Analect 2.484x

29 April 2009. Sunny pale sky, coldish breeze.

Late at night, Jeszcze Polska nie Zginela... Faces of Polish soccer players in a Berlin sports ring. They stand side by side, with a row of children just in front. Individual movements of their faces, each one's voice...

YouTube screen grab of Oceanside wave. Gray water, gray sky...as always...

This morning, by the big window on Solano, pc earphones tucked under hat, cords twisting to harddrive tower. Voice of Atilio Reynoso... Domingo Pampeano, also a song...

Analect2.483x

28 April 2009. Blue times blue...

Estilo Viejo, as played by Atilio Reynoso. La música de la pampa...

Si usted no conoce el sur
y piensa que es el desierto
no sabe lo que es La Pampa
porque ignora su secreto
La Pampa es un viejo mar
donde navega el silencio...

(La Pampa es un Viejo Mar, Juan Ricardo Nervi)


* * *


(If you are not familiar with the south
and believe it to be a desert
then you don't understand what is Pampa
because you ignore its secret
La Pampa is an ancient sea
and what plies there is silence...

La Pampa Is an Ancient Sea, Juan Ricardo Nervi)

Analect 2.482x

27 April 2009. Gray skies.

La Huella: Santiago del Estero. "Aprendí, como en una universidad salvaje y abierta, silente y misteriosa como una salamanca, las músicas más hermosas y representativas de la región. Muchas las reuerdo aún. Otras han quedado en una zona oscura de mi espíritu, como un secreto que jamás se podrá develar, pero que alienta el pulso de la sangre."

(La Huella: Santiago del Estero: "I learned there, as if in a wild and open university, silent and mysterious as a Salamanca, the most beautiful and representative songs of the region. Many of them I still remember. Others have remained in a dark zone of my spirit, like a secret that never could be revealed, but that nourishes the pulse of the blood.")

Atahualpa Yupanqui, Este Largo Camino



Note: The Salamanca myth has to do with the underworld--in this case, a cave open only to adepts, who are severely tested in its rites. Derives perhaps from Arab brujería (witchcraft) in the caves around Salamanca, Spain--and may be related to the Faust legend. In any case, the name struck a chord with the country people of Santiago del Estero (and elsewhere in the Argentine northwest). The folkloric musicians associated the Salamanca--and its trials--as a (mythical?) source of their musical prowess. Don Atahaulpa clearly connects with this tradition in his final sentence...

Analect 2.481x

24 April 2009. Sharp yellow band of sun on Honda glass...

Cuadros de la Ciudad. Fray Mocho y Cnia, barrios del Sur, Buenos Aires, los años pasados. Un mozo viejito, vida de payaso--o sea payador... Calles sombreadas, de la tarde, otra vez...

A Media Luz...

Analect 2.480x

23 April 2009. Gray morning cloud, cold. Burlap bags on bed of truck, pile of damp brown sand. Two stucco workmen in worn jeans, hands jammed in their pockets, heads thrown back, following the movements of a compatriot on scaffold high above.

New shingles pretty much like the old--minus the variations of time. Guarantees of interestingness, now gone wanting.

As with a song--Atilio Reynoso, his "Estilo Viejo"--much to recommend. Or W.H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago...

Analect 2.479x

22 April 2009. Silhoutte of green ladder against expanse of blue. Small jet slips away to the left. Soft explosive report of roofer's pneumatic nailer... Calls back and forth, Korean voices...

Or others, in turn. The carpincho, for example. Almost unheard. Montes y juncales, siempre cerca del agua. Nose and tiny round ears held just above the surface--the capybara--a Tupi word, Guaraní. The mother with ten nipples, nursing two to eight young...

Analect2.478x

21 April 2009. Naked roof on milky blue sky. Scaffolding and cigarettes, language unknown...

As with the chiripá, or the rama, or the bird... Holding in space against a milky page...

