Analect 2.170x

28 September 2007. Scraggly dragon cloud whisping over white patch, heavy layers of gray tom tom, rain soon, rain soon, standing white lamp post--arched sentinel to the gods, silhouette, and tucked away under the eaves, run of warm interior light--constancy of the 7-eleven. Constanz--how we searched, the Dutch painter of atmosphere--was that it?--not so strident as Karl Appel Or Kiefer, before. "He's so aggressive." Force, more like it--the recognition or the imposition. Strands of matted yellow straw--embedded in an expanse of gray oil. "How golden thy hair Margarete, how ashen thy hair Shulamith..."

Analect 2.169x

27 September 2007. Succoth, a warm evening, moon through the mimosa tree, clearing the hills to the east, flooding the sky. The Mid-Autumn Festival, also people sitting together outside, eating mooncakes... Carrying brightly lighted lanterns. The two ends of the world--or is it so? Landing at night in Guilin, her mysterious hills hidden in the mist...

On the river at dawn, each bend disappearing... Fisherman on a bamboo raft, cormorants, shaggy phoenix-tail bamboo lining the banks, water buffalo in the shallows... The banyan tree...and a special kind of flower--or was it the fish named for the flower, as Effie instructed me--the Osmanthus-blossom... Perhaps that was her name?

The Five Treasures of the River. Friendship, a time of peace...

Analect 2.168x

25 September 2007. Filtered sunlight, early fall. Dusky yellow Ford pickup across the way, nosed in to 7-eleven wall. Working day. Voices of strikers on radio this morning: north side of Kansas City. Resolve and bewilderment. As in Lev Shestov--Athens or Jerusalem--more the resolve. His vision of the Garden of Eden--an eternal ecstatic existence--bounty of faith, perhaps, not yet brought down to the realm of distinguo--those grudging oppositions, true or false, good and evil, locked into the realm of "nature"--and every impossible false choice. Instead, to love the trees. Indeed, to speak with them...

Simone Weil: L’attention absolument sans mélange est prière...

Analect 2.167x

21 September 2007. Dappled sunlight, mild--as opposed to yesterday's dark hint of fall... Doritos truck safely parked along 7-eleven curb, golden triangles this way and that. Open doorway to Clean Living Cleaners across the lot just behind. Woman en route to bank, shapely black skirt, high boots... Human endeavors...

Last night: unexpectedly animated. Anthony's songs, "in my bosom, in my heart," Nathaniel's wandering images, moments of focus, delight in the act... Hojin's somber elephant--girl lifts cup to drink, then again, then again...grains of sand, a wrinkled pea...the start of life... Sabina: Acrobats circling a bar, round bicycle wheel. Man in suit with pink pillow, in black & white...a woman's surprise. Mound of dark earth, held in the hand, moist, each grain...

Harry Belafonte song, from that same era. Day-O, day-ay-ay-o... World of something real, even if far far away... A life lived...

"Work all night on a drink a'rum
(Daylight come and he wan' go home)
Stack banana till morning come
(Daylight come and he wan' go home)"

Analect 2.166x

20 September 2007. Gray skies, first small drops of rain. Natasha on round table this morning, arching her back and tossing her head. Whispery meows. All is response, water vapor, the rising seas. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Reading last night--poems of Larry Levis...each one new. Fresno, valley fields, dry grass, weeds alongside the road. Smell of winter, tule fog. Scene shifts to New York--I held her in my arms, Lexington, Third...whiteness of snow. Later: The Graves of Rome. A subtle preoccupation--recurring, always, shadow-like...


"...I'd almost forgotten that what
Most people leave behind them disappears.
Three days later, staying alone in a cheap
Hotel in Naples, I noticed a child's smeared
Fingerprint on a bannister. It
Had been indifferently preserved beneath
A patina of varnish applied, I guessed, after
The last war. It seemed I could almost hear
His shout, years later, on that street. But this
Is speculation, & no doubt the simplest fact
Could shame me..."

Analect 2.165x

18 September 2007. Gray cloud veils hide touches of blue, unexpected mass of Albany Hill to the west... Cars divulge their student guests--itinerants all, backpacks and untried clothes--each new costume a blaze of youth, dashing, unsure... Girl in red top with long sleeves, slightly lighter carnation skirt, a little short, red mixed with white, tiny tattooed bracelet on right ankle, she looks back over her shoulder through sandy blond waves, all aware... Boy with intent expression, lifting hood of trunk--he reaches for handle of dark fiberglass case--a guitar. Asian woman, a little older, pushing cart of metal trays along edge of sloped driveway, balancing with uneven steps...

