Analect 2.156x

20 August 2007. Mottled gray sky, white smoke rising. Golden retriever racing across wide lawn, coat flying, lunges up to snatch red disk in mid-air. Coiled hose in ivy tangle--kinked green links, pulled more-or-less straight. The night-blooming jasmine, unexpected.

Pouring forth.

Analect 2.155x

17 August 2007. Sunny, blue skies, crisp light...almost autumn. Woman in wide straw hat with scooping down-turned brim, eyes lowered as well, making her way down Solano in small decisive steps...Fujian, Hangzhou... A chalky red sweater, neither bright nor pastel, returning as a Digueno, here from a 19th century print--the flight into Egypt... Sauvage, Christophe explains--not so much wild as close to nature. As in the names--Jamul, Cuyamaca, Pauma Valley...the back country, mom called it...dry boulder-studded hills, touches of red clay. Manzanita and chaparral--cumulus cloud banks over mountains to the east, the desert beyond...

Ceanothus--a wild lilac, scrub oak, toyon...

Analect 2.154x

16 August 2007. Sunlight with pink gray clouds, quiet streets. Far in the distance--figure of woman in orange tee, stocky, set in relief against gray expanse of high school gym. Her golden-colored dog running back and forth, back and forth... On the radio--markets all in red--the Nisei Index, Tokyo stocks, Singapore, Hong Kong...a serious dismay (more current phrase). Nothing untoward.

The back country--San Antonio de Pala--image of adobe tower, two bells...wandering roof tiles sloping this way and that. Single tiny figure next to wide door--the chapel, at least today. Dark walls, clay floor, figures of saints with votive candles. Quiet, even austere. The Asistencia...

Analect 2.153x

15 August 2007. This morning: sol y sombra. Tiny golden-haired creature wanders past the window, almost looking in. Mothers and their daughters--Yael, Hannah, Celeste... At dawn--lithe figure in pool, dolphin awaiting a child. El mundo entero...

Talking with Christophe, almost unexpectedly--as if we walked this way every few days or so. Smell of the camphor trees, black pine--California live oak, privet, ash...a blue-flowered bush from Ethiopia, the one that he planted here--color of Sandra's eyes, as B spoke of them, after Sandra was gone...

El Río Sin Orejas--a book of origins, and the sense we make of them. Sunlight through clerestory window, just above the whispers of fog. Alongside, A Nubian maiden...

(for Christophe)

Analect 2.152x

14 August 2007. Gray clouds against hills to the east, dark birds wheeling. Image of the dry shores of Lake Superior--gray newspaper text. Lamplight inside, on a gray morning. There on the thick Columbia Encyclopedia, poems of Larry Levis. Tessellated pastel cover--a painting, maybe, or the overall pattern on low-end linoleum. Elizabeth Murray, Winter Stars...

And birds of all kinds flew in front of me then.
I learned to tell them apart by their empty squabblings,
The slightest change in plumage, or the inflection
Of a call. And why not admit it? I was happy.

(from Larry Levis, The Poet at Seventeen)

Analect 2.151x

13 August 2007. Sunlight, early, a single whisp of fog hovering on the edge of Albany Hill. Voice of Werner as the Dalai Lama...where did he come from? Metal detectors and class schedules--a mind full of bric-a-brac, woe, woe, if only emptiness. Chuang Tzu--along a path. The great bird P'eng...

In Northern Darkness there lives a fish called K'un. This K'un is so huge that it stretches who knows how many thousand miles. When it changes into a bird it's called P'eng. This P'eng has a back spreading who knows how many thousand miles, and when it thunders up into flight it's wings are like clouds hung clear across the sky. It churns up the sea and sets out on its migration to Southern Darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.

(translated by David Hinton)

Analect 2.150x

10 August 2007. Filtered morning sun, sparkling through pearl cloud. Ulica Glogera--a small street in Warszawa, curving, pre-war...the general's house, an older man in darkened rooms, laconic, gruff. Emblems of a cossack past--curving saber slung above the mantle, ancestral pictures in heavy wooden frames. So why did I leave him the Dr. John album--Gris Gris, I think--as if to bring the centuries into alignment, collision...

As with our arrival at Friday Harbor, spring of 1964--songs pouring forth from speakers on the deck of the long white schooner--She Loves You--dappled northern waters--I Want to Hold Your Hand...

Women of La Bretagne, white headcoverings, heavy skirts and clogs... Each gathering a kind of necessity. Pèlerinage...

