Analect 2.265x

29 April 2008. Pale blue May sky, puffy touches of cloud over 7-eleven roof. Niebla...morning mist. A horse bathing in the shallows of a river, brown and slow moving. Sueño del río. Wide sweep of low horizons...la tierra, que anda, anda, anda... Figure at night, swimming for the other shore. "Pero hay peligro..." A la gente verdadera...

Necesidád. Channels of words, meanings, options of truth. A stream--the story imagined, shared, retold. Compartir lo más importante... Compartir...

Una pulquería del campo...lejos, distante. Un hombre sale, muy pampeano, de buen estado, algo de borracho. Se monte en su caballo--cabagaldura de la noche--un matungo--y anda pa' su casa. Bien dormido ya, soñiendo de sus compañeros, soniendo, sonriendo...

Analect 2.264x

25 April 2008. Golden light, moving into May...an infused redolence, without explanatin, without excuse. Light through west window, fig trees and olives, zig-zag roofs, trailer parks and RVs, moderato version of the wild west. A truck stop or canteen--or maybe a saloon, as in El Centro, once, where Aunt Sis and Uncle Mac ran their bar--high dark interior light, mahogany counter running forever to your right, last night's drinks still tinting the noon-time air. Thanksgiving day--a family affair, the Pontiac station wagon--a Super Chief Safari (maybe not)--across miles of desert scrub. Borax plants and Brawley, Calexico to the south--a chilled Greyhound, some years later, en route, en route...

Mexicali, Nogales, Benjamín Hill...

Analect 2.263x

24 April 2008. April sun. White gull on asphalt lot, strutty walk in search of food, or love, or almost anything at all... Last night: the Tractatus, on bedroom shelf, London, 1969 perhaps. The date and place of the publication of books, Walter Benjamin's phrase--our only form of truth. But wait, let's ask the gull--or Sue, perhaps, the largeish type with graying hair, seated on counter stool, somewhere behind me, across the room. Others wander in and out. Distractions, inevitable distractions. Or are they not the point. Gates of hell, gates of perception--Lancaster, a desert shack with hot and cold, the back country behind LA, perfect setting for an English mind. Endless, arid expanse of the metaphysical--borax, topaz, tourmaline...

"All living beings shall soon be free..."

Analect.2.262x

22 Abril. Poco sol, poco sombra. Mediated clouds, wavery fillets of some unknown fish, banked again on the horizon to the south. Who cares? Some great maker, no doubt. His employ: to fall in love with the world--again, and again, and again--an endless chain of falling, or is it an ascent, into the hummus, the loam...

Last night: argyle and eros. Songs of George Brassens. Mourir pour des idées. But what? A cabaret, at first--relaxed, all attitude...but then the tone darkens, the weight of the beating wings of the past...

Song of Jeanne Planche...

Espíritu del Río, ojalá...

Analect 2.261x

17 April 2008. Warm gray skies, shifts in wind. A newsprint advertising flyer--bright colors--slips from top of green recycling bin. Street life--parade of the cotidienne. Nose of the 2006 at edge of window, AC Transit monster, roaring off now down the avenue. Voices: "I'll turn on the machine and get it done for you." Window again: the elder doctor's lanky walk, heading up the hill. Then: book merchant--Tim--his crinkled black leather coat, wire-rims, noticeable stride...

Zora Neale Hurston: stories from the South--Eatonville--Janie and Tea Cake. An understated sympathy for each of the names, for the inflections, the twists and turns. "Aw, don't make God look so foolish--findin' fault wid everything He made."

Pesach, too...

Analect 2.260x

16 April 2008. Morning sun, soft blue California light. Avenue activities--memorable or no. Pop of red scooter on uphill run, flash of white as the helmet whizzes by. Same with FedEx truck just behind--melodrama of the everyday. Man in white shirt, brilliant, dark dress trousers, making his way across 7-eleven lot, reaching into back pocket with left hand...wallet, appurtenance of commerce. Clean Living.

Placid, jumbled thoughts. Buenos Aires once--a guitar lesson. Barrio streets, mid-afternoon heat. Horizontal blinds pulled down over windows, Italian-style. A dark interior--húmido, mohoso... Sr. equis--pues no me acuerdo. Un estudiante de alguien famoso--eso. Rotondo, su manera, quizás pesado. Algo de Goncharov. De Oblomov. Me muestra una falseta, de Sevillanas, una vez, una vez mas. Notado. Calor de la tarde. Silencio. Silencio del interior...

Face of Diego, years later, tocando...cada instante, lo vivo...bullerías, soleá...

Analect 2.259x

15 April 2008. Chinese elm in full bloom, heavy fronds in rustling breeze. Chill sun, spring. Yesterday, late afternoon, winds off the bay, raking ripples across Hearst pool. Arcs of water in a single plane. Evening: three stones, weighted and drawn, strokes like water, like time, spilling onto paper. Anthony: dash of words, lonely piano, grand. Nathaniel: beautiful clumsy pinks, a girl's face, blurred in water--in time. Sabina: moaning sound of barge horn, all distance. Then: a man, whistling, an older woman, telling a story. "Pebbles and flowers..."

