Analect 2.648x

29 January 2009. Pearl clouds on gray, be sunny or sad...

A Russian sailor and his girl, with watching bird. Story from Gauguin--that he carried with him to Tahiti prints of classical Indian sculpture from the Louvre--Greek as well. As an overlay to inspiration in an unfound world--an imagined wilderness of feeling, with shoulder and breast open to the air--a young woman holding a bowl of crimson-orange fruit, or night-time god waking from eternal sleep. His question--what was it, really, those endlessly sinuous lines, revealing youth--played against the knowledge of age...

A guide...

Analect 2.647x (Эй, моряк)

28 January 2010. Sun, pool returns to blue... sky and gull...

Moryak. The Russian sailor. A type, with all attendent folklore (especially in a continent-sized nation that went to war to find a port.) Black Sea or Leningrad (shown here)--the telnyashka, cut with narrow stripes--and a mariner's neck... Sailor's song...

Becomes an R&B knockoff, a la Bill Haley, sometime in Putin's gilded age. As with all else, a television platform, with wide-eyed blond and her sailor guy--a rather effiminate penguin-in-wetsuit fellow with floppy fins. None of this makes much sense, but then, neither does the song...

Нам бы, нам бы, нам бы, нам бы всем на дно.
Там бы, там бы, там бы, там бы пить вино.
Там под океаном
Мы трезвы или пьяны -
Не видно все равно.

Let's a, let's a, let's a, let's a head for the bottom
Drink some wine down there
Down under the sea
Whether we're sober or drunk--
It's not at all clear, and it's all the same...

(Whereas Rock Around the Clock, of course remains a model of cultural probity...)

A descent, yes, but of another sort... Brecht, whirling in a watery grave...

* * *

(Note: A search under "песня матрос" got us here--which, on second try, has disappeared, or there'd be a link. Okay then, все равно... "It's all the same..." )

Analect 2.646x (Гармошка)

27 January 2010. Garmoshka and guitarra. Staraya Smolenskaya... A curving earthen road in autumn, stand of narrow trees, forest floor. Two white birches, rising at an angle from common root, luminous. Conifers--larch and pine, darker below, then thinning in a scatter of light against gray sky. Subtle reds, burning, more felt than observed, colors falling...

The artist, or wanderer, in Babel's terms. Two white mice tucked beneath his shirt--a replenishing of brushes...key to the painter's trade...

"You have a predilection for familiar faces, my dear Pan Apolek..."

Natalie's face, in parking lot dark. And Chris, yesterday morning, across the bright table--a Pennsylvania childhood, reappearing...

Analect 2.645x

25 January 2010. Morning rain on dark glass, night pools...

Pasternak reborn on a farm in Tennessee...Bonnaroo, the name from Ninth Ward slang, via Dr. John, as in bon and rue--the best on the street. Street. Poka, words of spring--a black torrent's rush, after black ink of winter. Fevral', self-annihilating absorption of cold... Regina Spektor, "Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood..." Inherit, not steal--more destiny than crime...

"Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls..."

Vesná...

* * *

(Note: Regina Spektor's song, Après Moi, includes a verse from the Pasternak poem, Fevral' (February). In 2007 she performed a live version at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, whose name has New Orleans' roots. She herself was born in Moscow in 1980.
Vesná is Russian for spring--but as a name, it comes from the old Slavic ve + sna--"(awoken) from sleep". The ancient Slavic goddess of spring...a messenger...)

Analect 2.644x (Voix Ukrainiennes)

22 January 2010. Cold morning, light rain. Slush of streetside leaves, steamy auto glass, dampness...

A row of Ukrainian girls, on an eastern church dais--les Princesses Tsarivny. From forest to footwear--their modelled voices, black and red shoes... The latter not so much discordant as unexpected... As opposed to lapti--the old kind--woven from the bast of the linden tree--or birch bark. "A kind of basket fit to the shape of the foot...," the wooden blocks employed in their manufacture apparently found in even in neolithic excavations...

The past. To dig into the earth--one possible route. Or a chain of flowers, embroidered in greens and reds, violets, blue, sparkling on white blouse. Worn in the hair as well, on the left side, over the ear. Black skirts with more muted motif--one vertical row, set slightly to the left. Their faces--the impossibly high cheekbones, slavic eyes... And to sing...

A world of young beings, from there...