The scholar painters. Zhu Haonian's "Portrait of Tang Yin after Qiu Ying and Zhou Chen," 1851. Figure in dark cap, seated on a rock, one leg draped casually over the other. Reddish shoes, hands in sleeves, hidden in the folds of long garment. Impeccable line, mirroring elongated sheet of scroll. On bare wall, the paper catching every shift in New York light. Indeterminate age, looking back at the past, remembered in part...

Analect 2.164x

14 September 2007. Ha Melech ba-sadeh... The King is in the field. Mountains of Edom, Ethiopian steppe. Creature as figure, standing for... Gesture of nobility, a pride of lions. Oldest living court, back to the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, crossing the Sea of Reeds in a narrow boat, approaching the city of Jerusalem. Notion of Zion, a hillside, a gate, the land itself...the meaning shifts to meet each man's need. Need, yes, in a time of gray clouds and early rain, first drops on the dry earth, forthcoming...

Analect 2.163x

11 September 2007. Gray morning, approaching rain. Shaggy clouds over low 7-eleven roof. The good old days. Heavy-set man crosses street on diagonal, heading into the barber's. Woman of middle years with top-knot and khaki shorts, next to a white station wagon. Just last week: warm, humid afternoon on a crosstown bus, 23rd street, between 9th and 10th. Designations.

Kaikodo. Painting of a scholar seated on a stone. Somewhere in China, three hundred years ago. His long face, kind and severe. A motionless repose, where the weight of the support becomes him. Very much at home.

Analect 2.162x

31 August 2007. High clouds pearl gray, even a chill to the air, after heavy end-of-summer days... Valley hills, parched and brown, concentric rings to the east. Copper mines and zinc, chunks of iron, the entire mineral lore--opening onto miles and miles of straight-plowed fields... The Golden State, by some standard, a banner and a name... Gray marshlands at dawn, absent wind, every tiny ripple... A minnow scooting back and forth in cloudy shallows, then another...stands of reed. A heron watching, preparé...

Analect 2.161x

30 August 2007. Warm light over the hills, a Jerusalem morning. Figure of a man just now outside, peering up Solano, one hand to his brow, waiting for the Number 18. Figures of change, a crow, perhaps, poised, or something smaller. Robin or raven...

There's no telling. All is story--an unfolding of fleetingness... In México they sing, in the Argentine, staccato--so Ilan Stavans this morning, early, on the radio. But wait, that can't be. The guttural purr of the Porteño?--all sounds bending into "zh"--immersed in atmosphere... Avellaneda, Riachuelo, Hincha La Boca...

Analect 2.160x

28 August 2007. Argiope in the shadows, morning sun, spray of water across gray enamel hood, opening... La foule de pèlerins: Mark last night, to the entire gathering: what would be your question... A challenge--not in competition, but as a kind of vast encouragement. What would you engage--today--can it be done together? Roomful of faces, quizzical, tired, eager, intent, one woman staring vaguely down into the screen of her laptop, a red-haired fellow way in back raising his eyes to the ceiling, girl with dark dark hair, beautiful and patient--sits waiting. A compact blond: "It should be provocative..." We listen for ripples of response. Maybe. Lists of books, tenacity of the mind, winding intertwining paths of thought, the temptations of control. But no, there's no plan, we're flying blind, as usual, soaring, even, the horizon way down there below, a few clouds, otherwise clear...

Analect 2.159x

23 August 2007. Fog trails over low hills, morning light. Last night--Thom Gunn's essays. Ben Jonson, the occasions of poetry. Yesterday--panadero, the provider.

Sea gypsies--the Moken people, maybe now a thousand still survive--living out their lives aboard long hand-carved boats, entire generations, afloat, swimming in the Andaman Sea...

Analect 2.158x

22 August 2007. Gray dawn, hint of sun. Black dog amidst trees, tall, narrow verticals, as in Seurat. Figure of a man, waiting nearby, hand outstretched--holding something shaped like a cup. Now, just across the street, patient flash of revolving amber light--large green truck, pulled in to curb, also waiting...

Valley fields, somewhere near Wasco. Forlorn towns on dry valley scrub. Once the largest body of water east of the Great Lakes... Kern River out of the mountains, wetlands for miles and miles--cattails and sedge, gray brown mallards with their dark heads, distinctive touches of white... Wings lifting by the thousand, immense...

Yesterday: Stockton school yard field. Empty in late August, no one in sight... Unexpecteded: a flock of Candadian geese, gathered, gleaning...

Analect 2.157x

21 August 2007. Ying and Keri in hazy shade at near end of pool--filtered indoor morning light, blurring. Girls. Yesterday, in green leaves at bottom of campus eucalyptus, two figures entwined. Smooth brown hips, arms around...

Rilke's castle at Muzot. A medieval tower, ancient walls. Small window through stone overlooking a wild garden...grapevines and summer heat--the Valois. Print of Swiss officer--expression so stern that Rilke would take his meals facing the other way...

Anthony: I cried afterwards...

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...