Analect 2.149x

9 August 2007. Fuzzy gray sky--more velour than chenille--a meteorological children's blanket, pulled up over the crib... Woman from Bretagne--face à la mer--something from a painting by Serusier, or Gauguin. Truth of the local--even when it's not one's own. As in the Tempest--the English expedition of 1609, a second batch of colonists set out for Jamestown...they encounter a massive mid-Atlantic storm, find themselves wrecked on the shores of Bermuda. Written up later in the colonies by survivors, the story eventually makes the rounds of literary London--and corresponding details appear in Shakespeare's final play...

"When thou camest first, Thou strokedst me and madest much of me..."

Analect 2.148x

8 August 2007. Gray roof against gray sky. Darkened end of pool, scaffolding all the way to arched ceiling. Young guard in red sweatshirt, red shoes, hand to the side of her face--pensiveness in an unexpected setting. Two hooded figures, alone, facing a wide streambed. Glauber Rocha? A donkey in between them, nestled, wicker basket alongside. The arroyo disappears into break in distant hills.

Boulders and chaparral--the back country, gray-green leaves and a wash of red clay--an unexpected balance. Mining for gold, some ninety years ago. "I made a garment..."

Lagarto y libélula...

Analect 2.147x

7 August 2007. Truck door swings open, somber morning light. The claims of philosophy and the claims of love. One or the other...like a long metal railing, bow to stern, on the Great White Steamer... Calm of San Pedro harbor, early morning, darkened wharfs and gray waters, all the way to Avalon. Last night: some Tío Pepe, one glass after another. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she explained--another kind of darkness--unpredictable, maybe, or at the very least, unknown. Wild in part, and from a distant source. Migrant trails out of Punjab, turbans and hidden knives, sharp blue eyes take in every horizon--a horseman, defender of the realm...Mughul...

"If I have a daughter, perhaps she will sing..."

Analect 2.146x

1 August. Calm gray skies, shadowy pool, clerestory light pouring in from the east... Pèlerin. A French side-wheeler of the old vintage--along Catalina lines. The big white steamship, leaving San Pedro at dawn...all of us, passengers, Avalon bound. Through the jetty and into open waters of the channel--first taste of the sea, long swells and a rolling gate, clear gray. Dolphins lead...

Shirley last night--also a clear gray. Her face and head--beautiful still--and a sure voice, with all the articulate tentative touches... Circles and arcs--visions of light, Yehezkel's wheel. A small dark room in London, we're told--not Yerushalayim--just her voice--against a background of time, friendship, world...

All ends are beginnings, if so discovered...even now...

Analect 2.145x

30 July 2007. Gray morning, golden cast to sky in south. White workman's truck--number 18--with tool rack and ladder, one fine celadon hose coiled neatly over stanchion on back. Illuminated brake light now as he pulls out... The things of Europe--William's paintings, for instance. Suffusion of Italian light--the Borgo of Santo Sepolcro, his home--San Sepolcro--founded by two pilgrims, on their return from the Holy Land. Or a procession on the way to Jasna Góra. Gathering of young people, all sorts. They refer to themselves as hippies--hippisi po polsku--all peace signs and beads, Ottoman kerchiefs and woven vests, macramé, stars. Ingenuous, too, and scruffily appealing--as if hope might be renewed along the road, their faces, along the path...

Analects 2.144x

30 July 2007. White truck blocks sky, blue above... Line of double rivets along top, same but zig-zagged down below. Chamfered trim--a bit of aluminum--otherwise clear. Then, a humble roar, slowly rolling away... This is it, luck of the draw--a Mercedes emblem, upright falcon, in gray dawn light. Pelerin-- same word, but fierce with color. Swooping down out of clear blue, honest, intent...

We sometimes don't want to know...

Analects 2.142x

27 July 2007. Gray all the way, slight chill in the air, heading into November... Yesterday: column of fog in the distance, pouring over Marin hills and across the bay. Shifty forms of city lost in the distance. Evening before: walk with Loren and Libbe after supper, down road to bridge. Manzanita and madrone, California white oak, sparse stands of pine. Red twists of fire-wood pulled around shaft of conifer--a pinned embrace, digging in through the bark, the two trees become one. Something drawable, yes, that connection--like Loren's narrow splines embedded in the trunk--bridging checks and fissures, linking across, worked down to round face of wood, burnished, until the two materials are joined, absolute, imperfect...

Analects 2.141x

23 July 2007. Gray everywhere dawn, sound of gray doves under the eaves, lapping gray edges of pool. The Chinese painters began with the eye--always the eye--center of the universe in the eye of a bird. Sandhill cranes, gathered by the thousands in delta fields, late autumn light, furrows half-submerged... Zywot Mateusza...Life of Mateusz, "o duszy dziecka...," on the soul of a child...

