AutumnDrawing38

Billowing white steam against pearl white sky...filet of some unknown flounder on southern horizon--or is it flakey cod--pulled taut over the ribs with every breath. Girl with dark sweater--almost black--carrying bright blue vinyl binder and swinging her long brown hair as she makes her way up the hill. Muted sun. Season of return--the stubble grasses to the earth, sunlight to its source, rains and fields. All possible change clothed in loss... Banked fires, long-time friends, a time for stories. Maybe a glass...pear brandy on a low table in Amsterdam...veiled trees in the canyon...

AutumnDrawing37

17 November 2006. Mist of milky white, tiny droplets in an even veil, rooftops merging with trees and sky. Lina's family through steamy windows of brown SUV--"the gang next door"--wave returned with various finger wiggles--the littlest one right on her lap, perfect face, wide brown eyes... Tim heading past now, up the sidewalk--and the older woman with kind face, under small umbrella, looking off across the street. Two gulls wheel over Albany school--pointed wings, banking in wide turns. Flying in off the bay, morning... Last night: Anthony, Steph, Nathaniel, Urs...la música...

AutumnDrawing36

16 November 2006. Dark morning again, layered clouds to the west--mullet roofs and groupers, the gray shanks of a storm... Lone figure in late model car--beige metallics--her red sweats when door swings open, bank papers in hand. As opposed to Lina and family...beribboned children's bikes looped to busstop pole, long sari-like dress--a trace of Nepal, the Tibetan warlords, pouring out of high mountain passes, down into China. Mathiessen's Snow Leopard, danger of each narrow trail, powder-filled crests, impenetrable, but they press on. Footprints along the way--where is she--somewhere...

AutumnDrawing35

14 November 2006. Morning sun across upper right corner of the page--after dark day of rain. Evening at Hearst Pool--cold drizzle on dank marble deck--warm green steamy water... The older man with barrel chest--like some ancient Scot...blocky head, neck, forthright even as he's slightly bending. Writing about new painting--all shades of brown. I look for Burma, then Rangoon, don't know quite why. Gleaming temple appears, golden roof against darkening sky. Later, in my office--incandescent lamp--a magazine falls open to feature spread--yes, Burma--a single figure, facing us, alone on a road--his brown sweater and brown watch-cap, dun-colored trousers against the brown earth. Touch of white at his collar. Everything coincides...

AutumnDrawing34

10 November 2006. Misty autumn sun--filtered light. Yesterday--as if I were writing about Kampinos--the forest outside of Warsaw, to the west. Figures with wicker baskets--each one of us--wandering along the paths in search of grzybki--mushrooms--the Polish word itself right from the earth--that "grz", like some animal from the east, beyond Lomza and Bialystok...vast forests dating back forever...bear, medieval bison...zubr. While here, the valley land--slow rivers to the sea, winding for miles through furrowed earth, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Mokolumne...

AutumnDrawing33

9 November 2006. Only in these days, golden sun, cool air... "Every conversation is part of the finished piece." Icelandic artist, snatch of conversation as recorded in New Yorker on table. A diner on Tenth Avenue. Which is known.   Marshland road past the sign announcing private access, heap of farm structures at industrial scale--a kind of Arc d'Triomph into realm of emptiness--rutted gravel gives way to stubble fields... Harvest past, now just the gray-brown earth, pools of shallow water reflecting an uncolored sky. Dun-colored birds, almost unseen, a pair of them--impossible dance, late light...

AutumnDrawing32

7 November 2006. Sunlight, mild November. Young Asian woman with long pretty face, her baby in a stroller next to copier, making prominent baby sounds. "I hear you Jun-chu..." Last night, playing in the classroom before anyone's there. Early evening, incandescent floods illuminate the walls in warm light...everything empty. Love Minus Zero--the mark of a poet. "My love she speaks like silence, No ideals or violence, She doesn't have to say she's faithful, Yet she's true, like ice, like fire...

