with worn walls, tall brown wardrobe just behind, painted decorations--a Russian shape, like an egg or an eye, black and dark dark red, moving towards gold. Sitting casually, legs crossed, the precision all in his hands...and face. A woman alongside, listening intently, head to one side. Warm, muted light...

Zhavoronok...

Analect 2.691x

6 April 2010. Golden light in blue pool water...

A girl with a small suitcase, travelling who knows where. In Russian, chemodan--the sound like something out of Central Asia--or the mountains of the Caucasus. As in Daghestan--that vertiginous vertical land-- "que nace en el vert ante septentrional del Cáucaso hacia el monte El-bruz..."

Things borrowed, as if on the run--migrations--a shawl, a linen vest--a bag of barley and sprouted peas. The simple meal, prepared over mountain fire--a ring of stones, kindling, gray smoke in cobalt air...

Analect 2.690x

5 April 2010. Sun at dawn, golden light, streets dark with last night’s rain.

Chorny voron--a black crow, but here he’s white. Isklyuchenie. The exceptional case. Silent for a moment—in the watching mode. Forest and meadow, rabbit and vole. Small creatures in their even smaller burrows, a clinging snuggle of babies, tucked way down, warm earth, mother’s breath, a worm or two…

Anthropomorphised in the song. Interlocutor if not judge. Witness of fate, as in all human affairs…

Spring winds…

Analect 2.689x

2 April 2010. April chill, gray skies, moments of rain...

The impossibility of drawing someone, least of all Sergei Abramov in this 1936 production of Figaro. Or following the intricacies of a plot by Beaumarchaise--picked up by Mozart for intricacies of his own. The three figures on a stage, robust Russian women with plain dresses and bare arms--linked with Comrade Abramov through a hidden story...

Shepherds of the moment--a sly glance, unabashed longing...

Analect 2.688x

1 April 2010. Sun and clouds, pool closed for cold water... April fools...

Georgy Andreev Abramov, in the tradition of the Diego Rivera, musical variant, a portly fellow in a shaggy suit, rounded shoes--his smile genuine, if a touch forced. In between, Krasovitskaya, then Bunchikov--the world of Soviet opera, 1953... The three of them, standing before a paysage--the long neo-classical promenade, with trees at determined intervals, planted symetrically, as if on stage. In the far distance, brief horizontal of a river view--water, the most stable of elements...

History itself being fungible...

Analect 2.687x

31 March 2010. Nicola stretched out at end of bed, one white paw extended towards sunny window. Last night's rain...

A gathering of friends, passover stories. Zoya at end of table, like a small bird with bright eyes, telling Rose (in Russian) about the family's fleeing the Ukraine in 1941, in advance of the Nazis. "We bought a horse...walked alongside with all our belongings..." Also a pesach story, if unintended...maybe the most pointed of them all...

* * *

Olga Leshinskaya, the ballerina. Her role in Kontsert Frontu (Concert to the Front), also stories. A favorite of Stalin (there were those who said it was more), and an exemplary Soviet citizen--an artist of great talent...a survivor...

Analect 2.686x

30 March 2010. Shadow of rain, wet leaves, gray sky...

Tonkaya Ryabina. A Russian song--Slender Mountain Ash. The rowan tree, its small clusters of red berries, set bright against a mantle of snow...

Why do you stand there swaying, slender mountain ash, your head bent down so?

While across the way, on the other side of a broad river, stands an oak, also alone?

And how could I, just a rowan tree, cross over to that oak?
I'd no longer stand bending and swaying...

With my slender branches I'd press against him
And with his leaves whisper day and night

But it's impossible for a rowan to cross over to an oak
To know such a fate--forever alone, swaying...

Analect 2.685x

29 March 2010. Fine mist, two lifeguard girls--Alex and Iliana, bending forward towards small office window, smiling... Later--man with paper cup, held at an angle, his rumpled stocking cap, begging in the rain...

Astrakhan, an Ahiska girl with her child, traditional dress. White head-covering over simple features, pale hair. Peoples of Central Asia, Turkik languages, their migrations brought them west (fleeing the advance of even more powerful peoples). A caravan of horses and yurts, arid landscape, rough hills. Image of princess with high crown--a narrow towered headress, dark silhouette in red against long horizon. An invention of now--video realm, whereas the grandmothers in Soviet-era garb, worn jacket layers, flowered skirts and shawls, deepset eyes and scanty teeth, their arms around a boy, at once tough and uncertain--one lock of dark hair, pommade, combed down over his forehead...

