Analect 2.52x

28 February 2007, Wednesday. Morning sun, blue sky. Sparkling light on all the hoods and trunks in 7-eleven lot. Two older Asian women passing by just in front, side by side, engaged. The long green Transbay Express rumbles up Solano...clicking tumble of copier just behind. Reading one paragraph of Sebald last night: a small Rembrandt, from the Dublin collection--point of illumination within the darkness. The Flight into Egypt--Joseph and Mary and even the donkey, all unseen. Yesterday, with Hojin and Nathaniel--looking on the screen for site of the Battle of Austerlitz... Moravian countryside, to the east of Brno. A prominent hill, to the left of the highway...dirt track to the top--unexpected marker, cast in bronze, commemorating what took place: December, 1805. Google map, google hybrid, back and forth--towards some kind of meaning--also invisible. Dylan's face in the Scorcese--so open and immediate. Wanderer and gypsy--a shaman, too. Shape-shifter...

"And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain..."

Analect 2.51x

27 February 2007, Tuesday. Blue sky with a few white clouds, sun in the east. Sound of bus as it rumbles by, whoosh of cars on damp pavement from yesterday's storm. Woke up with lines from a song...

In Scarlet town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwellin'
Made many a youth cry well a'day
And her name was Barbara Allen

T'was in the merry month of May
The green buds they were a swellin'
Sweet William came from the west country
And he courted Barbara Allen

He sent his servant unto her
To the place where she was dwellin'
Said my master's sick, bids me call for you
If your name be Barbara Allen

Well slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly came she nigh him
But all she said as she passed his bed
Young man I think you're dyin'

Oh yes I'm sick I'm very sick
And death is in me dwellin'
Unless I have the love of one
The love of Barbara Allen

Oh don't you remember in yonder town
When we were at the tavern
You gave a health to the ladies round
But slighted Barbara allen

Oh I remember in yonder town
When we were at the tavern
I gave a health to the ladies round'
Gave my heart to Barbara Allen

Then tripped she lightly down the stairs
When she heard those church bells tollin'
And each bell seemed to say as it tolled
Hard-hearted Barbara Allen

Oh mother, mother go make my bed
Make it long and narrow
Sweet William died for me today
I'll die for him tomorrow

They buried Barbara in the old church yard
They buried sweet William nigh her
Out of his grave grew a red red rose
And out of hers, a briar

They grew and grew up the old church wall
Till they could climb no higher
And there they twined in a lover's knot
The red rose and the briar...

Analect 2.50x

26 February 2007. Gray mauve sky at dawn, light rain. Girl on dark bike, pale yellow slicker, darting past, down the hill. Across the way, 7-eleven lot--two bright brake lights on back of small truck--earthen green--man slipping on his boots... Gypsy days, gypsy Davey. The figure behind the song. A strong man in biker gear--sleeveless tee--Zampano--or, a shadowy figure, prominent and hidden all at once, that part of the self no one sees--everywhere revealed. A caravan, moving along a country road. Winter trees, one small fire--all of them gathered there, two on narrow wagon steps, others hunched slightly against the rain. Sound of some instrument--faint in the mist, simple line of a song. Budapest, Varna, Trieste--Almería, la Camargue. White horse in an empty field. The wind and the rain...

Analect 2.49x

24 February 2007, Friday. Blue blue all across the sky--the storm must be way east by now, out over the valley. Air rinsed clean, slight chill...ready to go... Last night, again until late--Woody Guthrie--his wiry vitality. Okemah, Oklahoma--the Indian Territories--a hole in America, tornados and oil. Then the drought. "Dust storms hit, they hit like thunder. Dusted us over and covered us under..." Churning clouds all along the horizon, out of nowhere... The West Texas plains--Pampa--his uncle Jeff, a few songs. Heading west, by whatever means. Everything stuffed and strapped into an old Ford--if you had one--and if you had gasoline--the Depression, too. "Shows the damn bankers men that broke us, and the dust that choked us..." Sing what you see--his guide light. Sing what you see...

Analect 2.48x

23 February 2007, Thursday. Rain horizon--sky aglow with gray light. Soupy downpour just after seven--watery ricochets in curbside puddles, then a breather... Orange-red pickup with gleaming break light, 7-eleven lot. Another, a duller red, with dark windows, pulled in at an angle nearby. Ryan's understated delight with highways in LA--endless cars, each with a contemporary personality--waiting to be painted. The Pakistani man in convenience store--he has a cold. Night shift. World of mosques and teeming marketplaces--barley, hemp, millet...seeds and grains. Baskets of folded paper--cardamom, cayenne--saffron in tiny bags. A neat pile of eggs in clay bowl, one by one--raisins and figs. Narrow glass of tea, heavy with sweet, but always clear. Two men, squatting on their haunches, Urdu companions, shooting the breeze. Ancient bicycle reappears--Javed's back from the hadj--heading out after long night...

Rain again now, steady. Man opening umbrella--a touch awkward--under far awning...