AutumnDrawing31

3 November 2006. Young woman in hooded slicker--passing by just for an instant--dark blue, leaning back, holding her end of long leather leash. Yesterday, or the day before--someone sitting with beautiful golden lab, all droop and paw--patient face taking in the world...   Pamuk on Istanbul--an inbuilt darkness--black trees on autumn hillsides, pulling in the light. Swift waters of the Bosphorus--Greek fishing village, burning wood. Quality of huzul--he goes to great lengths to explain. A kind of collective melancholy...suffered in concert. Or is it that--suffering, I mean--more a recessive joy in the unchanging plainness of the everyday...   Izmir, too. Anatalia...

AutumnDrawing30

2 November 2006. Slanting rain--vent pipe steam white billow against fine wet mist. View to north from kitchen window. Nicola remains asleep on white at foot of bed. Natasha, too, on old green desk blotter. Sound of known footsteps--young Chinese woman approaching bus stop outside, bending down to her bag, under the awning. Gray brown spider on white pipe, just below window, computer wires, also whitish, tied on along the way. Peregrinations. Jesse, last night: the wanderer. Gypsies, Abraham, moon modules--also bound together, in wonder--not without anger--the lack, the want, the iniquity... Where is justice...?

AutumnDrawing29

31 October 2006. Layers of gray, all across the sky... Bumpy row of orange plastic pumpkins strung from pool desk window...eerie cheer. Table with full harvest--a vestige, but still affecting. Pumpkin, corn, squash... autumn light. B's poem on Fred Garel--Ethical Culture, the Catholic Worker--a true chassid. We cross the boundaries--all imagined--to reach out.

Un hombre verdadero...

AutumnDrawing28

27 October 2006. October sun, warm morning...making copy of the alef-beis from front of old siddur--pale yellow cover with rounded corners--even more rounded now with age. Strip of translucent brown packing tape down the spine, trimmed neatly at top and bottom. The delight--again--of Wallace Berman show--his circle of friends, really--Los Angeles and San Francisco, each with one of Berman's photographs--marvelous--a revelation, really--time as moment and eternity. Jess in sweater, having abandoned Los Alamos. Robert Duncan with notebook and pen--Edmund Teske's face--and his own mysterious photos. All elements coincide, all facts are one...

AutumnDrawing27

26 October 2006. This is fall--bright sun, whirling leaves. Indian girl with dark dark face, mystery eyes--in the evening, chair in the open hallway, feet propped on stool, reading. Book of hindu gods--ancient stone, rounded forms, each element intertwined. "I like the cover...," red and white pattern on textured muslin--run your hand over it--an entire world made present... Amin Maalouf...his novel about Omar Khayyam--Samarkand. Persia of old--also intertwining, but more edge and filigree. A different sense--the desert, maybe--or that particular light--Shiraz, Tabriz, the paintings of Bihzad...

AutumnDrawing26

24 October 2006. Gray sandhill cranes--silhouetted against the dun-colored fields. Stands of water--rice, wheat, barley--stubble of late fall, waiting for the winter rains. An impromptu dance--two of them, alight on long spindly legs. Furrows and ponds. Blackbirds as well--by the hundred, lined up into the wind on empty miles of wire. Even the name is vacant: Ten Mile Road, one straight man-made line, hard by the Mokolumne...

Georgiana Slough...

AutumnDrawing25

20 October 2006. Again, fall sun...possibility. Dad would turn 100 today: Mozyr, Minskiye Guberniye, 1906...

Last night: Nathaniel's drawings--on the verge. Also possibility. A playful and dreamy fullness--we learn this way just who we are. Later: the Russian musician--along the lines of Bulat Okudzhava--but more comfortable. Reliving those years. (The "human" song, Clara told us.) Gypsy accompaniment--mournful but also knowing--never ending on a wrong note--in this untrue. But be generous: at the end of he evening, two young girls with their mom's thick black Chinese hair--at the piano, dying to join in... Clementina, Bach, avid little faces. He holds the guitar with a chord in place, so the older girl can move her fingers across the strings...

Osher. Begin again...