Zamba de mi esperanza
amnecida como un querer
sueño, sueño del alma
que a veces muere sin florecer

Analect 2.258x

11 April 2008. Sciencia de Hoy. Maria Lojo, retrasando el viaje de Lucio Victorio Mansilla. Diesiocho jinetes, dos franciscanos, casi sin armas, hasta Tierra Adentro. El desierto espantoso, aguas amargas de lagunas desconocidas, el cielo hecho de nieblas turbidas, tormentosas. Una llanura entera de yerba amarillo, pajaros volando por la luz de la tarde, cantando, cantando una cancion medio-entendida. "Aquí me pongo," eso lo dijo. Pero qué sabemos de la luz, de los colores de la tarde, de la amargura, del amor en sí mismo? Cuando llegue una carreta campesina, tirada por bueyes innocentes... Con ojos dulces. Lo sensato, siempre dicen, lo entendido...

Océano... Paraná...

Analect 2.257x

10 April 2008. El diez de Avril. Tipo con flores, con flores, flores en la mano, como monje o penitente... Una montaña 'tras de Santa Fe, alto y frío, grupo de gente bajado de un colectivo de escuela, el color amarillo, algo reluciente encima del paisaje de la tarde de invierno... Cruz de Malta, bajo de Truchas...terminos viejos--antiguos--pocos conocidos--como sí habramos poder de hacer sentido. Lo sensato, como dicen--lo entendido. Locura de la vida, todo va pasando...primavera, verano, huertas, sol...

"Dicen. Yo no lo digo..."

Analect 2.256x

8 April 2008. Milky gray, sparkle. Las mañanitas... Reina de los pajaros, de las flores...vía infinita de solitúd. Nos quedamos hablando, cantando--a medio día, a media luz, como si fuera cosa ajena... la distancia imposible. Siempre eso, lo querer, cosa de dios, me parece...

White bird on a gray sky, wheeling and turning. Ocean winds, off the pier. Huddle of immigrant fishermen--mackinaws and marines--an ammo case tackle box, heavy-handled bayonette. Starfish in a plastic pail, one flopping perch, fate undecided. We search for compassion--is that not it? A congruence, a field...

"There's a new breakfast place up from Nib's..."

Analect 2.255x

4 April 2008. Mist and sun milk, yellows into gray. Last night--overland with Sara into the wilds of North Beach, San Francisco Italianate boîtes, patrons at their small tables in early evening light. A Greek waiter doubling as a paisano, all mustachio and glint, offering a tray of unnamed treats as we pass quickly by his door. Up Russian hill to a narrow alleyway, beautifully illuminated room in back, walls lined with small bronze gestures--lost wax casts--women, satyrs, imagined organic machines. The age in which we live, anything becoming possible, while the attenuated thread-lines to a denser past become more and more finely drawn. Thoughts of Maillol--a woman's middle--or Bonnard, from his very late models--or Renoir, even--where the impulse towards sculptural form leaves no curve unturned. "How her skin takes the light"--a painter's vision, and French as well--clarity of the morning, a folded table, wood, windows to south and east, line of hills with olive trees--or poplars--or wild black oaks...

Mi corazón...

Analect 2.254x

3 April 2008. Té juro, corazón... La voz de Chavela Vargas, cada día, de humo, de ascua, siempre empezando, empezando... Albur de amór...

Flash of morning sun on silver white van, gift of the gods. But which gods indeed? Ovid's own telling, gay, insouciant, posing the question--as if every question could be answered... Except again in the telling. Daniel on Tuesday--a tour de force--Socrates and the Talmud, with reflections on Bakhtin, Levinas. The events of the world become concepts, concepts become real, fluid lines of analysis, parry, play, a kind Rabelasian bouillabaisse --or borscht--and a delight in contention (contentio)--sometimes for its own sake--that which arrives from the other side. Sitra wha'? Where language takes on its own transcendence, its own demise...

At the outset, in this grand auditorium, all flags and banners, lone podium and the chancellor's voice (omitting the key word, fat). In a moment of thirst, Daniel reaches under the shelf, producing a narrow bottle of clear water, lifting it to his lips, with words of assurance to an eagerly attentive crowd, his right hand trembling, ever so slightly--a tiny visibility--in the strong light. For a moment, we see him make a she-ha-kol--a blessing--silent, the words, unspoken--the only ones...

Analect 2.253x

1 April 2008. Sun, pearly clouds, sparkle. That kind of morning, if only for an instant. Tim with broom, his off-white loafers, nylon sweater, sweeping the sidewalk in front of beauty parlor. Old words--beauty parlor--as on Oceanside Boulevard, taking Mom in the car "to get her hair done." One of the buoys in an attenuated universe of meaning. Verities of place, time...

Sabina: a figure grasping a tree branch, his feet swing wildly into mid-air, born by the wind (unseen, unheard), Hat flies off into the heavens... A bird in its nest...

