Analect 2.282x

30 May 2008. Gray to gray. The neighbors' house, empty--dark shrubbery surround, single porchlight announces... absence. Image in dream--a farewell.

Rose Ader in her role as Mimi. Later--in a photograph, sitting somewhere outside--Trieste, Palermo--with Puccini. Dark stockings, worn shoes, undarned. History's fist...

"...we lived in Palermo through the war, until 1948, when I decided to go to Argentina. My mother, being separated from my father, followed me there some months later and concertized and taught until 1955..."

"With a voice of exceptional beauty, one would have hoped for more than two sides to have been released. Those two arias from La Bohème are supplemented with unissued Parlophone titles, test pressings and a few late broadcast recordings..."

The port of Buenos Aires, docks and piers, constructed by the British. River Plate. An alternative to the Spanish Empire in Peru. Mercantilism, how-to, railroads to the south and the west, loads of cattle and grain...

"Si, mi chiamano Mimi..."

Analect 2.281x

29 May 2008. Hombros de nieve. Pale May sun on quiet street, later morning. Whitish van in glowing light. Woman with straw bag, brown leather over the shoulder of pale green. For an instant only...

Ensayos, contando. Los manos del reloj, hierro negro, lo resto de madera, en la mitad de la noche. Hijos del barrio, juegos, contando, cancha de futbol con tres casas, la viuda, otra familia, y lo de nosotros...

Baile Porteño. Bonaerense, dance. Bandoneon, polished wood, with blunt squarish ends, unlikely. From Alemania, somewhere, um-pa-pa, polka...or even a march. Bending under the southern sun into something less expected--lo impredecible, aun caprichoso--a kind of gliding motion, a setting aside of (what might be seen as) Protestant responsibility... éxstasis, de los católicos (que se yo)...

Krefeld, Duisberg, Dortmund...Bochum und Wuppertal...

El Riachuelo, aguas tibias, lo del corazón...

Analect 2.280x

28 May 2008. Gray skies over gray streets. The River Plate. Gray stones of an old city wall. Creaky sound of the bandoneon, a single line on a violin. Earl's Court, Sofia, Boul San Mich, Śródmieście. Warszawa. Also shadows, hidden in walls. A niche, with flowers, tiny glass vase, crystal, delicate petals of French ultramarine. Staszek, Marian, Witkatcy...

***

Caminito que el tiempo ha borrado
que juntos un día nos viste pasar
he venido por última vez
he venido a contarte mi mal.

Caminito que entonces estabas
bordeado de trébol y juncos en flor
una sombra ya pronto serás
una sombra lo mismo que yo.

Desde que se fue
triste vivo yo
caminito amigo
yo también me voy.

Desde que se fue
nunca más volvió
seguiré sus pasos
caminito, adiós.

Analect 2.279x

27 May 2008. Tempranito. Sounds of the doves under the eaves. First light in the east, scattered over the hills. Gentle line of eucalyptus, Albany, fur on schist. A lamellar mineral--your micas, chlorites, hornblendes and talcs. Houses, trees, sky--all upwards.

Juan del Gastor, a fiestero. Tradición de Morón. "Se dice que su tío era tocaor 'pa' escuchar'... Y en este se queda la herencia más pura..."

La herencia mas pura...

Wide rivers flowing to the see. Headwaters and sources--a lake somewhere in upper Minnesota. Having no idea just where--a moist spot in the ground, a spring, perhaps, pouring forth. The Missouri and the Mississippi, lights at dusk, along the shore. River towns, like Rosario, like Santa Fé...

No seas triste...

Analect 2.278x

23 May 2008. Pale sun, chill breeze. Narrow cellophane straw wrapper lodged in spout of recycling bin, trembling slightly. Two red Chinese dots--marks unknown.

Two men, then a third. Caballito, Boedo, San Cristóbal. Esquina Bolivar y Alsina, la Capital Federal. "...ambos de adobe y techos de junco, nació bajo la advocación de Nuestra Señora del Loreto, pero en 1610, un año después de la beatificación de San Ignacio, tomó su nombre..." Tomó su nombre, as in "espacio" or "divertido" o "relación." Relaciones internacionales--pathways and connections--sendas, that is--barter and burse, moneda nacional...

Image of the peso--dos, diez, viente, cincuenta...counting...

"Pero, che..."

Analect 2.277x

21 May 2008. Dark green Tacoma, tight against curb. Morning sun. Blue shadows on an empty street, occasional voices: "Thank you so much." Rustle and rumble of copier, Greg's face, vacant for a moment, staring into the distance...