Insistent voices now just behind, insistent stories, too-details of the neighborhood, also insistent. A busy-body, that's the word. Shopping cart filled with papers, cans, caps, bottles, all insistent--noise of the town, a discordant mottle...an insistent smile...

Villon, Po Chü-i, Tu Fu...

Analect 2.140x

20 July 2007. Clear skies, light breeze. Whoosh of cars rushing up the hill. Last night: terribly insistent tremble, then a strong bump--pronounced in conclusion, ojalá... All lying awake... Cast together in a state of no return, across the North African litoral, Abd al-Rahman--a migration, beginning with one. Life of the pilgrim...

Mongolian ponies--Przewalski again, wandering the Gobi in search of this creature of fable. A Polish nobleman, from the Kresy--Smolensk--he crossed the Dzungarian wastes, all the way to Beijing, then up the Yangtze and into Tibet. Over the Tian Shan...

Bactrian camels, and a gazelle...the equus ferus, too...

Analect 2.139x

19 July 2007. Sunny, with a few clouds, warm dusky grays tinged with rose, all along the hills. Propitious dawn. Tiny silver aeroplane reads even brighter against the southern sky--heading somewhere east. As in Xanadu, perhaps, or not quite that far, "down to a sunless sea..." Certainly not Olivia Newton John--that was then, granddaughter of Max Born, from the König Wilhelm gymnasium at Breslau, then Heidelberg, Zurich, Göttigen...Chicago, even. But Brooklyn no, Travolta's pals--white polyester and in-line skates...a row of leg-warmers...

The lonely Appaloosa, Montana plains, thunderstorms and snow...

Analect 2.138x

18 July 2008. Ring of gray mist encircling Albany hill, rain in the night--small drops, each sound each leaf. Wet grasses, and the news in two blue wraps... Pelerinage: Jeanne d'Arc and the marsh hare--Erasmus, apparently, "wilder in the marshes..." More alert than wild--attentive, even. As in reading--a book, an essay, a letter...or looking out onto the sea, where glassy swells nudge each other all the way to the horizon, crest and trough, crest and trough... The wind has dropped, water like burnished oil, moment of dusk, sun pushing towards a finale--a luminous orange globe moving past the edge of the world...

Analect 2.137x

17 July 2007. Gray morning, mist on the hills, illuminated just a little along top--hint of sun. A father and daughter, walking, he's dark-skinned, a dusky umber, in soft green cotton. Hand in hand, with black and white puppy on long leash. Loomis truck now, pale in color, rumbling past, heading up the hill, miniature American flag cocked at an angle on driver's door. Everything with its own meaning.

Al-Andalus. Cities with gardens--the Guadalquivir. Al-wadi al-kabir, Arabic of course. The Alhambra--al-humra, red, color of the clay. Umayyad, Abbasid, Moravid...El Cid--old-line crusaders. A library of 400,000 volumes--in Córdoba--watered gardens, while they lasted. An openness, unseemly, curious, grand...

Analect 2.136x

16 July 2007. Gray morning, mansard roof across the way, intermittent puffs of white disappearing against a luminous sky. But let's not overdo it here--we're talking dry cleaning establishment, after all, and the humble 7-eleven. Humble, why not. Like the cockle shell of St. James--coquilles St. Jacques--emblem of pilgrims along the entire route. Worn on the sleeve or carried, sometimes, as in the standing figure from Rothenburg, carved of wood, one leg stretched forward from under a long garment, a small water flask at the belt, staff in one hand, and in the other--a cockle shell. "Go forth with your palms upward," he said to Kristi--a pilgrim also, of her very own faith. And what is faith, after all, but something our very own...

Analect 2.135x

13 July 2007. Expanse of blue sky, end to end, a Greek island morning--Aegeo--soft sound of water lapping at the edges of the quay. A single figure, dressed in a suit, sitting at a small table right there by the sea. He's reading--a paper, it seems--something from Athens, Piraeus, Marseilles. Morning light--you can tell by the shadows, the freshness of the water, the translucence... A beginning, quiet, open-ended...

Jamaican man, also by the sea, sitting on the sand. He knows he's being filmed--looking right into the camera, wry smile, intent on telling. Of middle years, teeth no longer whole... He holds out a tape cassette, at arm's length. "I will sing it for you, a cappella..."

"The stone which the builders rejected...," but in his own patois. "Even ma'asu ha-bonim..."