"Who knows the meaning of pedregal," as in Juan Charrasqueado? And why should they? A poignant turn in a forgotten song. Chavela's voice, slowing ever so noticeably (this happens even more in the following verse)--a shift in tone, in mood--the world returned to its center...

Creció la milpa con la lluvia en el potrero,
y las palomas van volando al pedregal;
bonitos toros llevan hoy al matadero,
qué buen caballo va montando el caporal.

Analect 2.252x

28 Marzo 2008. Pajaro de silencio, volando. Nubbly morning pink cloudlets hold their own again vast shelf of blue--cerulean--sun pouring over the hills, pitcher of gold... Like Sammy's Roumanian, on Christie Street--the pitcher, that is--illicit bounty, enjoyable down to the...

Larry's voice, absent now, departed for the brown truck, after swatches and swatches of Michelle Lopez (no, Wie, no Robin...) All the kinds of thoughts one works so hard to abandon. A conspiracy theory of trash--where (instead) the breath might be focused, the mind alighted... A seventh inning stretch of the spirit...

Sound of Tibetan monk's voice--disguised for his own protection--on radio at dawn. Our lives, creyendo...

Analect 2.251x

27 March 2008. Long slow flight home--Oakland--the blue Pacific giving way to valley gold. Misty northern light---a layer of abrogated cloud, sun in patches, warm and insistent. Chilly breeze... All innocence.

Rajnit at the wheel, his turban an inverted whirl--Amenhotep returns as Frank Gehry. The way things are, a kind of seeming...

Tuesday night, at the Calypso. Launching into into "Careless Love," a reckless start at half-tempo--more like a dirge--but with a cowhand's wave they pick it up to a loping country four-beat...

"Once I wore my apron low..."

Analect 2.250x On-the-Road

27 March 2008. Gray skies, ocean air. Sound of waves at night, played against march of inland road. Green wooden bird feeder, rustic, with pitched roof, tiny hole in back, on spider-webby metal pole, surrounded by dense leaves of the staghorn fern, just visible through screen. Pitch of eucalyptus, beyond, climbing skyward, delicate branches arced and tracing.

Last night: Jack and company, tucked into their Calypso corner. Bonne hommie all around. Henri at the back table with French friends , surf board and scallop shell decor. Early Calypso (as in Belafonte) as opposed to that of Titan's daughter on Ogygia's shores. She promised eternal life--if only he would stay--but Odysseus built a small boat, set sail, Ithaca bound...

Analect 2.249x

21 March 2008. Sun, à la Bonnard, just short and to the point. All thoughts saved for that tender blizzard of color hugging his one well-used plate. A palette, of sorts--alimentation, of the eye, where each precise new tone emerges in its flurry of ambiguity...until...

Yesterday: wandering the De Young. Metal expanse of meaninglessness, grates and grills, carapace of the armadillo--but where is the creature, the physical being, the twist of arm and torso geared to a knowing? All vanished in a hyperbole of innocent, insistent geometry. Will replacing would...

Then: a single Colima dog, dark red-brown clay, asleep now for 2300 years, paws tucked under chin, tail wrapped down around legs, just so--the characteristic open O, all life becoming, the handle of a cup, the lift of a glass...

A blessing, perhaps, or simply something everyday...

Purim...

Analect 2.248x

20 March 2008. Pale yellow gold sky--more resolute from up close. Tiny birds work at scattered leaves near edge of curb. Searchers. Hopping with their shadows in the raking light.

Georges, last night, describing Ozu. "An everyday story." Narrow patch of light falling on a man's cheek. The appearances. As with Benjamin: A Short History of Photography: people's faces in those first few years, before they knew they were being pictured. An openness, incommensurate...

Unmeasureable--one's unbounded space, known in such masterful detail. A personal history of the senses, worked up in relation to all else--lifeboats, lines from Kant, trolley problems, Chip and Joe. All fading away--or merging, rather--into one intimately vast sweep of conocimiento.

Not so much yo sé as yo conozco...

Analect 2.247x

18 March 2008. Short beeps of waiting bus, hidden from view--driver leaning into wheel as she veers to the left. A summer's day in spring. Radio sound of Barak Obama's voice--on race. What Simone called "America's great wound." Kennedy, Jakarta, Kenya. Kansas, too. An unwound web of interstices--taut and alert, juxtaposed with the snapshot of his mother, a seeker--her curiosity--meeting the world on its own terms... Another kind of vision--in the joining. Can this be ours too?

Yesterday's green, an Indonesian courtyard, children in the simplest of clothes, faces turned upwards, smiling...

Last night: gathered around a song. Jose Pedroni's poem, "Carcel." Voice of Orlando Vera Cruz. ""Los Borrachos de Diego Velásquez..." As with Garcia Lorca--each noun, weighted, an earthy presence, and at the same time, algo más. El origen de los símbolos... "Luna, paloma y trigo."

His voice--con todo cariño, "Eso..."