Analect 2.47x

21 February. Sunny morning, scattered clouds.
A Woody Guthrie and (much extended) family list:

Woody Guthrie
Almanac Singers
Moe Asch
Asch Records
Folkways Records
Stinson Records
Pete Seeger
Sonny Terry
Brownie McGhee
Cisco Houston
Bess Hawes
Leadbelly
Josh White

Will Greer
Golden Gate Quartet

Frank Proffitt
Doc Boggs
Jean Ritchie
Ewan McColl (Britain)

John Lomax
Alan Lomax
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Pete Seeger
Mike Seeger

Harold Leventhal
Irwin Silber (later)
Max Gordon (The Village Vanguard)

The Weavers
Fred Hellerman
Millard Lampell
Lee Hayes
Pete Seeger
Ronnie Gilbert

Leadbelly
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Robert Johnson
many many others

Paul Robeson
Marian Anderson

Burl Ives
Jean Ritchie
Aunt Molly Jackson
Oscar Brand
Richard Dyer Bennett

Carl Sandburg
Thomas Hart Benton
Erskine Caldwell
John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath
Ben Shahn
Walker Evans
Dorothea Lange

John Lomax
Alan Lomax
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Pete Seeger

Wobblies
Little Red Songbook
Joe Hill
Communist Party
Progressives
Harry Bridges
"I'm not a communist, but all my life I've been in the red..." Woody Guthrie

The Great Depression
Dust Bowl
FDR (Roosevelt)
WPA
FSA
Eleanor Roosevelt

Jim Crow
Civil Rights

Bound for Glory (This Train)
Dust Bowl Ballads
Talkin Dustbowl Blues
Tom Joad

Folkways Records--early recoding sessions with Moe Asch
Lonesome Road Blues
Goin' Down that Lonesome Road
Goin' Down that Dusty Ol' Road
So Long It'S Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)

I Ride an Old Paint
Barbara Allen

Country Music
The Carter Family
Jimmy Rodgers
Roy Acuff
Grand Ole Opry
Uncle Dave Mason
Clarence Ashley
Ralph Stanley
Ernest Tubbs

Aaron Copland
Carl Sandburg

Woody Guthrie: Bound for Glory (Intro by Studs Terkel)
Joe Klein: Woody Guthrie: A Life

Apologies for this cascade of names. Think of it as the beginnings of a self-guided tour.
A beehive, a web of meaning...

Analect 2.46x

20 February 2007, Tuesday. Warm gray clouds, billowing, heavy with with whispy edges, long sliver of blue running through in the distance. Alan Lomax book--The Land Where the Blues Began. River song:

I went up on the landing,
I folded my arms,
I never missed my dog,
Till the boat was gone.
Oh-h-h, ee-e-e-e.

Roustabout, you got no home.
You makes yo living on the shoulder bone.

Lord, we work hard, babe,
And they know we work hard, babe,
And they know we work hard, babe,
And you know you work hard...

May your fortune be as deep as the ocean
And your misfortune as light as its foam...

Analects2.45x

19 February 2007. Even blue to the sky, green grass matte across yard--all the new shoots. Three squirrels in spring attire--welcome. Buds on plum and Chinese elm--a wash of new leaves, set against twisty red-brown limbs. Every turn revealed.

It was there on your banks we fought many a fight
Sheridan's boys in the blockhouse that night
They saw us in death but never in flight
Roll on, Columbia, roll on...

Roadway high above the river, hugging the side of the gorge--waterfalls and ferns--sixty-some inches of rain, forests damp with dew, russet-topped mushrooms everywhere--more a warm gray-brown, boletus edulis--the good ones, open spore tracks under wide cap, forest denizens, solid in their stance...stalwart fungi--they belong there...

Green Douglas firs where the waters cut through
Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew
Canadian Northwest to the oceans so blue
Roll on Columbia, roll on...

Winding road with hand-set walls of stone--our kind of Europe--from sometime in the '30s--the WPA. Men at work at last. Also a blessing...
Oregon bound... 2.45

Analect 2.44x

16 February 2007. Friday morning. A few layers of thin white cloud in the south--in sun-filled sky. Today, again--soft air of spring. Beautiful, even when one loves autumn best. Leonard--your favorite season. How could it be any other. We are what we dream? Or is it the other way around. Huddie Ledbetter as a boy, on the shores of Caddo Lake...that quiet expanse of water--the Red River--in far north-western Louisiana. No white people living there then-a world at least in part free of the terrible, on-going oppression. Betsy--late last night: "The horror." she meant it--straight out of Conrad. A horror of our own creation. Scar from ear to ear. "Some fellow tried to cut my head off." That was in the newsreel--with John Lomax posing the questions... They say his tuning notes were very gentle--as we heard, sitting there together. And that Leadbelly played best for children--they understood him. And he them. Endlessly growing--the fresh horizon... 2.44

Analect 2.43x

15 February 2007. Mid-morning sun, warm, like spring. Ojalá. Last couple of days--reading about Leadbelly. Played at Wheeler Hall early in April 1945--just a few days before I was born. This from Phil Elwood, then a student at Cal, who'd helped arrange the event: "on a Saturday night in a 'large loft over a double garage in the fancy Claremont district of Berkeley on Ruble Road. I suppose there were twenty of us, mostly couples. some of them left-wing types... None of us were quite sure what was going on, but we'd been told Leadbelly was going to come and we were going to sing.' When they arrived, Leadbelly was already there, and 'he was in very good shape. I can't remember if it was 'drink tired' or just tired. He was seated the whole time. The women in particular liked him. He was a powerful personality. As a personality he was rather forbidding, but then I always felt a little nervous around people like that.'"