Analect 2.643x (страстное желание)

21 January 2010. Gray and rain, and rain...

El niño, bendecido... the boy child, blessed. And a Russian woman with a guitar. Tradition of the bard (old Celtic bardos--poet, singer--from a posited Indo-European gwer--to lift up the voice, praise). Here Veronika Dolina, Beznadezhnoe moë delo... It would be sad to translate such a phrase that makes sense only in the telling. The English "without hope" so starkly definitive--whereas the Russian all internally shaped with muted o's and zh's... Mournful sounds, yet filled with possibility--if only in the telling...

Srastnoye dyelaniye... A passionate longing...

Analect 2.642x (Никого не будет в доме)

20 January 2010. Dozhd' idyot--rain is falling, all throught the night, and into a dark morning. Ruthless handful of swimmers in their shared oblivion. Sharp drops on surface of pool. Dozhd' idyot...

Or Pasternak, and the snow. As sung by Sergei Nikitin, with his Russian seven-string guitar, a voice at once gentle and sure. Becomes a film--a tale of two cities, Soviet-style, for the new year--and a nest of contradictions (as every nest needs must be). The inadvertant apartment, a singer, unseen. A beautiful Polish girl playing her Russian counterpart, and the mother--in a telling moment of wry understanding--whose quiet presence informs all. A poem, a song, ongoing, and a story of love that might never have been...

Two birds in the snow...


* * *

(The film is Ironiya Sud'by--The Irony of Fate)

Analect 2.641x

19 January 2010. Sound of rain all through the night, waves wash up against the house, intermittent drips on all the sills...

The old cyrillic--Cyril and Methodious, those wandering Byzantines--two brothers, Apostles to the Slavs. The glagolitic text, Old Church Slavonic, with slashes and angles as appropriate to the the east. (Some say.) Pannonia and Upper Moravia, the names refigured in each generation. Town of Brno, with its dark arches--and a hilltop near Austerlitz. Bronze plate at the top, announcing a great battle--vista of all the surrounding lands. Napoleon, 1812...

Tatiana and Sergey--Kharkov--an inheritance...

Analect 2.640x

18 January 2010. Rain from a bucket, black sky.

A game with gifts, each wrapped for the Russian New Year, hand-written numbers on paper strips attached. I was 12. Cyrillic shapes revealed in the long serif, the small loop on the two. Klara's hand. Sergey on the couch, holding forth--his alert eyebrow eye catches all--on which a subtle but explosive disquisition-- the theory of the evolutionary structure of the human vertabrae (elaborate back scratcher with wooden rollers), or the Japanese-ness of a Japanese tea (small bag with gen-ma chai)--not a circle, but a picture of father, mother, child. "A different structure within the brain." He unfolds the melody of "Vo pole beryoza stoyala" into a round--hands moving to guide--and soon all the room is singing. Sasha, high wide Russian eyes, his lady Masha, small and charming, with dark curls close to her head, like my mother. Vadim, eyes round with questions, and Natasha, alongside her daughter Ira, all inward, eyes upcast. Young Dara, in the corner, with many questions. And Marianna's delighted but shivery response to a small mechanical frog. Zoya, too, perched attentively in her private high-armed chair...smiling, listening.

Jack: "Like the evenings when I was a boy, with my parents and their friends, all of them sitting together, speaking Russian..."

***

(Drawing: Isaac Babel, and then his daughter, seventy years later, in California... The bird is a Russian starling...)

Analect 2.639x

15 January 2010. The birthday of Alice. Looking up from pool--an egret, wings spread wide, heading west...

To see a bird, in flight--we were somewhere near Warszawa on the day of Boże Ciało--Corpus Christi--the body of Christ. 1969. Driving west, on the road to Łowicz, with Robert and Gabryela and Blanka--who catches sight of a bird in the sky above. "A good sign, flying in our direction..."

Layers of belief, embedded in each perception. Attached by fine silver wire--almost invisible--the maker unknown. Like the story from Shelley Winters, about Brecht, in Hollywood, in the years during the war. "I'd brought him home to dinner, with my mother, who sometime later asked me about that 'jeweler' who'd paid us a visit. 'Jeweler? I don't remember any jeweler...' 'Well, when you were out of the room, I asked the fellow what he did, and he told me that he made jewels for poor people..."