Analect 2.246x

14 March 2008. Warm yellow light on gleaming cars, pockets of wet dot the street, sun. All in the angle--of incidence, of repose. Girl in milky pink sweats, ambling past, just a touch roly-poly, drink in hand, gabbing with the figure alongside--also in sweats--her mom. But here I'm guessing. Two visitors from afar--a Belgian princess and her dowager aunt, discussing the succession. Or perhaps the stars in some unknown docudrama on the lives of women in Siberia--or...or...

...good Baucis and Philemon, that mysterious history of inadvertencies. Ovid's tender recycling of a story from the gods--Jove and Mercury come to earth, two simple travellers, spurned by all, but welcomed by these generous elders...who layer their table--olives and farmer's cheese, radish, endive, egg... Cornel-cherries, and all manner of nuts--honey, figs dates, plums, grapes... An apple, sliced, and then the wine, poured in what proves to be an un-ending stream...

It's this first part of the telling--where modest Philemon wipes her board with a sprig of mint, tucking a bit of pottery shard under one leg to steady it; or Baucis, reaching into the rafters with a long pole, pulling down their best smoked ham...

Worlds generous and intact, no moral here (at least at first), only the sharing...


(for Mauricio)

Analect 2.245x

13 March 2008. White Rogers Trucking slanted against gray sky, figure hidden behind, crumpled trousers and the lower stripes of a nondescript brown and orange shirt. Tailgate. Small digitized turning lights, high-key pastels, yellowish, blinking away. Pair of work boots approach cab from opposite side...

Nathaniel West, the San Berdoo Arms. Homer Simpson, his one hand carrying its mate to the sink, bathing it ... Reading this at fourteen--amazed by the presence--the feel of something authentic, if slightly unpleasant... That was it, a reduction. To argue with, as if heroism could find no place amidst the snaking wires and pasteboard backlots. World not so much of ruin as of displacement. Dollar trains to paradise, the seedy beachfront villas, crumpled winter skies, half-finished drinks in linoleum casters, pinkish blankets, longing...

And yet...

Analect 2.244x

11 March 2008. Blurry birds of the morning, white sky, sun from the east. Inti, the Arauacan, cuerdó, Quilmes, Leubucó. Words in the middle of the night, debajo de las cubiertas. I offer them myself: to bless, for example--or to hide. Escondido, tucked away, blanket pulled high into a kind of tent--to shelter the light. Saturdays in Oceanside--very early. Something on the radio, Big John, Sparky. Lo chispeante. Chusma, potro, chiripá. Meanderings back and forth, always the anticipation--possibility of beginnings. A habit of sorts, an eagerness for the unknown...less danger, though, than delight. Glee. Or maybe simply deseo.

A welcoming...

Analect 2.243x

7 March 2008. Gray with sun with gray. Indecision--who needs it. Again, voices, insistent voices. The public realm. Birds calling out in the morning, a dove, for example. Tucked in under the neighbors' eaves. The talk meanders on. "I took it to the biggest libel expert in San Francisco." "You need to retract this..." "But they didn't even answer."

Jerusalem, a dozen-plus years back. Small window onto narrow courtyard, just enough for morning light, sometime before dawn... Those same calls, unmistakable, even when heard for the first time. Was it a welcoming? A moment of on-goingness? Or are the two the same...?

Analect 2.242x

6 March 2008. Milky sun, quiet voices. Blue van edge in corner of window, man with toolbox crossing street, his other arm swinging in time. Two girls in 7-eleven lot, also just a flash. Wavy dark hair, shower, scrumpled t-shirt bit just below jacket hem. In front, matronly woman with stern face, power brow, reading invisible book, mouth slightly ajar. Her hair soft but wiry. Patient black shoes, untrimmed. School person appears, pinkish backpack slumped with books, no two places the same, leaning against bus post, vans a-dangle, checking her phone...

Last night, late: Miguelito. Refuge among the Ranqueles. "Ni un cautivo ni..."

His own kind of freedom...

Analect 2.241x

4 March 3008. Later morning, sun. Lurching FedEx truck, white plus emblems, squeezed onto 7-eleven slot. An older person, gray, worn gold wedding band, seated at window, leaning towards monitor as she types. Pleasant tapping sounds. Glasses tilted forward on the bridge of her nose, intent, pausing to scratch her head for a moment. Silently sighing.

Susurrar, suspiro. Lo que se oye casi sin pensar-- algo del pasado, de los días de ayer. Un barco en el río, navigando, donde hay que nadar. "Pero no tenemos substantivo." Substantivo, de que no hay en el río, donde todo se mueve. Todo se mueve. "La sombra de un caballo..."

(para Berta)

Analect 2.240x

29 February 2008. Gray morning, mist. Night of moans, oh lord, oh lord. Courtyard of dreams, rooms and doors, each one the same, no path, no sign, no key. Pero la carga viene--de Lucio Mansilla--un nublecito marrón, en la distancia. Ojos como lince, lo fije de múy lejos... Azulejos, azulejos.....