Pesach...

Analect 2.684x

26 March 2010. Sun, with bravo team in next lane--their underwater laps, face-up, like dolphins...

Kupala in modern dress. The village of Pen'kovo, Tverskoe Oblast'... A moonlit evening, down vests and folding chairs. Young boy in skeleton costume--his rosy cheeks under black hood. Woman of middle years, in heavy gray sweater, wreath of daisies over close-cropped hair--holding a book with shiny cover. Ways of regaining the past...

Little girls dancing--children's gait--all movement. Their older sister, her hair decked high...

Floating islands of flowers on dark pond, illuminated by candles...

Analect 2.683x

25 March 2010. Mildly sunny morning, after evening rain. Emory, still bundled up for winter in high lifeguard chair, waving from across the pool...

Two Russian singers, Kontsert Frontu (Concert to the Front), 1942. For the troops--bits of broad comedy interspersed with the remnants of a beautiful oral tradition--as when Lidiya Ruslanova slips in one of those high-energy folk lilts at the end of a line--a lifting of the voice--all is possible. Thus a metaphor as well--Ivan Kupala--once a pagan fertility rite (waters of spring), melded into the Orthodox calendar (John the Baptist), and put on hold in Soviet times, except in these hints and glimpses...

One responds with a whole being...

Analect 2.682x

24 March 2010. Cool bay morning, gull swooping low over pool. Returns.

The children of history. Lidiya Ruslanova, here on back of Soviet truck, the year is 1942. Concerts on the front. Her humble beginnings--a village near Saratov, peasant family, a father who died in the war with Japan, childhood in an orphanage. She began singing in the local parish choir, soon a soloist. Then for the soldiers in the Russian Civil War. Extremely popluar during the 1930s, "she was noted for her peculiar singing voice and timbre, which was a revival of old traditions in which female soloists would perform on festive occasions."

Her performances throughout the Second World War, on all the fronts...songs of encouragement to the troops, who revered her. ("Her rough manners and racy language appealed to the soldiers...") She also became "one of the richest women in Soviet Russia," at one point personally financing two katyusha batteries which she then presented to the Red Army. (Soviet reprise of Kutuzov's adjutants purchasing their own uniforms.)

She was arrested in 1950 (her husband's association with Marshall Zhukov, an opponent of Stalin), but Ruslanova refused to sign a declaration that he was guilty. For which she spent years in the gulag, until Stalin's death--at which point (though barely able to walk) "she returned to singing almost immediately..."

Katyusha...

Analect 2.681x

19 March 2010. Gray dawn, with sun to follow...

The hoopoe returns--Leonard must have left him somewhere nearby, in the fold of a coat, or just behind the desk, upstairs, on a high shelf, where the rows of Roman poets hold forth, with some space for William Stafford and a Swede or two. Translations from the Sanscrit--that's it--brought forth in modern dress, a starry-eyed bird, clear-sighted when near the earth... Whistful...

Walking together across a canyon bride near the Tilden wetlands lake--the two of us--where a quiet morning remains to him filled with sound. I catch them after--he's told me where and when to look. The names, in Latin, understated but always with a certain eagerness......

Phaenopepla...

Analect 2.680x

18 March 2010. Looking for the true meaning of morning... Concerted St. Mary's swim coach instructing tiny competitor on the fine points of endurance...both treading water in lane number seven... (Do the lanes have numbers?)

Or the claims of the poet, in a bookstore somewhere in Russia, printed volume in hand. Rumpled post-Soviet medved' of a man--bear-like, that is, and humble, with that intensity that follows from the love of an almost unattainable lyricism...

Khlebnikov in another age. A book cover with crude lyrical flowers--Zangezi--a bit of France and Africa conjoined. Moskva, 1922...

Там где жили свиристили… There where the waxwings used to dwell...

Analect2.679x

17 March 2010. Hazy sun, and an almost warm spring day. Birds enjoying things, too...

The older Volga, fishing weirs, poles for nets, sometime in the late 1800s... Where every surface seems touched--worn and woven at the river's edge. Figures gathered around a skiff--their stiff poses of an early spring. Heavy Russian coats, belted, an arm wrapped round a riverman's staff--tall and thin diagonal set against a sky of incoming clouds.