Analect 2.134x

12 July 2007. So, off we go--rolling clouds over mansard roof, blocky yellow school bus with back up lights showing, now the sound, too--that particular mindless regular beep, warning of nothing and everything all at once. A city bus chimes in--higher pitch, faster rhythm--but very much the same idea. Telegraphic messages to the cosmos--to other machines, perhaps, for only they would understand... Princess N visits yesterday, the lady in the crocodile--striking close to home, as we review the harvest. She teaches me a new word: zögern, from Rilke, I think--he used it in a poem... The dictionary is no help: to pause, to hesitate, to lag, to tarry--procrastinate, even--to demur. Falter, indecision--all the words that find that spot precisely in between intention and effect--where we're most human--a place of dream--how did she put it, yes, the wavery line...

Analect 2.133x

11 July 2007. Low gray clouds with trailing edges, touch of blue cutting through from below. All caution to the winds, mates, it's a merchant ship. "If you can only get them to meet you, once they're there, they're sold. Meet your neighbor..." Overheard conversations, avenue advice--how the town works, a little of this, a little of that. Yesterday: low clouds with trailing edges, two girls dancing, in a narrow hallway. From immobility to everything, in an instant, movement of the arms first, then the shoulders, feel of the beat--except that I watch in total silence--not a sound, just the flickering image of two figures in motion, Greek priestesses in daily dress, smiles, slippers and cut-off jeans...

Emma's birthday today: she's ten years old. Jane Austin, astronomy, flowers...

"I think it's gonna work...!"

Analect 2.132x

10 July 2007. Two ragged crows, veering over the playground, one leads, the other follows. Mist on the hills, a gray Pendleton blanket, raw wool of a neutral shade, alloyed... Lands of the Umayyads, from the Indus to the Pyrenees... early settlements in Hispania--Berber warriors, a Syrian king...they intermarried, soon enough--Roman remnants, gypsies, Visigoths...children with pale skin and blue eyes, their mothers from the north, recently converted...wholehearted, that is...the Ornament of the World, so said Hroswitha, a nun in Saxony--her description, from the tales of the ambassador of AlAndalus... Or so the story's told--a time of tolerance, a delight in all the facets of the world, where openness finds a home...the crescent and the wavy line...

"Se toma una esfera celeste, tan grande como se quiera..."

Analect 2.131x

9 July 2007. White smoke against white sky. Sharp bay wind picks up all remaining stubs on a tear-off flyer that's been taped to the streetlamp stanchion. Monochromatic morning, even the yellow hump of asphalt rolling up to the cleaners has a black-and-white demeanor--like the red wall-stripe just inside... Last night: ladder on shed roof, footsteps up above. Unwanted presences, unseen--later running across bank parking lot, hooded shirts, looking up and back. Furtive. Fertig. The great sea battles, relenlivened in slap-dash paint--a little imprecise for Napoleon, perhaps--Heart of Oak, Lobcouse and Spotted Dog. Patrick O'Brien, born in 1914, at the outset of the end of an era. Like Rachmaninoff, wandering in a lost past, all the way to the Second World War. "Monotonous in texture ... consisting mainly of artificial and gushing tunes ..." That's how the Grove Encyclopedia had it as late as 1954. And what about Sibelius. "Hopelessly provincial."

Yet Morton Feldman, in Darmstadt, humming the Sibelius Fifth...

Analect 2.130x

6 July 2007. Continuous gray sky, ripply gray-green pool, wiggle of fingers from Alison as a hello... Later, young Asian man in white cut-offs, striped top, sandals, load of clothes in his arms... Ladder in front of dark window, two men emerge, carefully carrying an unhooked neon sign--clean living...they lay it down on the sidewalk...

Bernice Abbott in New York, sometime in the late 1930s. Figure emerging from basement stairs, the Bowery, three large porkchops for 30 cents, Yankee pot roast, oxtail stew. Meal plates, a dozen or two more, enumerated in white hand-painted script, adjacent window and wall... An expected plethora...

Woman behind me, ordering t-shirts for children and grandchildren, every detail spelled out. "Aren't I a good customer...", and "I do all my homework..." Greg stands alongside... "One, two, three, four, five," pause, "six, seven..." A world of normalcy, taken for granted. Necessary, even. Mrs. Bridge, in her large car, lodged in the doorway of the garage, unable to get out... The midwest, late fall, snowstorm on the horizon...

Analect 2.129x

2 July 2007. Narrow gray-white wedge of cloud--long-horizontal--just over the 7-eleven. Red car angles back into lot, then sets forth. Beginnings.