***

(A note on the drawing. The two men on the left, Russians, from a city somewhere in the south. The one on the right a seminarian(the coat, the leggings, the shape of his shoes). Heavy lock of hair flopped over his forehead, giving him an even more intense visage. Standing alongside, a companion--maybe from the university--the small mouth, pale face, bow tie. Group to the right--a family from the Caucasus--the mother with folded hands, eyes downturned (strength and severity of inwardness). Her daughter close alongside, leaning in--hands held very much like her mother's. Feet turned inward slightly as well--in some way a repetition of that gesture. The father, with high black Caucasian wool hat, dark face, and a full black beard hiding his mouth. Patient but not resigned. The pockets of his closely buttoned shirt at a precise angle--as with a line of shells. On his waist, a dagger at the ready, just under his left arm. Above--a Budionnovka--the felt hat worn by Budyonny's cavalry. Something right out of Babel...

"You must know everything...")

Analect 2.638x

14 January 2010. Vapors rising from pool, ships in the night...

Soviet era songs, their bright instrumentation, touch of the Hebraic, American jazz (muted trumpets, wiggly clarinets) and a subtle marshall undertone thoughout--an obligato to difficult times. Gray upon gray--as in Deborah's description of Kabul--the dust in the summer, winter mud...three or four paved streets, rocks and potholes everywhere--narry a tree in sight--cut down for firewood, or blasted... Port-au-Prince...

Utesov. Song in honor of an armored train--from memory as well. A strange name--strannoe nazvanie--and strange the cities on its route: Irkutsk, Lvov, Krakow, Warszawa... Destinations of the mind, vapors rising from a pool...

Analect 2.637x (да ребята прощайте)‏

13 January 2010. Bright sun on backlit gray, gleaming gold, all surfaces...

A Russian gathering, by Lev Shestov. His arched nose and sliding brow--the summer cap, and a table, outside, amidst the dacha's trees. Women in careful blouses, short to the waist, with long Russian skirts. A tiny broach worn just at the neck, in black stone. Vera Petrovna, reading to us from Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich--her favored son--words from this world...

Words from all worlds--a pigeon's walk, or a toast--proschai--

Analect 2.636x (Песня о Kаxовке)

12 January 2010. Gray billows...rain...

Music of Utesov. Pes'nya o Kachovk'e... Then, images of these generals from the past. A question of which side... Regimental cross... "The 300th Jubilee of the House of Romanov," a basket of medals...sword and epaulette. The verse from the Glinka song--"either by the sword or upon the shield..."

Kooperativnaya Kolybel'naya... A Cooperative Lullaby...

And Deborah's face this morning--I kiss her on each cheek. Ezekiel's Wheel...

Analect 2.635x

11 January 2010. Winter sun, both grackle and crow--their imposing hop. Gathering tidbits off tabletop, in children's lot--a child's dream--or ghost, both present and not...

As with Sebald--his photographs, Austerlitz and Vertigo--also gathered, years before. Stories follow--okra, beet and kale--a European host...

Farther to the east, on Odessa's shore. The ages of man, Soviet-style--that big-chested walk, all above the waist. And a towhead boy, alone on the sand...

Chernomorskaya dal'... Black-Sea distance...

Analect 2.534x (да и скоро будем знать)‏

8 January 2010. Gray and cold, sprinkle of rain, warm within, the seamless rungs of a song...

Leonid Utesov, played by tiny earphone on the docks of San Francisco--the former docks, I should say. Now one vast (yet somehow not intolerable) playland. Maybe the weather--a beautiful overcast day, silver skies disappearing into mist, boats lapping on waters of Vologda wax, faces with verifiable smiles. A man photographs a strutting gull, his ladyfriend just to the side, offering tidbits (off camera). Russian voices everywhere--their high-chested walk--all above the waist--Artur Eisen's progeny, moved now to the west. We turn the last corner to the sound of seals. Sea lions--big ones, wet and brown, huddling in one gemütlich communal pile...

Proshchal'naya Komsomol'skaya...man or gull... We'll know soon.

We'll know soon...

Analect 2.633x

7 January 2009. Floating mists over blue-green pool. "Popyli tumani nad rekoi..."

Words from a song, remembered only in part, as when a Mikhail Brodsky appears in the copyshop aisle--mistaken for a moment for Robin Williams (how can there be that strange resemblance?), but with a stronger and more foreward-looking jaw, vperyod--aged a bit, as needs must, but Soviet still...