"Oh, the Rock Island Line..."

Analect 2.42x

13 February 2007. Oblong warm gray cloud positioned behind upper corner of white bank wall. Sunlight, intermittent, to the east. Warm, now cool, now warm. Flash of figure as I glance up--teenage boy with fender guitar in limp brown sack...appurtenances. Like the tape from Katie--Hound Dog in Big Mama Thornton's original rendition. On a television stage, her gray massif holding the space in front of photo city facade--side men off to the side, the lead guitar player reed thin to her imposing bulk. He looks up, a bit anxiously, left hand at very top of neck, three fingers whammed across as he pulls off a rudimentary blues run. Modulated, reserved even--the ball is in her court. Big voice, yes--warranted, it seems--a belter, like Joe Turner...he started in a St. Louis bar, the voice already there... "Rain rollin' down my window pane..."

Analect 2.41x

12 February 2007. Sun, but with clouds to the west. Stolid woman, late 20s, at window monitor, her young daughter tucked away on gray rug at end of aisle, alongside. Sitting with her head down, arms around her knees, head tucked in. Bottoms of her small jeans lined with several inches of lace. Worn patent leather shoes. Story from Alan Lomax--the black women in Mississippi--customs from Africa--how the women there were so much responsible for the agriculture--maize and yams. They lived close by the fields--to be able to take their young children with them as they worked. A pattern of necessity... Her face up now, fine brown-blond hair, upturned nose, sloping gray-brown eyes--agile little mouth, pulled in at the corners--one expression after another--inner life unknown...

Come on there, chillun,
Sister Katie, we got to go,
Sister Katie, we got to go,
Sister already gone,
We got to go,
We got to go...

Analect 2.40x

9 February 2007. Rain and gray. Yellow light under overhanging eve of Navigator Escrow...captain's wheel on curved-top sign... Figures in slickers and umbrellas, faces inward. Painting room yesterday--also rain. Deborah's black and white Longhi print, her tentative chipboard version right alongside. Sanaa--doing Corot. The view through Roman aqueduct arches--1820 something--just as vital right now. We recognize a touch of lighter tan--unexpected--under one of the overhanging curves. Another navigator. Ryan's murky Los Angeles--views into the distance. Hint of mountains, city interspersed...beginnings of something strong--heroic, even--despite the anomie. Lydia--her Prussian blue--now with a kind of brownish-pink in with the white--hooded figure. "Every Russian woman..." She expects me to know. Ivan Grozny, Kazan'--the defection of Prince Kurbsky to the Polish side... Anthony and Nathaniel, drop-cloth desks--anchoring the corners...

Analect 2.39x

8 February 2007. Gray morning--parallel rows of fluorescents inside the 7-eleven, dark mansard shingles, stained here and there. Big brew sign, tilted coffee cup--paraphernalia. Albert Nachman plumbing driver climbs into high van--his two-tone cap--dark blue and white--atop a boney narrow head. Sitting inside the cab, crueler and coffee--shape of a commercial phone held at an angle--longish antenna--checking calls as well. Hand to mouth, fingers tapping his upper lip, almost in rhythm--like the story of Jimmy Dale Gilmore--no, Butch Hancock, their songwriter, driving a John Deere in West Texas cotton fields. "Lubbock or Leave It." His phrase--along with lots of others. "I was driving a terracing machine, working for my dad... So on that old tractor I found out that that speed and gear was the key of G and you could play any song you wanted in it. I got to carrying a notebook and jotting down songs out there. I'd go home at night and try them out on a guitar and they'd be done. In Lubbock there's nothing between you and the clouds or you and the earth..."

Amarillo rose...

Analect 2.38x

7 February 2007. Layers of gray cloud packed in like sturgeon sidings--trunks and gullies. Silver light hovering too. Three sea gulls--tiny against distant sky, heading inland before the rain. One or two drops--a herald... Last night: Iris DeMent's story again--her family's farm, a generation back, on the St. Francis River in northeastern Arkansas. Cypress trees, black locust, tupelo and floating willow--Dawidoff knows all their names--nearby the Cherokee Trail of Tears... A small hand-made barge, ferrying long sacks of cotton to the far shore, then by wagon to the gin... "..."What she heard her mother sing moved her in ways she wasn't prepared to explain... 'I'm so wrapped up in these sounds,' she says. 'It's more than music to me. It's a kind of place. I know about these songs. It's music where people are sitting and writing about life, the things they're struggling with and the hard times. They're about tryin' to get through life and hope for the future...'"