How it always began. La familia Torricelliano, Buenos Aires, sometime before the First World War. "Esa sencilla historia..." A village in Calabria, olive groves, rooted stone. Vineyard and wine press--torqued metal disk on canted barrel, angled staves, bolts and gears, set against the fine return.

Abandoned. Spume. Atlantic crossing on an English steamer, below decks, bundles of clothes, bedding, shoes, tied in heavy black cloth. Farm implements, seeds--a scattering... La Choza, Lujan, Gral. Rodriguez... Melchor Romero, Alejandro Korn. San Vicento.

Then: Avelleneda, a single room. The Riachuelo.

Gold-green waters, al amanecer...

Analect 2.276x

21 May 2008. Avenida Corrientes, winter. Light snow--una nieve ligera--loose white patches against gray River Plate sky. El Río de la Plata, evening, silver and bronze, expanse of small waves, invisible into the distance. Uruguay. On the near shore: etched branches of the sauce colorado. Sauzal--willow.

A stand of willows, loving water...

"It was down by the Salley Gardens..."

Analect 2.275x

20 May 2008. Gray gray gray, endless gray. But not entirely. The deep maroon Zephyr Express, for example, moored just across the way, filled with worn wooden crates of Andalucian wine--unlikely--as the driver ducks into the 7-eleven for a cup of java--or some giant front-end iced wonder on a would-be summer morning.

Last night: Lorca, otra vez. His gacelas--the late poems, on Moorish forms. Two by three by two by three by two. Aljeciras, Lebrija, the gardens of Granada. Albarocas--pools, fountains, from one courtyard to the next... La puerta de la calle...

Yo quiero que el agua se quede sin cauce.
Yo quiero que el viento se quede sin valles.

Quiero que la noche se quede sin ojos
y mi corazón sin la flor de oro...

Analect 2.274x

19 May 2008. Gray morning, even-toned light, one white gull with dihedral wings, illuminated against expanding sky... Claims of patience, claims of experience. Borges fragment: "Y tu, Bruto" becoming "Pero, Che..." History repeating itself as it must needs, in the heart of a seeming wild. En el sur de la provincia de Buenos Aires, un equipo de gauchos...

Lo Argentino. Land of silver--color of the river Plate, "tonos del desierto," a wide expanse of water bordering on nothing...a few miscellaneous grasses, lapping the shore, miles and miles of modest undulation. River boat with captain's chair--a figure, heavily built, in alpargatas and a hat of straw. Eyes on the slow waters, mid-day heat--un horno de humedad. El Tigre--rivulets and riachuelos, moving in and out, amidst the reeds...

What a place for a civilization. Lo Europeo, de alguna manera. Teatro Colón, chorizo y morcilla...

Ateneo, adentro...

Analect 2.273x

16 May 2008. Golden light on gold-green hedge. Topiary tonsure. Lee's face at glass, engaging crooked smile in wide-brimmed straw hat--the morning's gleanings, bottles and bags from neighborly bins--up and down the avenue with her Safeway pushcart, refuse sample...heightened repair. Now in front: a limping trashman with big white truck. Lee's professional double, mauve rag on the scooper lever, exclamation point--danger, clean city program hotline, rolling off into morning light. Quiet returns.

Hum of machine, just behind. Curiously silent Larry. Don't push him.

Original peoples. John Berger's claim: that America lacks a peasant class. French country folk, as in Pig Earth. Lucie Cabrol. Having lived on that land "forever." The slaughter scene--early winter. Meat and fat for a season's wheel. Necessity leads to art. Expression of attachment--love, continuity, tenderness, compassion. All of these...

Leonard Peltier--his prison letters...

Al justo aquel por piadoso y sincero
La humanidad lo clavó de un madero
No quiero ser res para ese matadero
Al justo aquel por piadoso y sincero...

Analect 2.272x

15 May 2008. Warm already at dawn, puffy bus trundles on down the road. Asian man in pink shirt, with cell phone to ear, strolling under the 7-eleven eves. Door open on dark green Camry--two legs emerge from shaded interior.

Shaded interiors. Of language, of love. An overhang, a lean-to--shingles and thatch--narrow saplings bent just so, gathered together at their tops in a kind of primitive wikiup--Paiutes and Pomos, in what's now called Willets, a fish-fillet of a town, fresh in the skillet of Highway 101, man's ribbon, heading north...

Autumn rains, can they be far behind...

Analect 2.271x

14 May 2008. Pearl sky eucalyptus, yellow mist over morning hills, run of trees along ridgetop. Home. Larry, unfortunately--endless facts and postulations, knowledge of the physical way in which things work. Gears and insertions. Reach for song.