The gathering for Leonard--praise and mystery. Elusive trailings of intellect... Winters' rationalism against doctor Julia's defiant, "I am a romantic." A poet of tears, said Jane Hirshfield. Leonard's "Falling," she places it in the middle of three. Carol's smile, quiet, many times emphasized, Jamie takes her arm, leads her to the podium. That Nathan grace--in him as well, a knowing flourish--wistful matador to the universe--but giving of life instead...

Analect 2.128x

30 June 2007. A Friday--April, June and November... Beautiful gray skies, my kind of morning. Massive cloud bank wedged over the hills at dawn, middle warm gray, sunlight pouring in to one side. Yesterday--much belated, learned of the memorial for Harvey Stahl... Doves in the afternoon, at twilight--a pair of them, chasing through camphor branches, magical hour. This morning, across the way--painter's truck, flatbed Toyota with low wooden siding, worn tarp held down with yellow rope. A rusted sign, slightly askew--stucco--nailed onto the back...

Like something out of Ovid--which story I'm not sure, the combination of volupté and doubt. Always that way--life surging ahead, trailing us in its wake... Nevins Street, the IRT...

Analect 2.127x

29 June 2007. Sun, and a preternatural blue sky. "It's too blue," Harvey Stahl once said, having moved out from New York, as he surveyed the panorama of the campus from his Doe Library rooftop alcove... But today, it's still blue, even with tracey whisps of cloud over the 7-eleven shingles. An American invention, where good fortune produces wealth. Roll of the dice, South Lake Tahoe, the gambling's on the other side...

Leigh and Jeremy, from far across the street. Each one animated in his/her own particular way. Newer model car, pulled in just alongside, sleek and nondescript. Minutes before: Javed, on his bicycle, careening out of the parking lot, head down Solano, cloudy expression. After working all night. But he looks up, waves good morning, "Hello, boss...how are YOU...?"

Analect 2.126x

28 June 2007. A Wednesday. Sunny morning. Mr. Copes' curious voice from the doorway--"How are you, my friend?" His 5-gallon pail with window-washing things, up and down the Avenue--a short man, of middle years. Gold tooth or two. Head always covered, until it's warm, and he needs to mop his brow...

Pina Bausch. Das Tanztheater. A man embraces a woman, or rather encircles her in his arms. To give comfort. His formal attire, white gloves--Spiegel der Gesellschaft--tender and clinical at one go. She a model of refinement, hair carefully gathered, tailored dress with tasteful floral print--a strand of pearls. Her ring--left hand--catches the stage lighting, and a narrow leather strap, above, over her wrist...

Rilke to Marina Tsvetaeva--"signal givers, noting more..."

"Each relinquishing fall plunges into the origin and is healed."

Analect 2.125x

27 June 2007. Brown United Parcel truck pulls in, glowing morning sun, Worldwide Services, golden letters on a darkened field. Yesterday: Jason Fox, his Aunt Jackie--the letter N on a dark blue cap, sidewalk show, under movie house marquee somewhere in New York... Figure in stocking cap, then another, lights of the city just behind. Double-long bus pulls in--long white shape, lumbers off, but the dance continue. Home video with very smooth cuts, golf gestures raised to the waist, the shoulders, baseball maybe--Yankee Stadium in its final season, 161st Street, the Bronx, turns and returns. Quick steps, a jump or two, arms out for the swing...

Sound off, just for the movement--always alive...

Analect 2.123x

22 June 2007. Morning sun. Animal hospital girl in white smock, brisk stride across north end of 7-eleven lot. White van with light-colored box askew on roof, aligned with bungee cords. Close at hand: shadow pattern of leaves on jumbly gray sidewalk, gentle motion. Floating flag form--the copy store logo--meandering on a darkened screen... Al-Andalus, this time via Paris. Bazille's studio, decor on the walls: rugs, daggers, brocade... She reaches into a purse just above her waist--everlasting gesture. Very foreign--and very French...

Analect 2.122x

21 June 2007. Longest day, shortest night. Sunny and clear. Yesterday evening: cold wind off the bay, raking the length of San Pablo. A few late diners at the Little Hong Kong, headlights zipping by, gold and white. Stories to Emio, the camera running. To take something with so little apparent value--a small square of cardboard--and to redeem it with meaning... As told to Nathaniel and Stephanie, a week before: the flood of divine light, breaking of the vessels, shards fall to earth, amidst which the sparks--to discover them, return them to their maker. No language for this, just a wash of muted color, then another--eddies and striations, everything the world would want to be. A kind of theater, perhaps, the quality of one tone against another, slight roughness of an edge. "Not too perfect," that was Lars' phrase, years ago, as he worked on a drawing, taking up a small eraser and easing back on a line--blurring it a little, an accident or two... The way of the world...