Analect 2.37x

6 February 2007. White plume of steam against milky white sky. Plumber's truck with long lengths of copper pipe on the diagonal up onto the cab--no, it's a red-orange fiberglass ladder, maze of gardener's equipment, one plywood side pane along top of worn white metal. Mistakes. Inconsistencies. These things happen. Like George Jones , when his new wife gives him a white Dodge pickup for his birthday--he goes down to the Nashville(?) dealership, decides on the spot that he wants the green one as well. Twenty seven cars and four golf carts--how many vehicles can a man drive? And yet, his enunciation--the way he'll linger on a word--mining the meaning--wins over all. No other excess can compete. Like Rose Maddox, close in her mother's tow, belting forth songs at age eleven in Central Valley bars--Visalia, Tulare, Modesto. World of the fields, picking apricots and peaches at 25 or 50 cents an hour--that's when you become a band. "Let's sing..."

Analect 2.36x

5 February 2007. Mist-covered moon, floating just above the hills. Edges lost in darkness. Morning: also veiled, sun just now pushing through. Woman in jaunty white baseball cap disappearing for a moment behind large green truck--amber dome light flashing on cream white cab. WM. Two guys in heavy work clothes, dulled fluorescent-green safety vests--one leaning back slightly, hands in his ample pockets. Just in front--the German doctor, walking carefully up the street, head tilted upwards, houndstooth, sheaf of papers tucked in close. Last night: Doc Watson and Bill Monroe--also a duet, Doc singing the lead, Monroe in high-voiced harmony on the chorus. Banks of the Ohio. Where the song comes from--two solid men, 200 pounds, catching empty oil drums as they were tossed from a train in Detroit--Monroe in his youth--but here, an almost delicate tenor, with subtle mandolin line--like a honeysuckle vine on a trellis...crucial embellishment. Sadness of the words...taken up in the flow...

Analect 2.35x

2 February 2007. Bands of yellow sun pouring through gray clouds. A fan of light from above--as in a 19th century devotional. Last night: what is the difference between gospel and spiritual?--the first being the music out of Protestant evangelical tradition--African-American as well as European-American...where the spirituals are very much the body of song from the black South--out of Africa, almost certainly, with their sliding notes, call and response... Ghostly slow black and white footage of the Swan Silvertones--a kind of music with or without the sound. Then Turner Junior Johnson--harmonica answering each phrase of his wavery voice...young girl in a modern kitchen, close focus--song of praise, as she veers into ecstasy...and an inexplicable re-enactment--Down by the Riverside--a re-knowing of slavery--green chartreuse t-shirts, mop handles, a plastic bucket or two--in some church rec room, perhaps, the camera all jiggly, calls from the audience--laughter, affirmation. Their beautiful voices...

Mary had three links of chain
and every link was freedom's name
Pharaoh's's army got drownded...
Oh Mary don't you weep...

Parshas B'Shalach--this week. "And the waters divided..."

Analect 2.34x

1 February 2007. Pearl gray trailing clouds. Blond woman with bangs, muted cerulean coat--crustacean--striding up Solano, narrow black circular cord in her left hand, fingers tight... Another walker, more loping gate, her arms swinging back and forth with an unpredictable grace. Dawidoff on Doc Watson--Arthel his given name. Blind before he was a year old--something of a memory of the moon. But a life fully lived, down to choosing a dress for his beloved--by feel. Clarity of sound--as if he were chosen. So seemingly straightforward. So straightforward, period. "Like doing carpentry or fixing a car...," both within his grasp. But more than that, too, of course. How to feel the song. "...a large heart behind the words..."

Calico...home...

Analect 2.33x

31 January 2007. Gray on gray. Yellow street lamps before dawn, far end of the block, through branches of camphor trees. Song of a dove. Steady note, then higher, then gently falling. At intervals, again now and again. Last night: the Louvin Brothers. No doves there. Fire and brimstone more likely...at least in Ira's lyrics. Ira Louvin--a man possessed...down to his name. Meant every word, too. Hill country salvation--Sand Mountain--massive plateau in the northwest corner of Georgia--violent and remote... Was it the isolation or the poverty--or simply the starkness of it all... Charlie: "I think my brother was tortured by religion." And yet, not to believe... Cattle and kind. Sheep grazing on a hillside--cows, too. Jazzbo prancing through the fence gate, late late afternoon--leading the ewes down steep meadow path to waiting barn...soft white doves there, too--high on the eves, evening calls...

Analect 2.32x

30 January 2007. Jet with upturned wing tips, gleam of sunlight on its nose--veering across whispy bank of clouds. The rest of the sky a milky blue. Dark-haired fellow in gray sweatshirt--a builder--climbs into heavy maroon pickup with incongruous silver panels along the sides... Ralph Stanley...a shy man before his brother--the extrovert--drank his liver away. "A dram drinker," they called it--at least according to Nicholas Dawidoff--who does usually seem to get it right. The way the voice--high and lonesome--corresponds so closely to those hills and hollows. Clinch Mountain country... An unpainted cabin--weathered gray wood--lived in for seventy years. Iron pump handle, sloping porch, tool shed and barn. One cow, a few rows of corn. Hardscrabble... House Carpenter, Barbara Allen, Banks of the Ohio, Omie Wise...