Allá le voy a mostrar
mi mancarrón, mis dos perros,
unas espuelas de fierro,
y un montón de cosas más.
Si es entendido, verá:
un poncho de fina trama,
y el retrato de mi Mama,
que es ande rezo pensando
mientras lo voy adornando
con florecitas de retama.

(milonga)

Analect 2.477x

20 April 2009. Ojalá...

Analect 2.476x

17 April 2009. Without and within... Richard's new book, Great Basin Poems, on earth-colored stock. Working cattle in the 1950s. An opening into a world...

Last night: cowboys and la frontera. Nuevo Lareto, Sinaloa, LA, Sleepy Lagoon. Pachucos and the Repatriation Act. Kat and Mildred take us back through time, down Mexico way--but not quite. The borderlands, rather, and an entire culture so engendered. Braceros--in the lilting and effortless voice of Pedro Infante, while film clips reveal a darker truth... Lydia Mendoza and her sister, their impossibly close harmonies, Freddy Fender, and Lila Downs. Richie Havens, too. Vision from 1958, the gym floor, Oceanside High... "Para bailar la bamba..."

Kat: "She was pregnant when they crossed the border..."

Then: Chalino Sánchez and his son, Adán, both lost. Mildred's mom: "They shouldn't of gone back..." Her own growing up in the Salinas Valley, ancestors all...

La Llorona...always by waters...

Analect 2.475x

16 April 2009. Springtime now. Restored roof in morning sun, tradesmen done.

Argentina, Provincia de Buenos Aires, en la década de 1880. Jacinto Duva (de barba espesa) da un cigarillo a su hermano Mauricio Duva... The founding of San Mauricio...

Zanja Alsina, a kind of of the Wall of China--but carved into the earth...

(Lugar Historico)
ZANJA DE ALSINA (1876-1877)
EXTENSION 374 Km.
Paralelo a la misma se originó, casi una rastrillada mas,
el "Camino de Zanja", el que Ud. está ubicado
catorce eran los fortines en el partido de Rivadavia

Analect 2.474x

15 April 2009. Chill wind, endless blue. Woman in long black wool coat standing alongside light green car with curvy roof. Seen for an an instant...

Then, the good doctor, in queu at 7-eleven with white poly bag of ripe bananas, dark yellow with fine brown lines. Ripple of color on the label... Workcrew continues on roof as well: Jerome Blank's green-rated shingles, installed by veteran tradesman with white hair, in perfect rows. The younger ones attend...

Calle Florida, reseen. Porteños all...

Analect 2.474x

14 April 2009. Blue all the way across. Two workmen high up on Navigator Escrow--now the Jerome Blank Building. New shingles on an old mansard roof. Sound of hammer from a distance--reassuring... Water bottle balanced on wooden batten...

Thoughts of repair. As in a note from across time. "I have been reading Analects for about a year now..." Where we left off--the small house on California Street, upstairs. Melville's Pierre...or, the Ambiguities... The affinities, too... A sailmaker's loft in BC...

"...on Prince Edward Island..."

Analect 2.473x

13 April 2009. Sunny with fluffy clouds to the south, filtered light. As it should be.

Long blue pipes stacked to side of street--heavy PVC with steel tubes at the ends, rusted, to join. Metaphors of emplacement. Runs and flanges...

Late in the night: a discussion of what's been written about the design of parks, following Adrián's Castellano text... Andrew Jackson Downing, Olmsted and all the rest. A move to corral the maximalization of capital--those long New York blocks with street-front galore. Sarmiento's visit--to a cemetary in Brooklyn, the Green-Wood, hyphen likewise rusted, a golden red...

Analects 2.472x

10 April 2009. Yellow push from the east, embroidered pockets of blue... Nicola asleep, curled, just under the piano...a new place...

Conversation out of early Joyce, currently being conducted in copyshop aisle... Ivy Day in the Committee Room...

"I've been very fortunate, I've had the most amazing clients, ever since July..."