Tanya's grandfather--the writer of the song (Katyusha), in another age... now they live just up the block.

Here, Utesov, 1926, in the checkered pants (checkered career), playing a winning tough-guy from the Odessa streets. He pulls a gun--a shpaler--home-made--which on closer inspection turns out to be a dark-toned pear... The job accomplished, he takes a bite and heads off down the road...

Mu-mu... Bremerhaven, Hotel Schneider...long ago...

Analect 2.632x

6 January 2009. Pool girl, shivering, with arms around middle, scooting inside. Emory engages her for a moment's back and forth--but the morning won't allow it--a smile and a continued dash...

Then, suddenly, behind the scenes in the Moscow Opera--three life-size figures in folk costumes--sarafan and veil. The light--northern and low, raking in from what one imagines to be tall narrow windows on the left. Pale white walls, worn, and a high Russian doorway just behind--the elaborate escutcheon, in brass--and, just above, a cursory cast-iron latch-bolt...

The ancient gusli... many presents...

Analect 2.631x

5 January 2010. Krasnaya zara...the Red Dawn... A dark Natasha poised at top of stairs, surveying the hinterland. Last night--through darkened upstairs window, a small face just outside--long nose with pink nostrils, impossibly dark eyes set on angle, fuzzy ears and a brusque furry coat, elongated tail with tiny scales... Opossum...

Or, the Moscow Art Theater, Odessa style--a partisan skit, on the Volkhovsky Front, performed for the troops--soldier and commander. Songs of Leonid Utesov--"Gop So Smykom"--Hop with a Violin Bow.... that's me...

Spirit through all...or at least almost all...

Gop so smykom eto budu ya
Slushayte vnimatelno, druzya
Ryemyeslom ya vybral krazhu
Iz tyurmy ya nye vlyazhu
I tuyrma skutchaet byez menya
No v kakoy tyurmye by nye sidyel
Nie bylo minuty shtob nye pyel
Zalozhu ya ruki v bryuki
I khozhu, poyu so skuki
Shto zhe budyesh dyelat kol zasyel?"

"But whatever prison I may be in
Not a minute passes without me singing
I stick my hands in my pockets
And walk around singing out of boredom
What else can you do when you've been tossed in the clink?

(Version Zygmunt Frankel)

Analect 2.630x (Ах, Одесса Моя)‏

4 January 2010. Early January sun, even earlier than the usual early January sun--and always associated with January 15th, the birthday of my mother, Alice... A warm and beautiful day.

Princess N, by phone: "A Russian year..." Yes, and the voice of Leonid Utesov, holding forth from the Moldavanka. Well, from Leningrad, to be precise. His memories of Odessa--the "ss" pronounced "ts" in the local way. Here as a sailor of middle years, and fitted out raffishly in telnyashka and Red navy cap... Knowing eyes, hint of a smile--a survivor--1895-1982.

The gathering at Klara's. Zoya, now ancient, resting in her small first floor room. Just outside, near the couch, I cue up the songs--Okudzhava, Artur Eisen, Utesov as well... Some of these from the mid-thirties--"Ax, Odessa Moya"--lyrical bounce, but with a certain Jewish plaintiveness...

Zoya, later, to Klara: "I was thinking to myself, where are these songs coming from...?"

Analect 2.629x

31 December 2009. Gray on gray, plus morning chill. Berkeley Monthly, folded in its rain wrap, askew on red cement pathway to house. Two days now...

Tatiana and Sergey, their respective modes. Animation of the storyteller--Nikolai Leskov--hovering at the edge of conciousness. "The most Russian of all Russian writers," as Benjamin might have added. Quality of the telling--an alert kind of patience, the mind on the balls of its feet--relaxed, hands aloft...

"The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."

* * *

(Note: the last line is also a quote from Walter Benjamin.)

Analect 2.628x

30 December 2009. Pale light, winter morning. Rain on studio roof last night--skylight sounds.

The local view. Oystershell clouds raking in from the west, on a low slant over sempiternal 7-eleven roof. Just now: young woman in brown leopardskin slippers with darker brown bows sits down alongside at the middle PC. The middle PC--a political tract of some kind. Goes with her half-finger gloves--the black over-the-wrist variety, reaching up to brush aside sleepy brown hair.