Analect 2.30x

26 January 2007. Solid gray thick-enough-to-cut-like-butter sky. Softened edges. Two crows and one white gull on asphalt of 7-eleven lot. The crows encroach, but the gull pecks them away. An ornithological standoff. John Ford, maybe... Last night--sound lines. Melody of This Land Is Your Land, picked out on the guitar with Carter Family lick--just enough to get the thing going. Stephanie on bass, Angie on washboard. Our Scandinavian trio leaning back and forth... Anthony across the circle, sitting on the floor, plugged in--embellished riffs way up the neck. Joe's can with walnuts--motley of bottle caps applied to the outside. Applied--that's the word. As if the thing had always existed--and we simply grace each new turn. Urs: Is there truth in the wind? Indira--Lonesome Valley--a song opening out into the world...

Analect 2.29x

25 January 2007. Puffing cloud of white steam against warm gray sky--just over worn mansard shingles of 7-eleven roof. Narrow vertical antenna obscured for a moment--then crisp again against more yellowish patch of sky. Man in shorts on old-style bicycle, baby carriage contraption towed behind--small red pennant, also on vertical. Latina with newspaper bags and a slightly crooked smile--morning stock from grungy gray-green van. Inside--window nearby--woman in sleeveless blouse--the hairdresser's--standing with arms akimbo (all in black), head tilted to the left, inspecting her work. Worried-faced woman in crisp London Fog, just a glimpse of her head as she backs out in late-model dark bronze Honda SUV.

Ollie Gilbert, somewhere in northeastern Arkansas--now fifty years back.

Down in the valley
The valley so low
Hang your head over
Hear the wind blow...

Analect 2.28x

24 January 2007. Mid-morning sun in pale sky. Massive longitudinal soda truck--red, white, black, moored across two parking spaces, a handicap zone, and twenty-some feet of red no-parking curb--projecting a couple of extra yards into 7-eleven driveway for good measure... That's across the street. Next door, Kathmandu--Lena and her husband, seated in doorway alcove, on yet-to-be unwrapped wooden bench--handmade, each leg still in raffia... Their small backs turned to the sidewalk and street, taking in the sun. My guess is that they're drinking tea--pale Assam in small chamfered glasses, mixed with honey and mare's milk. But no, they're sipping from some franchise cups--same soda as in front, no doubt. Meeting us half-way. Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley-- "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"

Analect 2.26x

22 January 2007. Single gull dipping and turning against blue morning sky. Woman of middle years with small dog on leash--who turns his head just now and looks back up at her. They disappear around the corner. Earlier: wind against canvas sheeting over playing field fence--each gust sends giant ripple across the surface. Reading last night: concluding pages of Austerlitz. The Paris library, built on a ridge of pre-historic chalk--and the ruins of German warehouses for storing goods confiscated during the war--rugs, paintings, china, furs--stuff of bourgeois life. "It's a bourgeois town"--Lead Belly, around the same time--but he's talking about D.C. This morning--the Libby jury--hard to select. No one who speaks out against Bush acceptable. Song as weapon? No--just song as song. Reaching back into the past, the arms we most need...

Analect 2.25x

19 January 2007. Sun, just now over the hills, pouring light. Early: Javed in 7-eleven. Back after Mecca, Karachi--I can only guess. "Mucho trabajo, poco dinero," he says, two or three times, more as a mantra than anything else. Photograph at top of New York Times--waves pounding the sea wall of an old European town. Cover of New Yorker: Bush as Nero--playing a lyre, by self-appointment. Last night: Down in the Valley. After a good shot of Polish vodka. Told story of Robert and Gabryela--driving with them from Amsterdam east, across Germany to the Oder...small town where family of the school principal welcomed us. Friends of Gabryela's family from the time of the war. Feather beds, cucumbers with dill, mushrooms gathered from nearby woods. A school building, their apartment one of the rooms--a shelter. Having lived like this always. Song.

Analect 2.24x

18 January 2007. Gentle sun this morning--why is that? Sometimes harsh and raking, today an infusion of golden light. Cold again in the night--white frost across the field, shapely figure in the dark, her agile scraping at a car window. Last night: Lonesome Valley. Not just a voice, but an entire being from the past--emerging almost miraculously from the screen of laptop...Mississippi John Hurt--his taut skin, lively eyes--many emotions, the subtlety of them all. A kind of rolling motion, too, as if he played from the shoulder, rolling into each note, each phrase. "I learned one number all the way through." In the dark of night, his mother's musician boyfriends asleep in the other room--always the sounds--breathing, light snoring. He takes up the guitar--very quiet. First notes--fingers follow what the heart must know.
One could weep.

"You've got to walk that lonesome valley..."

Analect 2.23x

17 January 2007. Rain yesterday evening--glossy steps outside fourth floor door. First day back at school, cold classroom, grungy desks--yet enthusiasm of new group... Po Chü-i, ancient poem: The Hundred-Fire Mirror. We read each line. Can you convince us of the meaning. "Was he a court poet?" The meaning of mirror...red-jade powder, golden oil, polished bronze... This morning: sun everywhere, now glinting off metal pocket clip on my pencil. Also a mirror. Last night, late: Austerlitz. His disturbing, detailed reiteration of the camp at Terezin. Nothing left to chance. Returning to London, he watches a film made there at that time, now in slow motion. Kinds of distance, layers of remove. And then: Agata's face. His mother's. A mirror as well.