"I was that way, I took five jobs..."

"It will turn around..."

Analect 2.471x

9 April 2009. Passover morning, nice spring rain. Gentle and unexpected...

Slowness of the seder, word by word, rabi Eliezer, rabi Tarfon...rabi Elazar ben Azarya... they're back, camped out again in B'nei Brak, holding forth of an evening, long ago...

We rehearse their words--a sequence of questions, really--as to what is true...

And the students arrive, only at dawn...

Analect 2.470x

8 April. Erev pesach...locomotive skies, a rumbly gray with dashes of light. Hamid on front walk of 7-eleven, under the eves, having a smoke...

Compadritos of Parque Patricios, barrio reo, del tiempo anterior... Walk of the porteño, somewhere in the shoulders, slightly raised, a quizzical but definite anticipation. As if a question should follow--something philosophical, but still earthy. The remnants of a Europe lost--Seurat's trees, or those of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot--wirey branches, finely limbed, taut curves with a mind of their own...

Rousseau, Proudhon, Babeuf...

Analect 2.469x

7 April 2009. Fishtail clouds, dark aire, fuming smoke against gray sky... Beeping sound of beer truck backing--Red something-or-other Jamaican lager. Jamaica? Lager? Young man in brown hood pulls up slatted door...

The girls of Quilmes, projected back a bit in time. Colegio Nacional in 1961--when the first handful of visitors from the liceo appeared, in starched white smocks, a tentative presence, distributed evenly amongst 500 boys... Regrouping instantly at every break...

Analect 2.468x

6 April 2008. Butter sky, cool.

Names of birds: chingolo-- zonotrichia, sparrow family. Here with crest. Ycancho en el norte aregntino, cachilo en el este, chuschiú en Córdoba, vichi en Tucumán; marumbé en idioma guaraní...

Peter's birthday...

Analect 2.467x

3 April 2009. Mellow morning. Young girl, tiny hands, riding on her father's shoulders, looking this way and that... His heavy leather coat, brown courderoy trousers, emblems of masculinity...

Or Little Richard, at his baby grand, in the potched-up bathtub seat, holding first a miniature fluff towell, then a bar of soap, and finally, with a quick double squeeze, the pièce de résistance, a small inert yellow rubber ducky...

Leaning in...

Analect 2.466x

2 April 2009. A sunny morning...

Humberto 1º y La Rioja--o si fuera San Ignacio, esquina del café Margot. Libros temática ciudadana--y cositas distintas. Una papusa tomando café, sin duda, con los tipos del barrio. Buenos Aires sur, una fábula de cuentos, de escenas particulares, temblando...de buen humor...

"o tu voz, donde está..."

Analect 2.465x

1 April 2009. Weather master says it's a go. Early morning tv, scratchy noise at dawn, test pattern and a table of booze. The Jim Beam bottle on it's side, bar smells, late night crowd...

But wait, that's Nicola's fine head, with the impossibly soft ears, leaping onto window end of bed, making her way up past calf and thigh and hip, tentatively eager for a caress...

Two otters, side-by-side, their more-than-human hands joined in furry embrace, parted for a few moments--the exigencies of the tide, then regained...

Analect 2.464x

31 March 2009. Sun. Bud Light truck, silver blue on white, verging on gold in the sun, then cooler when turned away...

Time cover: "The end of excess, and why that's good for America." Aimee Semple McPherson in corporate dress, preaching from an orange box stand.

A narrow Asian girl in black and gray, fabrics from afar, with tennish shoes whose heels ride on springs. Cushion ride, like the emblem on the railroad car--goods and services, rolling on...

Analect 2.463x

30 March 2009. Wind at windows, night. Sun in the morning. Genteel young man from Pakistan, behind 7-eleven counter. Announcing change in precise, understated voice. Three Brazilian bolds, including one for Lolita, from copier repair. "A little sugar, a little cream..."