Li Ching at work just behind--wheel-bag, several pockets unzipped, his mild green nylon jacket (with unexpected Harley-Davidson emblems front and back) draped over handle.

Reaching for thumbdrive, her keys in hand, red heels...

Ending Poverty in America...

Analect 2.227x

29 December 2009. Dawn light through white curtains...

Neighbors' cars nose to nose on quiet street--insistent voice of starter motor, engine engaging in bloom of white exhaust...

Or, the Bud Light delivery truck, backed tight against 7-eleven facade. Driver buried in cab, hovering over forms propped on wheel...

A restless morning...young mother in Chamonix baseball cap, pony tail and dark green sweater, waiting for file to download as tiny blond Lita and her older brother explore the interstices of neighborning machines... On to water cooler possibilities across the room...

Greg, in patient voice, "Let's go see mommy..."

Analect 2.626x

28 December 2009. Morning chill, layers of white down, hood...

An evening with Sergey, invigorated and at his best, songs from Glinka, Shubert, Mozart, Brahms--a fragment of Handel on Jack's worthy upright, Sergey's frock-coat form leaning deeply into each note. Image of a bird--ptitsa--Nestor Vasil'yevich Kukol'nik--do I have this right?--a bird on the wing, Sergey in his perfect moment of theater, just before beginning, reaching up with an open hand...

Then after, gathered at two skewed tables, champagne, a toast, platters of Klara's Armenian spinach pie, beet salad vinegret (svyokla), in simple bowl, from Tatyana's mother, who speaks with Roma in her beautifully clear Silver-age diction--studies of language, history, philosophy, science--borders shifting with each decade, with each breath...

Physics, taking flight...

* * *

Sergey Zadvorny, the noted Russian-born basso cantante

Analect 2.625x

22 December 2009. Cold, brrrrr, winter sun. Steam rising from the pool...

King again, pine trees against eastern sky, their companion silhouettes. Shivering on deck while Yassir surveys the lanes. Woman with dark form, vigorous stroke. The tattooed girl from El Cerrito--her thin legs embroidered with Prussian blue flowers. Lin, his street-wise face bundled in life-guard red. Water sweet, a relief from the cold air...

A trailer frame nestled in the tees--random image from the Paraná. It's summer there, along the river's edge. Awning of red and white, metal...a combinatory aesthetic--the ore of an urban world...

Analect 2.624x

21 December 2009. Rainy morning, King Pool. Gray skies with flurries of wet. Low-rider changing rooms, dank and dim, with the same worn green poly-mesh clothes bags hanging from their skewed wires. Empty benches, puddled floor, a gym bag or two, someone's shoes tucked underneath, and the winding hallway to the deck, with snatches of Moroccan sounds en route--and there, the regulars. Yassir, for one, his sculpted beard now a little gray, directing traffic as of old. "Here, you swim in this lane, pointing. Two will be out soon..." Memories of that commanding diction--and the morning, late summer, nine years ago, with word of two buildings in flame. Same room, radio voices--Larry Bensky, coughing in an unexpected way...

I look into his face--the same warm smile, regaining time. "The same good eyes..."

Analect 2.623x

18 December 2009. Warm winter sun, unseasonable delight. Santa hats, t-shirts and smiles...

Weather for the birds, as one can see. A collation of little ones--house sparrow and finch, with the obligatory pidgeon. Cooing strut--city gait. Tiny violin case with miniature Chicago-style submachine gun (Al Capon--a terrible fate--a terrible pun)--while here, simply the partially puffed chest of an everyday egotist. Not so, research tells us--all behavior has a purpose, ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, at a very swift clip--round the last turn now, they're neck in neck--it's Fritz by a nose...

Die welträtsel, some would say...

Analect2 2.622x

16 December 2009. Two tigers loose in the house, one curled on a pillow, the other on freshly washed pile of blankets and towels. Winter poses, while outside, the steady rain, a nondescript mist of gray, home to house finch and mouse...

Signs of life along the street--wet camphor leaves, blue-gray light...airbrakes of recycling truck, careening around corner. Two faces behind blurry glass...

Fifth night--a home to all...

Analect 2.621x

15 December 2009. Even gray sky--single disk of gaberdine cloud with illumined edges, high over dark 7-eleven roof, broken arc of white just alongside. Glowing winter sun...