Courtyard in Spain, Morón de la Frontera, August 1965. Narrow winding streets, led by boy on bicycle to an arching gate--opening onto simple sky-covered patio, the wide Andalucian blue. A gentleman appears, white shirt, múy formal--this is Diego--we sit on small cane-woven village chairs, talk. Questions about Chet, Esteban--los amigos Americanos... His eyes, intelligent, reserved...todo eso por el cante...holding all for song...

Ansonini, Joselero, la Fernanda...

The key--acompañamiento, always a response. La alma viene, siempre viene, desde dientro...

Analect 2.239x

28 February 2008. Golden light subsumes the 7-eleven--that moment, early spring. Narrow girl in black tights, shades, loping across parking lot, climbs into tiny late-model Honda, swinging wide onto Solano. Expansive gray puff of cigarette visible through glass. Freedom, an ancient idea. Like Hart Crane, his window over Brooklyn, or Roebling before him--the pirate's glass--Columbia Heights, spyglass onto the East River, progress noted: each bolt, each cable end, attached and fastened, iron swing, chastened stone...

Gowanus, Red Hook, the Jersey Shore...

Analect 2.238x

27 February 2008. Web of clouds from west, intermixed with blue. Nicola this morning, darting across kitchen floor, stopping, looking up. "You're the man..." But wait, she never said a word, all by feline implication--feminine, that is, the tilt of a head, a lifted brow. "Breakfast would be good." Folded bag top with giant paper clamp, some newfangled plastic sheeting, opens to miles of kibble--Science Diet--only the best.

A white table cloth, the Biltmore Hotel, 1960 or so. Clothing Show. Clothiers. Rooms as booths, individual brands--trying to recall the names, their mercantile reality. Short sleeve suits, yes, with Nehru collars, gabardine and plaid. The Ernst tie. Stacy Adams, long narrow leather foot sleeves, intricately worked, each stitch a resolute advertisement of the individual self. Long ago. Sixth Street and Spring, the park, warm mornings with LA light, a pigeon or two, wheeling, wheeling...

Analect 2.237x

27 February 2009. Clean-washed sun, Canada Dry--the truck, that is. Large and white, with single black wheel. Asian man in gray-green suit reaching up to check the lock, his cohort, similarly dressed, swinging into cab. Disappearing into thin air--no mean feat (for a Leviathan). Like last night--Ung's gray wash, separate strokes merging at top, open below, revealing warm tan of underlying board. Three small holes to left--from a former life. Or the two smudgy footprints on long horizontal--Berta--writing on the world. Then, Sabina, kneeling on floor, intently folding her blue-lined sheet--an homage, "this changed my life," small boat on the open sea, charting a course for miracles--a vision, even, shared, it seems by no one else. America to the old world. Irish shore, the hull alone...sailor lost in place unknown...

A bird, a prayer...



(for Hojin)

Analect 2.236x

22 February 2008. Same Day Service in pouring rain, orange and pale blue-green, holding their own against the gray, reflected even in darker windows alongside. Red Toyota pickup with long roll of black roofing felt, bungeed up over the cab. Precarious. Tiny birds against southern sky--two by two, shapes so characteristic, so invisible.

Sitting with Jeremy at white studio table, late afternoon. In the old Chinese way--album leaves and hand scrolls under warm incandescent light. My crusts of worn cardboard--skeins of washy color, deep and bland. A figure or two, in line of brush, picked out like the emperor Sung Hui-tsung, his narrow branch arching towards the sky, edges heightened here and there with even finer lines.

For birds, they always began with the eye...

A keening...

Analect 2.235x

21 February 2008. Lumpy gray clouds across entire sky, nicely filtered
light. Single figure in plaid shirt crossing 7-eleven lot, brisk, hands in
pockets, glancing toward the illuminated interior. Earlier: Javed, night
shift. Sleepy eyes, mass of graying hair--Pakistan--as always, small
styrofoam cup, "one hundred nineteen dollars," the sounds softly elongated, with a slight smile to himself, waiting patiently while I fish out the change. The change--could be almost anything, out of nowhere even. The infrastructure of Mumbai, for example, a zigzag of railroad lines, crisscrossing steel--chemin de fer--still from early Satyajit Ray, The World of Apu, two small children nestled in high grass at the edge of a vast field, expanse of India left, right and above, until somewhere, in the distance, the first sound of a train...

Analect 2.234x

19 February 2008. Rainy approach over misty gray-green bay, colors lost in whispy clouds, dark and wet, all rooftops and ponds. A navy ship--squared off jaw--transport matériel--now small below...with ducks afloat on rippled tones of brown... Private jet pulled to side of glistening runway, figure emerges in trousers and shirt--business class--pausing on tarmac at end of stairs, his arms raised, stretching...

Fleeting sound of Spanish voice, young woman on bench, and a red-head, also young, with plastic bag from Berkeley Bowl, nibbling, healthy, red-tipped pen for notes in the margins of some elaborate stapled text--already filled with her small dark hand...