It's the scale of each part--this one feels--the size and shape of a piece of wood, or the stones piled carefully into a low wall...

As in the paintings, or Tarkovsky's film--Andrei Rublev, the painter/monk as he "confronts Russian pagans cavorting naked through misty forests." He resists. But later, it's Marfa, the pagan woman, who unties the cords with which they've bound him--and saves the painter from crucifixion...

Analect 2.678x

16 March 2010. Rock Island Refrigerated Dist. truck parked on street, white hood lifted into the air, motor running, repair...

Two young women from Georgia--a Song of Batum, Maia Kalandadze and Nino Komakhidze, standing close side by side. Village women with baskets over their arms--plums and coriander, set against dry hills rising from the sea. A medieval fortress in the distance--the stones for its walls plucked from the same land.

Long faces and sad eyes, as in Arshile Gorky's painting of himself and his mother--A Quiet Garden in Sochi, except that it wasn't Sochi at all, but some unknown village high in the hills. The back country, as Mom used to say, road to Temecula, winding through dry boulder land, dry and hot in mid-summer. The Pala Mission--Asistencia--an old church with adobe walls, worn red tiles. Spanish arch with bells...

San Luis Rey...

Analect 2.677x

15 March 2010. Early pool, cool shadows...

Boris Shtokolov as Ivan Susanin, the legendary peasant martyr hero who led the new Tsar Michael's Lithuanian/Polish pursuers deeper and deeper into the Russian woods, where on a particularly cold February night in 1612 all perished. Glinka's opera based on these events--which premiered in 1835. Nicholas I being in attendance, Glinka changed the title to Zhizn' za tsarya--A Life for the Tsar, but after the 1917 Revolution the opera again became known as Ivan Susanin...

Russian folk melodies throughout...

Analect 2.676x

12 March 2010. Circling jet with heavy wings, two engines each, gray clouds moving towards rain...

Puchezh. A theater group, indeterminate year. Staging or restaging an early Soviet event. Each character distinct in their seeming sameness--a padded jacket with tilted head, the young man in long European leather coat, floppy wide lapels, serious mein. Youthful women wrapped in babushkas. It's cold, as well--hands tucked in pockets or behind backs. Young faces, attentive and ready. At once accepting--and questioning.

A miracle.

Analect 2.675x

11 March 2010. Fistful of sunshine...

A metaphor less fraught...Sergio Leone on the Volga. Here in the form of a rare Isaak Levitan portrait, the figure in a formal white dress (full-cut fabric, one imagines) with an almost invisible corsage high on her lapel. Head to the side--unexpectedly--so that the effect is one of pensivess rather than display. Grays and off-whites, merging. Recalling his landscapes, better known--Vladimirka, for instance, an empty road stretching to the horizon, intersected in the middle distance by an even more undulating path. Far off, a few trees against darkening sky--their sizes and shapes as varying nicely. World of moderation, yet vigorous throughout...

Russian...

Analect 2.674x

10 March 2010. Black crow on pool deck, morning sun. Pointed steps, one by one...

Another go at Repin, Surov's portrait from 1892. Forget it. Yes, Repin was his teacher, but somehow I don't quite believe this kindly face of middle years. Usually warmth in a painting is beguiling, but can it not also be a form of deceit? A covering up? As in the scene from War and Peace, the late-night revel, when Pierre clambers onto the third-floor window ledge, demanding a bottle of rum--if he drinks it, he'll fall, without a doubt--and Anatol Kuragin makes his soto voce aside to their drunken pals, "I'll fool him..."

Good intentions, questionable tactics...

And Brecht? "Und das nasse Ohio wuchts unten..."

Analect 2.673x

9 March 2010. Nicola tucking herself in next to my side, down the bed just at dawn. First light in eastern sky, line of hills...

Serov's drawing of Pushkin, imagined on a bench in a park (Mikhailovskoe?), from 1899. The artist was 34--a good year to tackle the very icon of Russian literary culture. Casual, light touch throughout--but not unstudied. How many Madonna's in that upward gaze? And yet the effect is one of youth--self-assured, but more pensive than cocky. Wind in the trees, line of distant hills...a Russian setting to be sure.

Talking about Sargeant--with Midgette, half a century ago. The same questions--a discipline of immediacy, lost in all forced resolution. Bonnard's sustain--he'd begin from the motif, which, once registered, could endure a lifetime...