Full stop, then a beginning. As with a sentence--each linked set of words. A party tray--Harry and David, those Oregon gents with their apples and cheeses and pears, sent from afar in heavy boxes, nestled in excelsior. Channukah lights, fourth night...

A menorah of plain wood--from the garage in Oceanside, 2x4 with line of eight roofing nails. One for the shammus candle, too--tapped in a little higher...

The rock dove...

Analect 2.620x

4 December 2009. Sunny winter's morning, red-gold leaves mushed in the rain gutters, faces with smiles...

Zampanò e'arrivato...somewhere around 1954, rolling into town on that ancient motorcycle contraption. A touring show--Gelsomina's trumpet-plaint--and her unforgettable upturned eyes, all innocence and doubt...

Chains around his chest, a blanket for a cape, fiece look but strangely delicate shoulders, Anthony Quinn strides out before the crowd. Townsfolk--riffraff and loungers, children, too--until the sound of a car, just off camera, begins to build, gaining speed, and at the moment it passes--paaaaam--the links are parted...

La Strada...

Analect 2.619x

27 November 2009. Rain on the streets, rolling clouds, gray...

Yesterday: Delta roads, filtered sun. Field of sheep, their gray shapes, grazing. Coyote running along furrows of yellow husks, stopping, looking back, then running again... Sandhill cranes in Mokolumne backwaters--flooded fields of Staten Island. Their projected voices from afar, at first unseen--two sharper sounds, then a rumbly gobble. Same from high above... "They come all the way from Siberia..." I remain skeptical--half way round the globe? "The Bering Sea..." Home waters in Delta fields, winter light...

The killdeer and a piebald grebe...

Analect 2.618x

25 November 2009. Pale sky over dark hills, early. Swimmers in yellow-lit pool, flip turns and splash... Woman's form alongside, breathing, jumping in feet first...

Water bird and ling cod, eel grass in dark green sea. "Rocky, marine sub-tidal areas--in crevices and overhangs..." 

The shape of the guitar--imagined again for its ins and outs--a viguela, tauter at the waist, with six sets of double strings. De los tiempos de la corte de Carlos V...

Trovadores--cormorant and dove...

Analect 2.617x

24 November 2009. Slanting sunlight, east wind from over the hills. Water bird, high above, wings churning...

Borges, in a field of trees. Eyes with a touch of white below each pupil--sanpaku--a question of sight. Into a certain distance, that is--his world of English nouns and Elohist plurals--alternative names for visions of the Divine--distinctions gathered from arcane traditions, rewoven "bajo la luz del Sur..." Also--an impatience with sentiment--with the exception of what might be deemed a determined starkness--as if the world could be summed up in telling bas relief...

Buscando lo criollo...

Analect 2.616x

23 November 2009. Crisp sun, chilly gold ripples on blue pool. Swimmers with arms held in close to their sides, scurrying for the warm showers...

Or, a beach in Santa Monica, 1963. Fred Price (violin) and Roscoe Holcomb, his banjoe at the ready, angular face, perpetual upright stance... Southern mountain hat and stiff gaberdines. Here for their appearance with Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson at the Ashgrove, on Melrose. The old days. Tradition and bohemia in gentle collision, by the edge of an unknown sea...

Analect 2.615x

20 November 2009. Clear to east, high storm cloud wall coming in from the west...

Cold November mornings, closely trimmed head of Eritrean man behind counter in 7-eleven--shades of brown and gray. An immigrant's smile. School kids piling off city bus--arriving from who knows where...

A backyard garden--personal victories of a sort. Rutabega and chard, millet, a few Idaho potatoes. Miniscule harvest in the blowing rain...

Analect 2.614x

14 November 2009. Late fall, red leaves--colors of the earth, worn round the arm... Adam, adamah...

A truth in sadness--the bending bow. Judgments and conclusions of human kind--with all reasons invented after the fact. The world as plan. But no...becoming instead one grand river of delight--moments of challenge, love, tenderness--the feel of a cheek, a mother's breath. Two young birds, side by side, beginning anew...

Ongoing...

Analect 2.613x

18 November 2009. Awakening to clear skies, after yesterday's drizzly rain. A few cold nights in the woods--manzanita and madrone, white pine, fir. Home fires in a black cast iron stove, meandering flame through tempered glass. "Water is more beautiful than fire..." An assertion, even as we sit transfixed by the warmth, the snakey light... Outside--the Leonids, sparse... The Pleiades...