Analect 2.121x

20 June 2007. Skies gray on gray. Two-tone 7 tucked away behind magnolia leaves. Marlboro's double chevron just below, $3.99. Wszystko na Sprzedaz--Wajda's film from 1969. Everything for Sale.

Tradesman in green t-shirt. The glazier's truck has arrived. He pulls the OSB, tapping a secondary sheet into place. Long length of aluminium molding...

Streets of Granada--Moorish Spain. Los Chulos, Los Gorrones, La Gente del "Hampa." Los Guapos tambien. Islami al-Andalus. Los Moriscos que no se fueron...

Analect 2.120x

19 June 2007. Gray skies, chill wind off the bay. Window across the street boarded up, incongruous sheets of OSB. Evening before a car went half-way through, right into the foyer of the cleaners. On opposite side of door, still plugged in: Same Day Service, and, in flowing dark orange script, Alterations...

Al-Andalus, In the Shadow of Pomegranates. Small village in Moorish Spain, on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Mulhacén, the highest peak, snow-covered even into the spring. Legend has it that Muley Abul Hassan, second to last of the kings of Granada, was buried there. He refused to pay tribute to Castile. A life of peace--recetas and silk--but the Church would have none of it. Moriscos, conversos, la vita nueva...fierce tenacity of belief...

Analecty 2.118x

18 June 2007. Bright Monday, cool bay wind. Colombo bread van pulled in at an angle, 7-eleven lot. Odd green and lemon-yellow strip on white field, image of loaf and roll. Kurt Schwitters on the dunes at Scheveningen...the Ursonate--a poem made up only of sound...

dll rrrrr beeee bo,
dll rrrrr beeee bo fumms bo,
rrrrr beeeee bo fumms bo wo taa

and so on and so forth, as Uncle Jimmy used to say. The coast of Holland, yes, and points east...a wedding, perhaps. Two rustic figures appear, arrived from the country-side--bast shoes, heavy coats. A peasant dress with light-colored apron, fleur-de-lys on the Russian front--weave of tiny violets... Carrying a basket of fruit, lemon, fig, olive--just the beginnings, just the beginnings...

Analect 2.117x

15 June 2007. Warm again...even in the morning. Leigh's face just outside the window, pushing back a strand of graying hair. Her shopping cart--the neighborhood's excess, gathered, like a miner, working a vein...vegetable and mineral, bottles and cans, piles of newsprint, rags, god knows what, an inverted world, wheeled slowly up the street.

Set free a bird. Searching last night--Peterson's Guide to the Western States. Which one? The oriole--too bright. Spotted Towhee--Freya's guess--but no white front. Black-headed Grosbeak--also Freya--but needs the collar. The right creature on Plate 48--same page as the robin... A Varied Thrush...?

Oregon forests late in the fall, mushrooms everywhere, pushing up through the damp ground. Each one distinct, never quite matching the examples in the book. As if planned that way--to fall in between. Always their own...

Analect 2.116x

14 June 2007. Warm morning, dusty blue sky, cool shadows along edges of the street. "Das ist Werner," the early voice, as if from some secret service operation on the Eastern Front, low, gravelly--understated but firm. The kind of voice that gets you in trouble--or already has...eternity and a day.

Under the Sallyport, middle of old dorm block. Darting in and out along dark brick walls, perched for a moment on the even darker molding above. A dusky orange with blackish hood, sash dropping just below the eye, another over the shoulder, as if to hold in place the taut black wings. Alert, none too pleased--he disdains the attention. But it can't be helped--we notice everything. Gnarly bark of old sycamore, wide-branching ash and elm...the expanse of lawn, Portland green, two hazy tracks disappearing into the gloom, and a tiny white garden chair, seen from afar, something dark blue draped over its back...

No telling here, the guests have gone, scattered home, all far flung...

Analect 2.115x

15 June 2007. Figures outside the window--morning bus. Michael, narrow-limbed, with a full rucksack of books, quick smile as he turns to board the G. Portland again, standing under the Commons eve with John. Remove of forty years. Last time was the Doyle stairwell, fall of 1964, sometime late at night. Hume paper due the next morning--was it Blake? Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience. But how does one know? His holding forth--on Leadbelly--the only true music. An adamant view... But again, how little we knew. A bridge in Caddo county, oil derricks and duress, the prison songs were just a fragment. He'd as well have been doing Gene Autry...

All the same, finally, all from the same spirit...