Jorge Cafrune, on the horse, retracing the steps of la Patria--two figures in a truck--a camioneta--19 years old, hired by Videla, or someone close. Their fervor, no doubt--and their aim. "Qué mueran los salvages unitarios..." Cries unending...

But also the songs...

Analect 2.233x

15 February 2008. New year: O's and infinity. Sparkly sun, mirrored for a moment on roofer's truck glass. Door swings open as figure in work boots and brown paper bag swings his legs aboard, 7-eleven. Sound of engine, silent blast of gray exhaust... Within: sound in back just now, second phone. "Hi, Melvyn, can you call me back?" Leonard's book, from years ago--Returning Your Call--his wry and poignant insights, increasing with age--the years a great underwriter of sadness--no, just melancholy, that feeling from the very edge of the path, as the horses sweep by--or on the sand, mid-September, crowds gone, each ocean wave alone...

Early Snow on the River, Southern T'ang, the fisher king...

Analect 2.232x

14 February 2008. Hole in the sky where the pine tree once stood--narrow pinnacle shooting into the heavens. Orion again. This morning: cold and very clear. Manager Mimi in Starbucks, her appealingly braided hair pulled up on either side, like Virginia or the Carolinas from an earlier age--leaning over the dark melamine counter with its industrially recessed holes, cleaning and polishing. Smiling.

In front now, warm carmine eggplant vest--baseball cap tucked low and a few whisps of grayish-white hair, Lee at work as well, salvaging, something from the bin, god knows what, a plus in the universe. Pulse, the rhythm of conviction. As with Emily, from the morning class, who asks me brightly, "What are you giving your wife for Valentine's Day?" The question itself--a world taken for granted. "Well, yesterday she read me the saddest poem I've ever heard." Quizzical look. "I listened..."

Analects 2.231x

13 February. Gray dawn light. Plants gathered in small jungle of pots under the eves--the tree cutters come today--Monterey pine. Groby Great Tree, of recent memory--Ford Maddox Ford, Parade's End, just after the First World War--Tietjens, the later son, unexpected inheritance...responsibility. Worlds revolving, colliding even. Velikovsky careens off the Mecon's wall of sound--no, more a nasty garage-band twist, set up in some Soho dive--Cockney, that is, or the Midlands--where the limitations of accent run thick, a social bridle and bit in every waiting mouth...

But it's gray outside, the white van waits patiently for owner's return, or cell-phone girl in black and pink, purse and bag, hair damp from shower, thumbing a paper on dark green recyling can lid. Hope of song, in an unexpected place. Even again: unexpected.

Analect 2.230x

12 February 2008. Sparkling sun, early spring. Puff of white smoke against pale blue sky. The older neighbor couple lumber by--a Mexican shirt and a blue smock, holding hands. Narrow figure emerges from 7-eleven , white hair, dark clothes, graceful stoop, opening door of dark red car. Woman with leopard-skin shawl...

Song with many O's--feeling follows sound. The pleasure of... Smallish gray squares, painted with infinite slowness, a wainscot room. Who are we? Frayed wire on white wall--abraded--and a camel/ship vision. Desert door. Words for drawings: fast, free, legal...incommensurate with gesture, sense of touch. A sly but serious way of knowing. A path. Treacherous reward...

Analect 2.229x

11 February. Gentle sunlight at dawn, the world store is opening a little earlier these days. Almost daylight walking down the steps, pool again. "The water is 77 degrees, but we're open.."

Stories and songs. A small settlement on the edge of the Pampa, Provincia de Santa Fe. Monje--the name abrupt, almost blunt, a noun--imported, plunked down in the middle of a vast field. Ganado, potro, ternero--bombachas on a certain señor who will ride his horse to the local cafe, spend the evening with friends--algo de vino--climb back on in the moonlight--un poco emborrachao--lean forward, half-asleep, and wake up in front of his home...

En frente de su casa. La toldería de los Ranqueles. An Indian man rides standing, upright on his horse's back, jumping off at full gallop, jumping back on...

We sit at a small table in the ark of a large white room, soaring. Cuentos, cantos, historia... "Soy parte Guarani--de mi Mamá." Ojos negros, vivos. "De nuevo en los tuyos..."


(para Laura)

Analect 2.228x

8 February 2008. Foggy morning, winding through back streets to Happy Cleaners, double yellow apparitions in the mist--an oncoming car. Oncoming car, fleetingly, in the mist, as in posted video on life of Jorge Cafrune--a set of stills, in black and white...manhood, boyhood, youth. Strong face with mop of hair and wide beard, dark heavy-browed eyes, like some kind of landlocked pirate of the interior. Jujuy--far to the northwest: Francisco de Argañaraz y Murguía, who erects a small settlement in 1593, fighting the Calchaquíes and Omaguacas for what is of course their own land. Later, all becomes song: "En las sendas de Tapí...."