En route--a market in Cloverdale, hidden away on a frontage road. Spanish surname over the door, tall man with awkward teeth standing just in front, conversing with a friend. Their postures--from afar. Music inside--corridos--and a young girl at rotating counter, her shoulders bare, bright eyes...

Leaving for home: wild turkey in brush at side of cabin road--a mother and two offspring--their careful one-after-the-other steps, backward glances, disappearing in the gray rain...

Analect2.612x

12 November 2009. Clear with bright sun. Emery high on his stand, black balaclava pulled snug--an ageing terrorist of the lifeguard line.

Gaucho indumentaria. A history of clothing--but, of course, it's more than that. The tellingness of gesture--la chinita, for instance--homespun skirt at once graceful and plain, wrapped around her strong waist--opposite of stage-attire elegance. Long to the ankles, feet turned out with a hint of charming uncertainty. Flat on the ground--cloth alpargatas--hard to draw in just their plainness. Two braids and maybe a flower...

For the chango--as with the birds. The male plumage. What's downhome here is the hair--more front-to-back than up and down. A kind of connected solidity that belies the fanciness. Also something slightly rumpled as to the hat--worn true.

Cosas así...

Analect 2.611x

11 November 2009. Pale sun against mantle of gray, pushing through.

Choice and resolve. A wandering line, figures emerging as if from two pieces of cloth--held in the hand, released in the air. Their separation a measure of commitment--as if the bekoning were all.

The zamacueca, first danced in Lima, in 1824--la liberación, Gral. San Martín. "Su denominación como 'zamba' se aplicaba a las mestizas descendientes de indio y negra (o vice versa). La danza esta diseñada para seducir a las zambas, y de alli su nombre, tanto en Perú como en la Argentina."

Agitando Pañuelos. "...bailando esta zamba repiqueteadita..."

Analect 2.610x

10 November 2009. Half blue sky, bundled guard, change...

La firmeza, danza de galanteo... A dance of courtship, the two figures separate and independent throughout...

Moving through their steps with a poignant sureness, bending bough...

* * *

Coreografía:

1. Cruz
2. Vuelta
3. Giro (de espaldas)
4. Primer paseo: hacia la izquierda de varón
5. Segundo paseo
6. Tercer paseo
7. Cuarto paseo: apoyo de codos
8. Retroceso: con la mano izquierda en el oído
9. Avance y retroceso: con los dedos índice y mayor de la mano derecha en la cabeza
10. Avance y retroceso: en el 2ndo compas, las manos en el hombro
11. Avance y abrazo: el hombre intenta abrazarla a la mujer y ésta se agacha
12. Avance y abrazo: hacen lo mismo; en el 4to compas, el hombre le tira un beso a la mujer
13. Zapateo y zarandeo: el zarandeo se realiza con gestos de negación y de vergúenza
14. Media vuelta
15. Giro final

Analect 2.609x

9 November 2009. Cool November morning, all nines.

Margot and Daniella, a birthday gathering, on a hillside at the edge of a great park. Circle of trees along the ridge line, just behind another circle of gathered flowers and boughs. An offering--heather and rosemary, California sage. Other young people, and a mother with two bright children. Talk of Portland, a French teacher, the rain...

One of the younger women with spoon in hand, carefully ladelling chunky apple sauce into one of the children's bowls. Slow and precise movements of her hands--just so. As if all the care in the world...

Analect 2.608x

6 November 2009. Ying at pool window, notebook of college studies. Elbow arms of swimmers, back and forth, hint of sun...

Story of a puma in the Oregon landscape--Thalia, near the Dalles. "All orchards and fields." Her brothers wouldn't believe her till they saw the size of the tracks. Big smile, both arms in the air, straight up, a contemporary hooray...

Or Christine, telling of musicians in the Austrian country towns--local folk, each person involved. "You don't buy a drum, you go to the man who will make you one; he makes the other instruments, too..."

Carmencita, filmed with el Cachafaz, mysterious bit of footage--unique, from years past. Then, dancing again, at ninety-five...

Derrick and Lisette... Adiós, arrabal...