Federico García Lorca--leaps and premonitions. Cante del pueblo. What would he have called them? Orange groves and mint. Albahaca--basil. Alberca--a moorish pool. "It is a song without landscape, withdrawn into itself and terrible in the dark. Deep song (cante jondo) shoots its arrows of gold right into our heart. In the dark it is a terrifying blue archer whose quiver is never empty."

Subí a la muralla.
Me respondió el viento:
¿para qué tantos suspiritos
si ya no hay remedio?

Analect 2.270x

13 May 2008. Bright sun gleam off tinted window of Ford Windstar, parked on the bias across Solano. Tokens of home. Yesterday: Garcia Lorca at 37,000 feet. En busca del duende. Duende. Afternoons in Oceanside, early 1960s, Ponzi and Yvette. Stories of Barnaby Conrad--the bullring--and the guitars of Eddie Freeman. Lo flamenco. Tuned concert pianos, in Dallas, transcribed jazz off the shortwave during World War II. There wasn't a Spanish dance troupe touring the states that didn't make a pass through his Texas home, long suburban road in late winter, icy wind off the plains, stark branches of the sycamores. A compound--courtyard rooms to the inside, feeling of great warmth. The Oklahoma doctor who drove down every weekend--for the spirit, the comraderie. Crooning masculine voice, the first notes begun with incredible patience--a slowness to life, el descanso. "Relaxed," we might say--but it's not the absence of labour. Rather the way one lifts a glass of wine, holding the liquid steady--igual...

Dicen que por las noches nomas
se le iba en puro llorar...

Analect 2.269x

9 May 2008. Pale sky, pale sun, cold wind off the bay. Javed careening out of 7-eleven lot on handles-up bicycle, oversized earphones in place. Beethoven? The Upanishads? Dr. Israr Ahmed's complete tafseer (in Urdu) of the Holy Qur'an. Possibilities.

Wind in branches of the birch tree, late at night, ends brushing against upstairs glass. Stories, doubts, more stories. Robert, Gabryela, Moshe in Amsterdam. A glass of Jack Daniels. The 'Snoga, Nieuwe Kerkstraat Shul... het Plantage. White birds on placid dark waters. The Nieuwe Prinsengracht, Zwanenburgwal. Meanings of names, their resonance. Amsterdam tower: the Oude Schans. Stonework and brick from the time of Brueghel, smokey shapes disappearing in the mist. Low clouds from the sea, rushing over rooftops, rushing over...

Analect 2.268x

8 May 2008. Gray May morning, evenly lit, one white gull dipping low over long mansard roof--a bonnet for commerce. Covering of gray-brown shingles, dissipated lines, lot of cars, nose in. Go figure...

Small bird on arked wreath, announcing the dawn. La madrugada. Fields of grasses, Laguna Alegre. Mil raíces--water birds from an entire continent, covering the lagoon. Places visited, forgotten, known again. Loping gait of the horses--una tropilla. Algo de potras, que no se comen... Potra y matungo... Lo matucho... Así dicen...

Analect 2.267x

6 May 2008. "Me gusta el sol, Alicia, y las palomas..." Fragments of song, milky morning light--Jorge Cafrune, his unexpected accents, unanticipated. Lo Argentino, as if always on horseback--the rhythms following each change in gait... A kind of longing, anticipation, all before the beat--with the urgency of a downstroke countertime-- Tosco, dicen...pero con ternura...

De nuevo estoy de vuelta
después de larga ausencia
Igual a la calandria
Que azota el vendaval

Y tengo mil canciones
Como leñita seca
Recuerdo de fogones
Que invitan a matear...

Y tengo mil canciones
Como leñita seca
Recuerdo de fogones
Que invitan a matear...

Analect 2.266x

2 May 2008. Medium gray sky with hint of sun, light from the east. Two brothers at middle monitor, narrow spreadsheet for one or another business application. Low-pitched rapid-fire Misrachi Hebrew, syllables purring back and forth, intense cologne. Mixture of hesitance and insistance...

Yesterday: Pierwszy Maj--the First of May. International Day of the Worker, Warszawa, 1969. Lenin's effigy writ large, red on white on giant wall, posterized treatment of all shapes--as if this reductive flatness might clarify and convince. Instead: a screen for cynicism, curtain for doubt.

Doubt. What is architecture? Dietrich Neumann: a patient willingness to consider all... In the details, someone or another. And how do we care for a door? For the past? The place of knowledge, slow, hard-won. We move to sit on courtyard stone, to make one circle. Day of the Worker, Moscow, München, Berlin... Alvin Boyarsky, years back: Ask yourself--what are the problems that architectecture cannot solve? Two bricks, placed side by side...

Imagination...ojalá...

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...