Wan's face, ni hao ma, smiling. I wish her a good new year--gung hay fat choi--as she reaches just below the counter, brings out an orange, offers it to me with both hands. A time of gifts, blessings, good wishes. As the night before, The Great China-- up dingy stairs and backroom paraphernalia, smiling, to a brightly lit upstairs room, filling again with smiling faces. Platters arrive, the table is suddenly overflowing. Hueying, smiling, holding a narrow bottle of China wine, smiling, pouring, in delight...

Analect 2.227x

7 February 2008. Calm sun, touch of haze. Hazaña, late last night. Estevan Echevería--El Matadero. Founding stories as history--or history as a founding story. Matasiete. "Qué mueran los salvages unitarios." Remnants of faith, reapplied--the vicious blade. Celebration of--pure strength--to crush with gusto. Lo peor, todo lo peor...

Al justo aquel por piadoso y sincero,
la Humanidad lo clavó de un madero...

Russian-ness as well. Alexander Skidan, late afternoon. Jumpy hair, taut face, narrow, expressive mouth with flashing momentary smiles inserted into a stream of densely compelling analytic glossalalia. His own words-- "Poetry the only free space." "Lacan, ectoplasm, whose center is e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e." "Very big and very crucial change." "The word as such is useless and ineffective."

Uglich.

Time of troubles. And yet, also hidden within, manifest in flashes, a great hope--like the rumpled surface of a frozen Siberian lake--or the Aral Sea, a wrangly and decrepit motorbike three-wheeler, rough boards and the Pleististocene rock weight of a Central Asian fisherman. The winds, the endless plain, the steppe...

Analect 2.226x

5 February 2008. Sun, maybe even a warm afternoon? Coffee glass spills everywhere on stove, phone missing somewhere, insistent woman in background now with unnecessarily detailed queries on electronic transmission. Voting day--the poll room door is closed. Pharmacy shut till nine. Etc.

But in the course of things...

Nathaniel's four paintings, arrayed on the wall. One suggestive, after Courbet, another idyllic--"figures in a dream." Another from the past, remembered with help of snapshot, and the last a row of abstract trees on wavy grain of clear plywood--perhaps the most naked of all. Four ways of telling, four moods, four kinds of experience, variety, belief, even. Engaging, the looking. "I like to see the paintings up close." Until something--everything--comes into focus...

Note from Dick, serious, but on the mend. Later, one from Kit, read late in the evening, after class.

Our animals, asleep in the rain...

Analect 2.225x

3 February 2008. Gray cloud mass with tiny plane--fuselage and wings, ghost of Werner von Braun. Yellow pulse of sun, wishing to push through, two flap-wing swallows lead the way.

Las parejas. Two by two. The Honda coupes, for example, on a quiet Sunday lot. One black, the other deep maroon. Patient. Couples walking--side by side--mittens and ear muffs on this brightened day...

Rain and the past. Layers of wet mulch under dripping pear limbs. Alyosha's hide-away. His leonine form also in the wet, moored in slumber along back wall of house. "He wants to." What other response? This being his wish...

Analect 2.224x

1 February 2008. Gentle winter sun, after days of rain. Golden light from eastern hills. A white van zips up the slope--El Cerrito Electric. A line of gray Hondas follow. Morning patience of each buddhist chauffeur. Just in front: a young man with desultory walk, face hidden in gray folds of cotton--smiling to himself. A story, perhaps--or something recalled. Do the young remember? Wajda's film--at 81--Katyń. Another vision from the east. Byelorussian woods. Engraved on each conscience--the names--matka, ojciec, brat. Stack of rough bunks, heavy timbers, four high in a darkened room. The weight of time. Pokolenie, Popiół i Diament. Kanał. In the words, the fields, in each living soul...

Analect 2.223x

31 January 2008. Pearl gray skies with whisp of cloud hovering over rooftops of the cotidienne, one silver line separating the heavens. Halfmoon awaits over lost beaches--something from Lorca--the lonely solitude of September, unvisited...unredeemed.

A conversation--those that we might yet have. Touch of raw umber mixed in with ultramarine, titanium white. Bringing alive. Tiny figure, dark shoulders, facing the east. Or west? They both matter. Yesterday evening: a circle of backs, seen from the hall. Joe's class, gathered around. He's down there, somewhere, floor level, doing his thing--an inveterate magic. Primate behavior--to test and smell. Asian girl in loose white top, black tights, perched on a table top for better view. "Joe, Tony's here." Nod of no--don't tell him--I step back--don't break the spell...

Analect 2.222x

29 January 2008. Grumbly gray morning, bits of rain involve themselves at every step. A poncho perhaps...? Life of the pampas--los crudos y los cocidos, rojos y azules. Wars of old. A telephone conversation with ATT--the infinite slowness of the new DSL service. At the end: where are you located. Latin-America. In what part? Argentina--Buenos Aires. Ay, un Porteño--pero no me di cuenta...!

Twenty self-portraits circle the the room. Julia standing just in front of brown wood wall, holding painted wedge of cardboard with three holes, lifting it up to the light, then to her face--a window, a mirror, a mask. Her intricate explanation, in English from afar...