With Mansilla again, onset of dawn...

Analect 2.462x

27 March 2009. Jump start sun, flood of light, as befits spring. Glints and gleams...

Waters of Buenos Aires, un río sin fin. Figure of Quinquela Martín, abandoned as an infant in an immigrants' orphanage, note attesting to his baptism. Adopted at the age of six by Manuel and Justina Molina de Chinchella. At 14 attended "a modest night school of drawing," working by day in the family's coal yard. Stessini Piazetti Conservatory at 17...

The life of La Boca--paintings of the port. Zeneize...

"Vigor," "activity," "roughness"--the characterization. A subject and a treatment, taken almost for granted. The allure of daily life, even when reinvented entirely...

Lo pintoresco...

Analect 2.461x

26 March 2009. Blue to blue, sun. Blurred contrails to the south, low over 7-eleven roof, crossing in shallow X like an ethereal flag of the Confederacy.

Day books and the best of intentions. Row of children's faces, enlarged in grainy black-and-white--Camp Cazadero banner on copyshop floor. Young boy's visage, hint of a smile, next to baroque cello scroll with ebony pegs, stand of trees just above.

Juan José Saer, from the town of Serodino, Santa Fe. La Universidad del Litoral--where he studied philosophy and law. Banks of the river, wide to the point of disappearance. "Sin orillas..."

Analect 2.460x

19 March 2009. Olu Kai sky, here on Solano--pink tinges to the blue, cool wind down from the hills. Stocky woman at teller box, rubbing the back of her head while awaiting digital okay. Then an illegal diagonal in the direction of Starbucks, while I head for Peets--beans--no hard feelings, really, to the gang at El Cerrito--names slipping now, it's been more than a year, my daily trek to java line, with all the locals. Hong Kong gal at neighboring table, chewing the fat with older man in sport coat and tennis shoes...

Photo of Kitaj, appearing suddenly--daunting. En route to the Hammer, in 2007. His mop of hair, pure white, bent forward a little, walking with wooden cane. The cane hardest to fathom. Not the over-sized Vans--an Angelino, after all--but that long straight piece of wood--another contact with the earth.

With the students--his arm outstretched, lying on a Cuban daybed, young woman alongside, her miniscule skirt. An explorer...

Analect 2.459x

18 March 2009. Insistent sun, no other choice, save for petals of pinkish-gray to the west. Sound of small car, old VW, caught in a glance, then a single call from a gull. La gaviota. Now again, also insistent, in her own way.

In her own way, mothering the world, leaning in to take his side--for the banquet meal. Settings arranged, well into the distance, against a wall draped in murky gold. All hotels the same--the porcelain, the heavy glass. A napkin folded just so--signature of the establishment...

Borrowed for an instant, like the breakfasts with Dad, at the Biltmore, before the clothing shows. Finnan haddie and other unexpected offerings, delivered on wide plates or silver trays. Covered, then revealed...

Mornings...

Analect 2.458x

17 March 2009. Pale gray skies. White van bouncing slightly as it pulls out of 7-eleven lot. Quiet moon-faced woman preparing coffee--small blue individual container of artificial cream, then another. Her attitude one of care...

A market in Buenos Aires, somewhere near Constitución. 1961. Cobblestone streets and patches of earth, produce in fulsome array, stacked in wobbly wooden crates, leaves poking through into morning air. Onions and such, remembered only en masse. Hot morning sun illuminating the stones, the occasional dark puddle, pungent market smells, moldering scraps of this and that, returning to the earth in an appealing disarray...

Analect 2.457x

16 March 2009. Drizzle gray rain--mist of white against roan sky...

Buenos Aires. Embankment along a river--El Tigre, or the park above Nuñez, summer. Dark trees, quiet--something out of Antonioni, or old Rome herself. An ancient scene, in black tights and stretch tops--small hand held close to mother's waist, the other free, testing...

Reflections in gold-gray-green...