Almond tree in early spring...adding that touch of...

Analect 2.672x

8 March 2010. Natasha in yellow chair, curled up in one dark ball. The queen of fur, lifting her head for a furtive caress... Her small pink tongue...

Alexander Sergeevich, in exile at Mikhailovskoe, where Arina Rodionova, his old nurse, will of an evening share fairly tales and legends in her own Russian tongue (the poet had heard them before, of course, but only in courtly French), thereby (as he phrased it) "making up for the defects in his accursed education..."

Last night: Sergey standing at Tatiana's shoulder, his every gesture defining the cadence of a song. Count Sheremetov's setting for a poem, also from Pushkin--one of the most seemingly simple--Ya Vas Lyubil...

I loved you once, love still perhaps...

Analect 2.671x

5 March 2010. Sun pops in window at 7 am, annunciation...

And why not? A Mari girl (this is a guess) in national costume. But how can there be a national costume for a people who worship the trees the stars? Every living leaf carries a note...

As when, last night, we distribute small sheets of plain white paper, cut swiftly on zinc, to be held in the fingers of each hand, pulled taut across the lips--a home-made kazoo. Smiles all round as we try the sound (chorus to Jesse Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues), hard to tell if the experiment really works--for half the fun is in imagining so... No way to know, unless you are there...

A water bird, Kostroma, early spring...

Analect 2.670x

4 March 2010. Possible sun, moments of cloud.

The claims of the 19th century, as put forth by Serov and Repin--two Russian wanderers in the realm of paint. The bravura brushwork--Valentin Serov--flashy until the crunch, when a fine-tuned draftsman appears, setting all in order. A little too much so, perhaps--the knowingness of a hand inserted into a lapel, or the turn of a wrist on a woman lounged on a divan--a knowingness that knows we know as well--as if the full-embodiment of a culture could be indicated in these social minutiae. And yet, the sheer skill--and a willingness to take it all on--as in his portrait of Glinka, amply holed up in bedclothes, manuscript in hand... A Farewell to St. Petersburg, perhaps... Zhavronok, the Lark, "melodically gloomy to the point of melancholy..."

His portrait of Mamontov's daughter, Girl with Peaches...

Analect 2.669x

3 March 2010. Gray, with touch of blue. Sheets of water on downhill streets, last night's rain...

Winter, somehwere near Rybinsk. A town on the Volga, once a fishing village in the province of Yaroslav. Coat of arms--a standing bear, halberd on shoulder. Below, mirrored steps extend into river, where a pair of fish set face to face--sturgeon and sterlet--recall that past.

Mother and child on a frozen road, car trouble, heavy coats. Distant trees hover in winter fog. A small figure, opposite (za mashynoj) sets off on path.

Songs unwritten, songs not yet sung...

Analects 2.668x

2 March 2010. Gray gull against darker gray clouds, swooping low. Rain...

Masterskaya. A workshop or studio, but here more on the order of an office, in a provincial town from the time of Chekhov. Shelves oveflowing with books and pamphlets, stacked this way and that--records of a sort. Moody light. Young woman on lower rung of ladder--imagined as Aunt Ruth, while closer to us, Osher, my father--the cap, the Russian shirt, a characteristic forthrightness, time of uncertainty...

Standing by the counter in Walters, decades hence, in a California beach town. Orders for shirts and shoes, Stacy Adams, Van Heusen, their sizes running this way and that--broken lots--fitted carefully onto varnished plywood shelves, small white cardpaper tags on the outer fold: trousers small/medium/large. Pulled one by one with a deft tug, the stack unchanged...

Doves under the eves, evening call...

Analect 2.667x

1 March 2010. Moist gray morning air. Unidentified pickup lodged in front of house: small toothpaste tube on corner of dash, acrylic blanket tossed in back, along with some hard-to-read cds. As opposed to small child in wide blue and white striped hood, hand in her mother's, crossing street to Harding school. Morning rites.

On the Banks of the Great Volga, 19th century photographs by Mikhail Bukar'. A Tatar man, dated 1872, from the Saint Petersburg Collection of Russian Nationalities. (Stary vopros: whose Russia, whose nationalities?) Long kaftan with narrow vertical stripes, green and white, black, off-red, strangely homogeneous. His undergarment, a reddish-oxide print, vivid and open shapes. A kind of allegory of space--the containment from without, freedom from within.

Are their Tatar songs the same?