Analect 2.22x

16 January 2007. Layers of white frost on dark car windows...grass playing field white as well. Steam billowing from over the roof of the pool--white against black dawn sky. Steam inside, as well--from blue-green water. Sylvia Plachy's photographs--many years ago. The baths in Budapest--muted green tile, figures half-appearing in the mist. Yet sense of home. Like Blind Willie McTell, his version of Amazing Grace. Not singing--just his slide guitar, erie and haunting--as if the notes appeared of themselves. A choral group, too--sound of the reverend's voice, introducing--then a run of moaning incantation--melody lost in the harmony of their insistent, rhythmic chant--voices adding in, more for presence than for song.

"Do Lord, oh do Lord, do remember me..."

Analect 2.21x

15 January 2007. Haloed sun in blue winter sky. Yesterday, early: large woman in layers of coats, small shopping cart, slumped back asleep in Starbuck's lounge chair--undisturbed. Images of the South: cotton field, plantation house, the river. Parchman Farms and Sugarland--the names pretty much covering the spread. A google search shows they've been turned into bands--strange phenomenon, this willful inversion. "From prison farm to play list," something like that. Midnight Special, for instance. Paul's outrage, years ago, at its neutralization as a cityboy song--whitened up, middle class. As opposed to the moaning trials of the run from Memphis to Chicago. And even more: lone window against nighttime sky, a few stars, train whistle somewhere in the distance...

"...shine her light on me."

Analect 2.19x

11 January 2007. Curling column of white steam against pale blue sky. Cold. "Maybe we'll get that snow they're talkin' about." White panel truck in 7 eleven lot, pulled in at an angle just under the eave. Figure in dark hooded sweatshirt making his way towards double glass doors. Orange-red numeral on wall above, smaller green eleven cutting through. Poverty of invention? A contradiction, in any case--where the claims of immediacy can offer so very little. And yet, and yet, we make this our world. Anthony and Steph at City Lights--from that time. Dharma Bums. What he remembers. Sugar, was it? A Buddhist dream? Mountain top somewhere northwest--a source, point of origin. The initial vision...held and held...

Analect 2.18x

10 January 2007. Morning fog, gentle gray everywhere, golden yellow mixing through just above the hills. Anticipation. Wash of buds on Chinese elm--also golden yellow. Motionless against the gray. First and last words, so often the same--or is it just that it feels right so. River Jordan--not Appalachia, but Burning Spear. Lyrics by the Itals, too. "Meet me at the bank of the beautiful river..." Evocation, no matter what the source. Last night: June Carter, with a lanky, expressively nervous Johnny Cash. Pete Seeger on banjo--but nicely in the background. "Blue Eyes." Steadfast and plaintive. True song. Later--with Ahron. Down in the Valley. The first notes, also true...

Passing through...

Analect 2.17x

9 January 2007. Sun through wide window, long morning shadows across Solano. Early crow on street light stanchion, sleek shoulders, flexed, then five raucous caws. Teenager maybe--or a corvidean James Dean? Note from Tom, apropos yesterday. Black Oak is on the block. Do I know a buyer? Nights before, mornings after--as in Flaubert, A Sentimental Education. Waking in the dawn... Rereading Austerlitz. The Antwerp station. Nocturnal zoo...mixtures and inversions--nothing as it seems--questioning the seeming itself. Eyes peer out of the darkness, impossibly open--awareness is all. "The helmsman, inattentive if only for a moment..." Unterjoch, Uberjoch...

Analect 2.16x

8 January 2007. Black sky before dawn, constellations through camphor leaves. Orion the Hunter. Scimitar or sword? Reaching down to lower shelf in Black Oak last night--Evan Connell story of the gypsy man in Santa Cruz, The Fisherman from Chihuahua. "Santa Cruz is at the top of Monterey Bay, which is about a hundred miles below San Francisco, and in the winter there are not many people in Santa Cruz. The boardwalk concessions are shuttered except for one counter-and-booth restaurant, the Ferris-wheel seats are hooded with olive green canvas and the powerhouse padlocked, and the rococo doors of the carousel are boarded over and if one peers through a knothole into its gloom the horses which buck and plunge through summer prosperity seem like animals touched by a magic wand that they may never move again."

Analect 2.15x

5 January 2007. Band of yellow light across obsidian black formica--wooden handle of brush, luminous, varnish chipped away at the end. Clear sky. Tiny stationary bird on power line in the distance, turns now to the east, flies off. Same black car, same spot on 7-eleven lot--now with brilliant sun on trunk panel. Sebald's character, in Riva again--this time as Dr. K. It was the Hunter Gracchus, hinted at in the first pages. Photograph of barque, with "dark, folded sails." Working back from image to story--his modus operendi--except that here the story preceded as well. Retold in scrupulous detail--everywhere evocative--crags of the Dolomites shooting up behind. (Betsy's mother: "Just wait--they shoot up.") The helmsman--inattentive even for a moment, and the ship can never land...