Analect 2.456x

13 March 2009. Wavering gray clouds, moments of sun, an insistent golden light from the east...

La Tempesta, Giorgione's standing figure, in attendence always, their lives intertwined in some unknowable way...

Her billowing hair, pre-Raphaelite frizz, long fingers, poise.

Oh don't you remember in yonder town
when we were at the tavern
I raised a health to the ladies round,
gave my heart to Barbara Allen...

Analect 2.455x

12 March2009. Milky sky, hint of sun. Woman with wavy gray hair and soft brown leather bag slides into driver's seat of gray-green van. A Previa? But here I'm guessing...

Economy slides as well, stocks and bonds in their own brown leather, not so creamy smooth. Smell of cash, as when the register slides open and you see all the 20's. Abandoned chart of national expenditure: Pentagon and Iraq, more than half the pie...

Green, apples, as on the hillsides of Tennessee. Mountain City, that is. Worn cabin walls, a set of wooden steps that don't quite meet the ground. Clarence Ashley, bending in the breeze. Doc Watson alongside, young, solid, attentive. Gaither Carlton on fiddle--in his own world...

Analect 2.454x

11 March 2009. Clear with lots of sun. Nicola's curled form at end of bed, head tucked in. 

Next to me now--Luca and his mom, energetic little boy with pale, questioning eyes. Photo prints of a house near the sea, white bench on rippled sand. Long shadows, late afternoon. 

Suchostaw, from an earlier time. Purim spiel, with Bessarabian gowns, their neatly folded sleeves in white, turbans and tunics to match. Elaborate strands of bead around a young girl's neck, bows at her ankles, gathered just so. Reflective pose--folded hands...

Always...

Analect 2.453x

Sun this morning, just won't quit. After long night...

Figure in a field, with trees just behind. Early. Poncho, mate galleta, sombrero santefesino... Blackened kettle on a small fire, boiling. Each element useful, known. Carried and true...

Analect 2.452x

9 March 2009. Cold wind gonna blow, clear morning sky.

Large girl in 7-eleven line, blondish, tailored brown polyester waist, sleepy eyes. Narrow faced man alonside, dark brow, fumbling with lips for coffee straw. Lotto cards and caffeine.

Yesterday, evening: grasses alongside a karst-built lagoon, to the south and east of Buenos Aires. Chascomús. A ring of juncales--marsh reeds--against slow waters, wider plains... Photo of young couple pressed close--their modern faces merged. Wrapped against the cold.

El Ombú...

Analect 2.451x

6 March 2009. Sunny and almost warm. A meteorological change of heart. Or respite, perhaps, storms for now dispersed.

To other climes? Barracas, Boedo, Constitución--where a langorous señora considers the day--the shifting light--a neo-realist swoon, Rosselini del sur (Roma città abierta, or maybe Paisà), the actors unquestionably non-professional--us that is--denizens of sidewalk and café. Pensive, porteños. Where a morning's paper can last well into the afternoon...

Al atardecer...

Analect 2.450x

5 March 2009. Sun and gray, as always lately...

La gaviota--a gull from Armenia, portrayed in a Russian engraving from long ago. The penman's Cyrillic script--narrow and flowing. Long dress, with floral print, increasing in size as each blossom moves down. The boy alongside, also with flowers, in a small vase, held in his right hand. Feet tucked close in oversize shoes... Necessities...

"The Abbot Pafnuty put his hand thereto..."

Analect 2.449x

4 March 2009. Sun peeking around flurries of rain, cold streets won't give up the storm... It's an attitude thing, like Wally Shawn on Brecht--"raw and ribald" says the playbill. His recent translation. "Let's say there's a word in German that is like "dourknop" that sounds like doorknob. Actually, it means betrayal. And it was a beautiful little idea of Brecht's that was trampled on by my mistake..."