Analect 2.607x

5 November 2009. To the northeast, island clouds--St. Thomas and St. Lucia...speckled and spotted, mandrake root...

A man alone, heavy wool on an ancient plain, his hands bound in iron, head down, eyes inward--contemplating--no, just first imagining--the long-term history of a noble refusal--in this case his own. To reclaim a kind of justice, yes, great horned owl of the Dakotas, prairie wind, also his own...

(for Leonard Peltier)

Analect 2.606x

4 November 2009. The gray skies...

And Tennessee Ernie Ford, with all his polished eagerness--the closely-trimmed moustache and those artfully wobbly teeth--sitting onstage together with Odetta, her presence, also artful in her own way--singing Woody Guthrie songs--the apple pickers' union in the Garden of Eden. A feigned spontaneity--or something more? Not that it matters, really, when they're so clearly enjoying each other's company... And the chance to do again what they truly love...

Analect 2.605x

3 November 2009. Early pool, blue sky, golden jet sliver on long diagonal, upwards...

The claims of Corot. A woman reading in the landscape, by the side of a modest French pond. Barbizon School... Hand to cheek, book in lap, and in the distance, a boatman, partly hidden by rushes at water's edge. Here made wide, the horizon out of Homer or Inness, perhaps--a seafarer--the Coming Storm...

That expanse, a patrimony...

Analect2.604x

2 November 2009. Gauguin morning, two figures at pool, rounded forms, dipping, smiling...

"Her Name was Vairaumati," and so the question remains--Vairaumati then, Vairaumati now, if only for this glancing moment, in the line of a shoulder, a flower, a young breast. Turned to the side, after the Pharoahs' wives, on dark blue cloth...Prints of flowers--frond and swirl... White petals...

The sea...

Analect2.603x

30 October 2009. Morning sun, clear and bright--not yet that late autumn mist.

Hablando de puchero y calabazas--Victoria arrives a little late, with cloth covered bowl of home-made empanadas--dulce de membrillo, quince jam--and a pitcher of tereré...that hot-summer variant of yerba maté... Nos encuentra cantando, our first pass at Tierra Querida...

And visiting from New York, Heather's grandmother, Edith, who appears with a spry smile at the classroom door...

Then: a black and white photograph of California land--darkly shadowed foreground with rolling hills, two rounded granite boulders, and a scattering of live oaks... where also appearing, mysteriously, at the far right--a small and convincingly incongruous rider on a rearing horse--borrowed, no doubt, from some long-forgotten yerra down Uruguay way...

Face of don Ata--a merging of worlds...

Analects 2.602x

29 October 2009. Face peering up from pool, "This lane's free..." Christina's voice...

Mate pava on office floor--small bright metal kettle with narrow handle, balanced precariously on plug-in hotplate, a little water spilling on brown linoleum, our version of the outdoors. Victoria's grandmother, in the countryside near Luján... Enlaces...

Or Melissa, a few minutes later, sitting with Alice. "Do you think Mansilla (she uses the traditional soft elle, not the raspy Argentine pronunciation) actually lived the way he writes?"

To ask these questions, for the first time...

Analect 2.601x

28 October 2009. Clear and cold, wind raking pool, guards huddled under laters of red. Ying's smile...

Vitello Abalos, bailando una zamba con Elvirita, just two years back. Born in 1922, "estrenando sus primeros 'pantalones largos' como miembro del conjunto de Los Hermanos Ábalos..." who first recorded Nostalgias Santiaguenas in 1939...

Pañuelo de la gracia, corazón de la vida...

Analect 2.600x

27 October 2009. Brisk wind on pool deck, small penants horizontal, cirrus clouds, just a few...

With Chugo again, somewhere in the northwest of Argentina. Breakfast with the locals, a reprise of Cezanne, Fanta-sipping cardplayers at small tables, the non-descript landscape calendar high on tan wall, digital tv monitor on old wooden stand... A single wire providing the horizon...

Evidence of travel--time, space, sympathy...

Analect 2.599x

26 October 2009. Sunlight slicing through blue-green pool. Vigorous types in two-piece suits, flip turns... Swim coach on deck, head down, sorting through cell-phone mail...

The modern age. Le plus sa çhange... Payo Solá, seated, many years ago, somewhere in provincial Salta, his narrow fingers and dark lapels, bandoneón pulled wide across his knees. Flaring hair, also from another age--both wild and controlled, as with Toscha or Cavafy... An island personage, yes, stranded on the coast. Alexandria, perhaps--another backwater town--theodolite of the past...