Analect 2.114x

12 June 2007. Golden light raking the south wall of the pool, ripples and shimmers. Two dark flip flops, askew, on wet tile. Racing turns in the deep end. Portland, Sunday morning...the wide lawn at Reed. Mike Russo's stories--Candy's brought him over--his tours with Lightning Hopkins, up and down the West Coast, Brownie McGhee, too. Got his start in Gresham, a few miles to the east. Last played in 1980, he tells me, with Brownie McGhee. More recently--hard times. "But I still have my thumb and finger picks in my pocket." And he did, too--taking up my guitar, launching into an inimitable version of "The Fireman," bass runs right out of the blues, figures up the neck, too, solid, emphatic--the kind of playing where detail never outweighs the song itself.

You wonder how he got there--so strong, simple, direct. Like the old guys, even with some missed notes. "It's all country...," he tells me. "But you know, I learned even more from them during the times in between the songs..."

Analect 2.113x

11 June 2007. Alison in the pool, leaning back, looks up smiling. Her black suit and blue green water. Birds in flight, Portland, dipping down over the Columbia. Rough freighter filled with rust, downstream, working tugs with flat pram prows--river boats--moored nearby. Ukrainian cab driver--Odessa. Old Russian songs, now with a Uniate twist--softened, rounded-off--but still that same longing... He swings over to Woodstock--way out at 82nd, same as four decades back, ramshackle structures, overgrown, the edges rounded off as well. Winter rains, green--a burgeoning, by way of melancholy...

Carved in stone, a single bird, emerging from a ledge. No lengthy wings, just a hint of flight, staring, forever...

Analect 2.112x

8 June 2008. Gray sky, touch of sun now from just over the hills. Blustery man in blue-black vest, tossled hair--Scottish highlands--making his way across Solano on the diagonal, worn leather knife case at his side. Last week: morning sun, two figures with guitars, in front of the old Commons. Felt hats and Yamahas--mountain retreat. Songs fifty years old? Right out the window--it's all rock and roll. Hank Williams, maybe--something lyrical? Takes encouraging--to get through the strum-o-phile veneer. A culture of consumption--re-purveyed. That's where we're at. But the songs themselves--where do they come from?

Bono this morning, on the radio, G8 Summit--his quest for African aid... Articulate, straight-talking. Almost guileless. "I'm just a vain pop star from Ireland..."

Analect 2.111x

7 June 2007. Bright Thursday, already warming. Stephan's gestures, seen through doorway of pool. The swim coach--bevy of women looking up at him as they lounge for a moment in the shallow end. Gray-green waters--now in the north. Portland canyon, alders and willows, tangle of unnamed grasses, all around the edge. Proliferation of green--impossibly green--verde que te quiero verde--the endless rains giving way to a hot summer afternoon. River valley--the sandy Willamette. Old smells of pulp mills and wood smoke--a working town. The Yamhill Market, horsemeat and mutton--Ginny Gilmore's "continual" stew--we finally had to toss the entire icebox... Quiet now, the summer's visitors yet to appear. Amphitheater on a hillside--rickety wooden benches, set into the slope. Not yet refurbished--no need to, apparently--memories too strong. Like the faces--intelligent, intense--all re-seen...

Analect 2.110x

6 June 2007. Pale blue sky, one small white cloud far to the south. The man with smokes, standing next to his polished black Porsche, unfolding a newspaper on the roof. Morning rituals. Evening, too. The four of us, walking alongside Reed Commons. Two penny whistles, a concertina, and Diana's voice. Earlier: her twirling motions, unending--singing along with everything. "I can make up words..." Chesty voice, belting them out, but understated, too. Not so much tentative as in her own world. The holy fool? But why her alone? Why not the friend alongside, holding the mandolin--or, later, an Irish flute, at the side of her narrow mouth. We reconvene--it's just past dark, making our way across the lawn to a long rolling hillside where everyone is gathered. Small figures down below, hidden in the distance--red lamps attached to their arms. Then, all of a sudden, a first narrow trail rockets into the sky, bursting into a streaming canopy of yellow-gold. "Ahhhhhhhhh...," the response from the crowd--primal, even--as if around some ancient fire...

Irish songs, played in the night...

Analect 2.109x

5 June 2007. Cool Berkeley morning, late spring. Whispy layered clouds, bus route sign shifting in the breeze. Changes. "Effective June 24 line 18 will begin stopping here & line 43 will no longer stop here," the dates and numbers entered by hand. History of the world at the end of a signpost--or a flagpole. The stars and stripes--unexpected--high above the wide Reed College lawn. A very warm day, humid, even. Everyone has left again...Eliot Circle, shaded once more in trees. A bicyclist or two, neighborhood folks, and one tall, pensive young man, stooped slightly, striding slowly in the direction of the library. Sound of piano from inside--second floor perhaps. Scales at first--soft and tentative, then something more complex, but still indistinct. Two women sitting on the steps, one with here skirt pulled up onto her knees, having a talk.