Betrayals and mistakes--accidents, inadvertencies. A crow with a piece of bread--the crust, or rind--an orange rind, painted orange, in an act of solidarity--or was it identification? These things happen...

Attempting to get things right--the great hope. As if grace and elision could work their magic always.

Dark afternoon... Maybe just song...

Analect 2.448x

3 March 2009. Lluvia sobre el mar. Lee, in three tones of violet, hood over hood, bending forward over dark green metal bin, crushing red can with booted foot...

Noticings. As with gruff plumber's face, stubble of shave, nodding ever so slightly as he pushes through the 7-eleven door. Or Pearl, with her endlessly picky requests--tone of voice--every question a minor-league challenge...

And so the day, as clouds roll in, sheets of rain, gray sky, white smoke...

Hope...

Analect 2.447x

2 March 2009. Low clouds over East Bay shores--looking down Fairmount into veils of oncoming storm. Gutters brimming, steady sheets at night...

Cangrejal, Güiraldes' vision, the Argentine, bleak lands nearing the sea, their marshy threat, described in full. Read in the middle of the night, rain...

Better Javed's face, over the counter early this morning, lined and tired after those same eight hours. Two coffees--French Vanilla or some such, black, with flimsy black lids--polypropylene, a modern muse.

Move on, move on, to higher ground...

Analect 2.446x

27 February 2009. Morning sun, pouring through corner windows...

Bombachas, mate galleta, y un gorro salteño... Parece este tipo de campo--algo del norte, donde los cerros secos contienen toda manera de recuerdo...

A life made almost possible--the slow byways of Tucumán, cane fields and hills--la chacra, cosecha de caña dulce... La familia Fereira, de raices y ramas... The first letter, from Raúl, "It is hard for me to explain about my being dead...", and the image of Nélida--la más bella de la provincia...

Unvisited, still unknown...

Analect 2.445x

26 February 2009. Rain wet steps, gray clouds. Chill pool air.

Café Strada, the morning crew. Dark haired girl with large eyes, una lenta paciencia, preguntas...

Y los músicos en Corrientes--Puente Pesoa, rasguido doble... Nostalgias de mi litoral... Beginning with the guitar, to set the compás, slow and even, como el río mismo, to be enjoyed. Of three ages, the youngest on bandoneón, sitting quietly, without affect, until the moment of entry.

Muchas veces cantado, sobre los años...

Analect 2.444x

25 February 2009. Unexpected shower, clearing to blue. Seabirds over inland hills...

Chubasco. Rain storm on the pampas, clouds gather at the horizon, first drops...

Como a pesar de la hora temprana sintiéramos calor, fue más bien un goce aquel tamborineo fresco. Algunos empezaron a acomodar sus ponchos; yo esperé.
Mirando el cielo colegimos que aquelo era preludio de algo más serio.
La tierra se había puesto a despedir perfumes intensamente. El pasto y los cardos esperaban con pasíon segura. El campo entero escuchaba...

(Don Segundo Sombra)

Analect 2.443x

24 February 2009. Wet streets, sun. Smiling faces at bus bench await G ride into town. All-weather vehicles, as with PG&E Terex truck across the way--the folded white ladder. For a moment: Deepak's youngest daughter, with her grandmother in sari, climbing carefully into back seat of the family's small gold-bronze SUV...

River life...

Analect 2.442x

23 February 2009. Warm gray sky, hovering rain. Pooled water on 7-eleven lot, yellow curb stripes prominent in the half-light. Glowing morning neon--same day, open, alterations...

The stuff of trade, as with Walters, years ago. Credit Clothiers, Style Center for Men, where $5 a payday guaranteed layaway rights for emblems, knives, forage caps, dress blues. A Marine Corps town, season by season--the Nehru jacket, the short-sleeve suit. Ned Fink, veteran of them all, working the floor from 10 to 10, taking the young men in arm--under his saleman's wing--fitting them out with purple shirts and greenish pants--all manner of the impossible...