Analect 2.14x

Gray and rain. Wet black asphalt, parked dark car, glowing sign in cleaners' window: same day service. Like in Oceanside--the pier in winter, fog, sound of waves below, feel of the swells. $5 a Pay Day--that was it. Sales to young marines--Camp Pendleton--arrived from Philly, Iowa, Kankakee--en route to a shaved head and God knows where. Knife fight--just the tip of the blade. "That's all I need," explained a barrel-shouldered sargeant. "That's all you need." Careful stacks of shirts, pinned and folded, plywood counters, worn and varnished... Walters, not even our name. Something received, ad hoc, but serious in its own way. Banks of fluorescent panels above, linoleum floor, long desk at back--the register. Always standing--an unwritten rule. Just $5 a Pay Day...

Analect 2.13x

3 January 2007. Gray morning mist, single gull against matte sky. Silhouettes, oak and elm, beginnings of new leaves. Alesia and Michelangelo appear just outside--mother and son--his young face peering up the street, searching for signs of the bus. Hunched slightly in his dark blue parka coat, back pack filled with what must be books--ready to go. Mother alongside, attentive, smiling slightly--hands in her pockets, the very same pose... G bus appears, out of nowehere, he climbs on.

"Hop little rabbit, hop hop hop," Mom, in San Diego, maybe 1949...

Analect 2.12x

2 January 2007. Rosy dawn--longs rows of mottled pink cloud over hills to the east...yellow-white of Albany Vets--small fluorescent on dark wall. Last week: Candye Kane--her ample presence. Belting it out, even in the way she held the mic--firm, in one hand, pyramid rings, silver and black, wide smile... voice like old times. Vulnerable, too--standing alongside, weight all on her narrow ankles... Reading Sebald. Time of the Napoleonic Wars--crossing the St. Bernadine into Italy. Antique sketch of gun emplacements--among his fascinations. Receipt from a pizzeria in Verona--the Cadavero brothers. Walled cliffs of Lake Garda--his character, lying on his back in an open boat, staring up at the heavens. Approach to Riva, too. The Hunter Gracchus. A European past...

Analect 2.11x

22 December 2006. Bright and clear, after dark day of storm--the change delightful and astounding. Last night, "a kind of angel," Gus' line. Transcendent, my suggestion...but it turned out to be himself in disguise. Narrow, arched nose, high and alert--modest and incisive. A kind of character, not giving the world any more than its due--hard won, perhaps--and not without a playful (kind of) resignation. On the whole: pointed, though. Lucy's Mexico sonnet--their fiesta, swaying figures... Ted: four million teeth, all on the front seat. Dick: a personalized natural history of the elephant. And Sue--her son at thirty--great distress, touch of love.

All our beginnings... Hemingway and trees...

Analect 2.10x

21 December 2006. Chinese elm against gray sky. Fan of angled branches, arc of gold-green leaves. Workmen with tool containers--De Walt, scuffed polyester--making their way into shop next door. Here, the German doctor, singing under his breath. A ruby-crowned kinglet, he told us last week... Mellifluous voice in middle-low register--always the positive. Morning banter, back and forth, also a kind of song. A maroon Subaru with cream silver siding backs out across the street--yellow head lamps on a dark day. Feels like rain--or is it just the winter chill... Lights before dawn on all the houses--arches and curls, long row of tiny single red bulbs all along a fence. No Santas or sleighs--no crèche scenes either. An agnostic Christmas, safely abstract...

Prayers, nonetheless...

Analect 2.9x

20 December 2006. Tiny plane banking upwards at dawn. Pool denizens huddled on steps in the dark, waiting for Laura to unlock the doors. Her figure approaching, seen through the glass. Plans and anticipations, thoughts before dawn. Another plane--silver sliver against distant cloud. Sixth night of Chanukah...red blue, red blue, red blue, one white above--the shamesh--servant--placed on top. Stan's brother's challenge--twenty-five years ago, maybe more: speak only of the present. Realized this week that I finally had a response: in the Chanukah blessing itself: sheh asah nisim l'avosenu ba-yamim ha-hem bi-zman ha-zeh. "...who made miracles for our fathers in those days, at this time..."

Analect 2.8x

17 December 2006. Bright, cold, clear morning. Tom Adame walking up the street as I'm heading across to pool. Face turns to smile... Steam and mist rising off water, Humann slouched comfortably in tower chair. He smiles as well...morning allowance, a kind of ethical spare change that gets you through the day. Small Asian woman, older--the picky one, always polite, always demanding, intent on Dell monitor near window, leaning forward, golden line of her glasses sloping down towards screen, lenses on her nose. Her sweater a Beijing gray-blue, tannish coat scrunched up on the chair behind, sunlight pouring in through the window to street. What am I--some kind of gendarme--these noticings. Who am I following? Photos of the Kresy--the Borderlands--from Lithuania deep into the Ukraine. Kamienec Podolsk...one long narrow bridge, all of stone...