Dark green letters on a high light-colored wall: Tsim Sha Tsui--the Star Ferry. Wan Chai, Central, Sheung Wan.

The fishermen's shacks at Tai-O...

Analect 2.221x

25 January 2008. Cold, rain. A lighter gray against the glistening dark wet asphalt, two parallel yellow lines, the rules of geography, and one rickety state law sign, tilting to the south: yield to pedestrians. Forlorn.

Verloren. Sabina, yesterday evening. I try to explain--to account for--my torn and humbled scraps of brown corrugated board--painting on air, as it were, on time itself, as present as one can be possible, and yet, the problems of eternity. Eternity, yes--a line from a song. Just down the street: a curio shop, dry goods from Maroc, a Singapore sling. And pinned to the wall: photo of a single wave on a glassy morning, next to the Oceanside pier. Bait house half-way out, man in red Macintosh--or was it a faded flourescent orange safety vest--with hooks and lines and sinkers--balls of lead, clipped to a length of silver line...

"We'll lower him down on a golden chain..."

Just ask Chuang Tzu, next time you see him...

Analect 2.220x

24 January 2008. Luminous band of yellow-white tops off expansive mass of even gray cloud. Filigree branches laced just in front. Two small birds. darting, very high. Almost lost...

Yesterday: recalcitrant and engaging. First class. Chaotic jumble of last year's things--we move them out. A new beginning. Setting out the colors, Cadmium Red Medium (hue okay), maybe Cadmium Orange (important for me). Then Alizarin--a bluer red, but fugitive, followed by the earth colors: Yellow Oxide--pasty off-tone gold, and Raw Sienna--Italia in the making. Raw Umber, too (why always so humble and so valuable?), then Burnt Sienna--Italy again. Burnt Umber--deep, withdrawn (you'll need a good brand of pigment here), followed by Ultramarine (the queen of blues). Prussian Blue--optional, reborn as Pthalo, leaning toward the green, with a patina of copper, but watch out--very high in chroma. Then, Jenkins Green--not too yellow, not too sharp. Also, two whites: zinc (for tints--always transparent) and titanium (covering all)...

Across the room, Nirmanpreet--backlighted against the north windows. Her chestnut hair, very dark, maybe with a touch of red, and a soft high-necked blouse--blue verging on crimson--a red from within, veiled but insistent--impossible to measure...

Analect 2.219x

22 January 2008. Xolodno, xolodno, ochen' xolodno, gospodá. Fellow citizens, it be chilly. Twinkly gray in the sky, threatening sun along the southern horizon, touch of rain. In the living room this morning, wicker basket on an old trunk, a cooing sound--at first a dove, but no, Natasha, her fluffy curl, entwined and esconced in some furry dreamland...

Through the window: two red tail lights on a midnight blue Chevy truck--everything looking good. Then, Richard's voice, in a downward slide: "Well, there goes our retirement...," proclaimed with cheery resignation (the stock market). Nonetheless, he chugs out the door...

Dubliners, Ivy Day in Committee Room. "Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome was thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself to fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall and his face slowly reemerged into light."

The ode to Parnell...

Analect 2.218x

21 January 2008. Gray with rain with sun. With rain. Greg running up sidewalk, small camera in hand. Even today, possibilities...

Sergey Zadvorny. Anchored gracefully just to the right of the Blüthner, parlor of Princess N. Low-lit sconces, a bank of candles. He nods subtly to Tatiana--Tatiana--seated alongside, and there Leporello comes alive: voglio fare il gentiluomo...e non voglio piú servir... His basso cantante--singing--a mathematician from the drafty dormitories of Dnepropetrovsk, via Kharkov, Odessa, the conservatory.... A young boy on the edge of the Black Sea, swimming in the churning tide. Thracia, Scythia, Tauris. The Borysthenes, flowing south. Chersonesus, Theodosia. Un mondo entero--all within reach, all forgotten...

"You must know everything..."

Analect 2.217x

18 January 2008. Gold sun for just these few moments, pouring down Solano. Round about eight. Image of Javed, on his bicycle--what at first look like headphones over his ears, gray orbs with a horizontal band of white--but no, simply muffs against the cold. Think of Lahore, in winter--or Peshawar--topcoat and shalmar-kameez. Hard to reconcile with the counter at 7-eleven, where rolling franks on their continuous electric grill, or cigarettes in the overhead rack, or lotto boards, or cellophane pies... A whistful glance towards the street, touch of consternation on his face, tired...

Life and life only...

Analect 2.216x

17 January 2008. Clear and beau. Following Bonnard, always the note, in pencil, somewhere on a daybook page, along with the snatch of drawing that catches the light... The edge of a balustrade, perhaps, from one of his walks on the hillside at Le Cannet. To hold the motif...

And so the French--a cravat, tied just so, or the turn of a phrase... "To drive 300 kilometers for a piece of cheese," a love for what is, the luxury of being...

Winter morning, Oceanside. Ocean temp. 59 degrees, noted in chalk, on a worn signboard by the pier... Gray-tan sandstone cliffs, all along the coast... The materials...