Buzz cuts and basic training, use of the M-1, the bayonet. The G string from the guitar--disappearing too quickly--a garrotte. Wooden rifle shanks, shape of the hand, the tree. Full-grained red walnut, steel bolt, lug.

Military lore, Oceanside...

Analect 2.441x

20 February 2009. Late night, early dawn. Natasha's curled heap in white wicker chair, Nicola the sphinx impassive at end of bed...

Girl's figure in pool, flailing--where grace becomes will...

O al revés--as in Spain, again--Federico García Lorca. Los Cuatro Muleros. Sueños de la guitarra--pathways to a kind of truth...

* * *

De los cuatro muleros
que van al campo,
el de la mula torda,
moreno y alto.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al agua,
el de la mula torda
me roba el alma.

De los cuatro muleros
que van al río,
el de la mula torda
es mi marío.

¿A qué buscas la lumbre
la calle arriba,
si de tu cara sale
la brasa viva?

Analec t 2.440x

19 February 2009. Dark dawn, eighteen crows heading east. Ripply blue-green pool, marble walls, wavery line of black... Guard on lone metal stand, orange cloak, her head dipping down...

The plutocrats will out--we live by their largesse. Or call it gen-e-ros-ity. A neo-classical marvel on lowish slope, with urns and columns, long halls, where more windows to the north, factory style, milky glass in hovering light, one clear pane with view to Sather Tower--the Campanile--a touch of Venice reborn on western hills...

Analect 2.439x

18 February 2009. Moments of sunshine follow days of rain...

Rumbling approach through layers of cloud, windows sprayed with diagonals of rain, port channel with gantry cranes and gray water, flooded fields...

Pedro Infante in "Los Pobres," standing forthright, with his señorita, on a street in the perennial Mexico pueblo, this time in the clothes of a young workingman, overalls, snug t-shirt featuring his upper arms. The peacefulness of the camera eye--framed just so--as in the YouTube clip in which he sings Cucurrucucu Paloma, battery of tender mariachi lined up like a Greek chorus in romantic overdrive, his momentarily petulant girl in the casa above, stirred from her bed by this public performance--for her alone--in the street just below...

Analect 2.438x

12 February 2009. Cold, with sun. Damp streets, yellowish cat tucked under nearby car...darting out, runs ahead...

En route from the cancha de fútbol, La Plata, 1961--dusk--a wild parade. Hincha de Boca celebrating victory, rampage through city streets, buses commandeered, figures in sleeveless t-shirts and dungarees, perched on running boards, hanging from open windows, fifty-five gallon drums aflame along the way--all included--something borrowed, misshapen even--from carnaval--a grotesque twist if not the love...

Colectivo...

Analect 2.437x

11 February 2009. Chill at dawn, blankets in a heap, Natasha's pearly curl in wicker chair...

Artifacts of existence. And their parallels. A sleek cell phone, for instance--something nice, from Finland--or was it Malaysia? The Bristish grip, fanning out from Kuala Lumpur...

A leafy park in the spring, Palermo, perhaps. Constructed on the ruins of a tyrant's retreat--a master of bookkeeping who could handle the gaucho tongue. Modismos--figures of speech, moving slowly into town, where the langorous Paso Doble of the estancia assumed a louche slide, witness the arrabal--lugares sueltos, a media luz, opportunities unknown...

Analect 2.436x

10 February 2008. Quiet sun, Nicola pausing at back door...

Images of the Riachuelo--looking again at old book from Buenos Aires, from 1962, creamy yellow stock with small inexpert color plates tipped in... Painters of La Boca, Quinquela Martín and all the others. A blocky picturesqueness...the world simplified, made innocent. As if the local dockworkers and fisherman would be forever at their mild toils, seen against green waters and dappled sun. The bridges of the river likewise--their iron hulks becoming pennants of connection...

Mixed in throughout--the mountains of Salta and Mendoza, a balancing "imaginario..."