Analect 2.7x

16 December 2006. Cold night, bright morning sun. "The Blue Sky Foundation"--Pasha Ivanov. Arkady Renko again, sardonic, unfailing...the telling is in all the gaps... Faulknarian almost, except that the plot (and only the plot) follows crime story requirements: who knew what when, the reader also alert to cues... But the characters here--or is it Russia itself--transcend the genre. And the central event, of course--which is Chernobyl. He becomes disconsolate in the spring--around May Day to be precise. Children of Kiev in street parades, carrying bouquets of flowers. Chornobyl in Ukrainian--wormwood. How that very word? As if the meanings of folktale and legend were somehow less real. Baba Yaga--a book of fairytales, carried under a boy's arm, along with a well-worn chess set. The poles of knowledge, poles of truth.

Analect 2.6x

15 December 2006. Pale yellow sun through high cirrus clouds, illuminating the sky above magnolia branches. Single figure in down vest, green and black horizontal striped jersey, striding down the hill--her bobbed hair keeping time. Last night, the musicale. Kashah the enchantress, quite uncovered, North African dance--Maroq, Tangier...a young Daniel Weingarten on Ladzepko drums. Later: Anthony and Steph after half an hour's practice--as if they'd played the songs all their lives. Talk, lots of wine--Nathaniel's generous spread--with their paintings on all the walls, each persona distinct, unabashed strokes of color, also unlabored--the meaning in the making alone. Mark and Peter, our guests, Katie, all smiles, singing along. "What about Freight Train?" Elizabeth Cotten at eleven or twelve--how did she know? "...way down on old Chestnut Street..."

Analect 2.5x

14 December 2006. Delicious pearl gray mist of rain...best right at dawn, everything still. Yellow windows of Albany pool, two small figures in adjacent field, hidden in the dark. Light-colored dog bounding across on the diagonal. Just inside, folded sign on desk: Please pay on deck. Alongside, elegantly slouched, head down, figure of Humann...he looks up with a smile... Sounds of running water, steam. Two more figures, veiled in shower. At water's edge, I attempt a buon giorno with chubby regular, waist deep at the rim. She lifts her head slightly, shifts to adjacent lane, beyond the rope. Laura's wan smile from lifeguard stand--still sleepy as well... Morning mores--Ovid, Catullus, Po Chü-i--everything touched, everything known...

Analect 2.4x

13 December 2006. Slow morning with a late start. Natasha jumps onto high round table--compact mass of tortoise-shell fur, tiny pink tongue against dark little face...waiting for a rub. Last night: Arkady Renko at Chernobyl--the Zone. Hot spots and blasted trees--"a stand of red pines." Cooling pond six kilometers long, with ponderous catfish each the size of a truck. "Renko--that's a good Ukranian name," declares the seventy-something Hero of Socialist Labor, in Slavutych, a replacement city, but there's cesium in the topsoil there, too. As if they were followed--impossibility of salvation. Images of taxidermy: a badger preserved, a reactor embalmed. And yet the older couple in the black village, serving them pickled mushrooms, cucumber, salted fat. "Don't turn on your dosimeter." The key phrase. "Don't turn on your dosimeter."

Analect 2.3x

12 December 2006. Rain rain. Glossy pools on morning street. Yellow catalpa against pearl gray sky. Dark magnolia leaves over the 7-eleven sign. This kind of silence--invaluable, even while it lasts... Whoosh of cars zooming up Solano, ding ding of backing truck veiled in the distance. Beautiful, despite the interruptions of Sue's incessant mutterings--comments to herself on this and that as she works on book. "It does look a little fuzzy up there." Greg by her side. "It's got a little boo boo here." Possibilities of the language--a miniature truck wreck sometimes--depending on the ear. Martin Cruz Smith, for instance, with the ancient Nina on her Pripyat bench, "Wolves eat dogs." Declarative, not a comment. "Wolves eat dogs."

Analect 2.2x

11 December 2006. Winter morning, gray chill. Woman in dark coat, slender cut,with one hand extended, holding translucent box with light blue lid--holiday cookies, one atop the other, their ends dipped in chocolate. A struggle to describe--the recalcitrant world. Sometimes it flows. Like Rumi's guests--they arrive in all forms, whether we think we want to see them or not, like family--right of access--but not always welcome. Like the dancer on the streets of New York. "Forty Sixth, between Seventh and Eighth." Known stretch of turf, ritual of knowing, redeemed through use. "Come visit. We'll have some brandy." All smiles.

Make it new.

Analect 2.1

7 December 2006. Narrow plum tree alongside Solano...burnished red leaves touched with brown. Reading Su Tung-P'o. That was his formal name, but everyone knows him as Su Shih...the second syllable softened at the end, disappearing into the surrounding air. Sitting with Shui Jing and Hin, in the evening--she tells me the story behind Cold Food Festival. A common man, a prince, a burning forest...need and longing intertwined... A family lost, but memory forever preserved. How do we say it? Rak b'simcha. Only in happiness. May we encounter each other only in joy...

AutumnDrawing39

5 December 2006. Golden marshland...gray fields. Sun low in the west, over wide expanse of valley. A bridge, creosote logs, over dark canal, wind dropping to a whisper--vespers--only the slightest ripples. Barn swallows in late light, forked tails disappearing in the gloom. Stubble fields--the summer's crop, harvest bales in low-lying sheds...barley, millet, hay. Visitors from afar, gathered around a fire. A cup of wine, old stories--all that's shared.

...our own future, we make our own past...