The letters of Father Catich--remembering when they were written. A guest of Lloyd Reynolds, from St. Ambrose College in Iowa, he held the brush--long and narrow--at a full arm's length, facing the stone. Writing each character by hand in slow, careful sweeping strokes--later incised and painted blue. Eliot Hall. Roman capitals from the Trajan Column. Not perfect--that was the aim. Human creation--an entire past contained in each of the forms...remade each time as best we can...

Analect 2.108x

31 May 2007. Tossing gray skies--light clouds moving across. The cleaning man in rose-gray short-sleeved uniform shirt, walking his old brown lab. Scruffy Mustang in 7-eleven lot--graffiti all over the hood. Zampano e' arrivato. The scenes from La Strada--Nino Rota's theme--cymbals and drums, Gelsomina with her trumpet. Anthony Quinn--chains across his chest, pulled wide to the max--they break, and he is free... Must all end in tragedy? Machine guns and sea walls--our best knowledge and hope. Tsvetaeva on the Kama--no end. "I do not know."

"For water clarifies the spirit, no less than a perfect friend." And music is all...

Analect 2.107x

30 May 2007. Gray skies, summer dawn. Puffs of whitish smoke drift up from roof of the 7-eleven, just over the cleaners. One fine blue line circumnavigating a darkened window...the words, spelled out in neon, turquoise green--Clean Living. Oh that it were so. Tsvetaeva last night, her response to a query from the new Bolshevik state, forwarded to her in Paris by Boris Pasternak, asking as to her origins as a writer. Many of her answers indelible. Social origins: peasant, worker, employee, cleric... "Of noble birth." "I know no literary influences, only human influences." "Things I hold most dear: music, nature, poetry, solitude." "Life is a railroad station; soon I will set out--for where? I will not say..."

Her photograph, 1925 or so, with daughter Ariadna. A life of rivers: Tarussa, the Oka, Koktebel, Chernomorye, the Kama...the Yenisei...

Analect 2.106x

29 May 2007. Gray and cool, clouds along the coast. Single line of metal flashing along roof of the 7-eleven, same color and value as the sky. Figure on bicycle, ragged longish beard, dark beret, buttoned wool sweater and nubbly jacket--comes in to make color copies. He's smiling as he explains the order. "That's four fifty seven..."

JMW Turner, sturm und drang--had himself tied to the mast of a ship so that he could fully experience a storm at sea. All the sailors below deck, just the painter and the waves. Back and forth about Keifer, Wagner--a certain human need for drama, perhaps? But what about "the poetry of blandness"--François Julien, who mastered Chinese, both the literary and the artistic traditions--in a lifelong examination of quiet. "To better understand the origins of our own classical civilization..."

The poverty of theory; experience is all. It doesn't have to be a storm...

Analect 2.105x

24 May 2007. Thursday morning, cool air, sunshine. Portland soon...the north country once more. Sawmills and paper, woodsmoke on the Willamette. Burnside Bridge, open to the river below, metal towers against an Oregon sky. What's forty years? Last time Midgette was working on his room-scale portraits--students, friends, Sally, himself--an American Courbet, without the cap. Bonjour, Monsieur... Wide expanse of lawn, hard to recall now just how wide--birds early in the dawn, grackles, maybe...and once or twice a year, snow. The temperature could drop to zero, everyone holed up. Walks in the forest--hunting for mushrooms. Boletus edulus, aminita muscaria (the fly agaric)--in Poland, as well. Red cap with touches of white--a children's toy. Everything returns... states of mind, incantations...

Roll on, Columbia roll on...

Analect 2.104x

23 May 2007. Warm already, just stepping outside the door. Light layer of clouds clustered to the south. Tiny figures of workmen lined up along one edge of the Bank of America roof, dark against the sky. Long ladder braced against the wall. One white t-shirt. Last night: St. Petersburg--looking for the Moika, the Fontanka, the Griboyedov Canal...not to be found. It's all stories of grupovniki and transit fuel rackets, godfathers in old hotel ballrooms--Vladimir Sergeyevich--and a waitress who blushes when asked to describe the flavors of the ice cream... The exotic returns to the everyday. A thousand Russian school girls still in love with Sergei Yesenin--that same hotel. He wrote his last poems there, in blood, very near the end. No place in a world of crankshafts and bullet-proof vests. Or was that it? Maybe just the song... A life lived to the fullest, ongoing, forever...

"And I hope that someday she come to love me too..."