Analaect 2.741x

30 June 2010. Breeze, sun... 7-eleven lot, yes, Russian stories. Bunin, Babel'... 

Banny Chow walking across street towards her Honda, she perks up when I tell her I'm listening to Russian. Language is her world. Yesterday, airport in San Diego--leaning back against wall, playing. Older woman in wheel chair, beautiful African face and calm eyes, I see her ask to be seated nearby. She sings along... All dressed in white, as if for church, en route to Dallas.  Missy Brown? Was that her name? I so wish I'd written it down...

Analect 2.740x

24 June 2010. At the pier, Oceanside. (But distracted here by Rupa's voice--from the Subcontinent to Wells Fargo, always dressed in a sari, at her desk over financial matters, smiling...)

On Pacific Shore--Kitaj's painting from maybe 1972, jumbled figures to the left--a kind of frieze, set against wide expanse of Matissian blue. From his Berkeley years--Duncan, Creeley, books...

An empty beach, wide sand at low tide, breaking maybe three feet. What is the feeling? Yes, what is the feeling...?

Oceanside...

Analect 2.739x

23 June 2010. Beresteczko, the Polish spelling--and an entirely different vision of the past. The kresy--borderlands--a pilgrimage from within. Figures in a ruined church, arcs of worn brick, columns of dust. One high window filled with light...

Analect 2.738x

22 June 2010. Shaded spot on parking lot, looking out on summer street, rumble of truck.

Stone stairway, 1968--Uniwersytet Warszawski--Polish eagle over baroque gate--every turn and filigree wrought in relief--flower interspersed with curve. An older woman, her straw broom with twisty wooden handle--a rustic touch in time of total employment, bending low over worn marble steps. Summer, no one about...

Or a shrine, tucked beneath stone, Berestechko. Candles, visitors from today...

The Babel' story--collision of grim detail, almost impossible to read, his voice notwithstanding.

A letter, faded and torn, found in a corner, on the floor--" 'Paul, mon bien aime, on dit que l'empereur Napoleon est mort, est-ce vrai? Moi, je me sens bien, les couches ont ete faciles, notre petit heros acheve sept semaines...' (Berestechko, 1820)..."

Analect 2.737x

21 June 2010. Chapel at Tomaszgrod, the ogee curve. Erect perpendiculars from the diagonal, at midpoints of each of the curves, to intersect perpendiculars from the upper and lower horizontals (to which the curves will be tangent). The intersections of these perpendiculars will be centers for circles of which the ogee curves are segments...

Language of geometry--clarity and order, proceeding step by step. The cloak of Squadron Commander Pavlichenko--"like a gloomy banner" riding in front. Heroism and violence, banners of history...

Analect 2.736x

18 June 2010. Volhynian chapel, Tomaszgrod, restored to a creamy tan--just enough umber to make it look dim, set against once-white pilasters and columns. The metal awning, mounted on wrought-iron braces, as flimsy and of today as the fenders of the snow-splashed Vespa parked in front. Reinforced concrete power stanchion, winter sky, two figures to the left in dark clothes and knit caps, alongside another vehicle--bus or truck of some kind...

Here--people in a field. Gypsies, perhaps? Are there still such? Woman with short jacket wrapped around her shoulders, traditional skirt. A Godard film, from 1962, set much too far to the east. More Andrzei Wajda...

At St. Valentine's...

Analect 2.735xc

17 June 2010. Vorob'ya, tricky to say, beautiful to hear. Russian for sparrow, as in Sparrow Hills, overlooking Moscow. Vorob'yovy Gory...

Names with sounds, lines with meanings, a blunted pencil figuring the form in each curve, understood as gesture, the weight of reaching... His Eye Is On The Sparrow, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, or, holding two young children, the voice of Ethel Waters...

Not skill, but love...


* * *

His Eye Is on the Sparrow

Analect 2.734x

16 June 2010. Molokan, an older man with scythe, Russian harvest. Their settlement in the Valley of Guadalupe, Baja California... Grape vines and olive trees...

From an article in the Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1907:

There are about 2,000 Molokane at present living in this city. They have wearied of city life and its limitations and many temptations for the young people of the colony. For months the dream of the Russians has been a tract of land in the sister republic, where they could worship according to their peculiar tenets and live a semi-community life. Philip H. Shubin, Abraham G. Desatoff and Efim A. Urin, three patriarchal elders, went to view the promised land. Tracts on the east and west coast were surveyed, but according to Hack, no immediate decision was made.

Analect 2.733x

15 June 2010. Anatole Kuragin, in a sertyuk. His pleasant smile--"now begins the amusement"--picking up on Prince Bolkonsky's intended demolishment, and laughing right along. Unflappable, a word from another age. "I was on the list," (the list to avoid military service), turning now to his father, "now, papasha, just what was I down for...?" All seriousness vaporized in these moments of applied mirth, laughter barely surpressed. Kundera's incredible lightness of being--probably very much misunderstood on my part--for what else can one DO in the face of this enslaught of reason and duty. Slava--the word itself--as in Slav--all glory and rightness and glory...

Analect 2.732xc

14 June 2010. Tachanka, a teaching thereof. Gruff words and military terms-- Makhno and Budyonny, names from a stubbled past. The ruts and gullies of a burned countryside, where "ruined churches glow on the hills" and "narrow-shouldered Jews hover sadly at crossroads..."

A gift from my teacher--Carl Proffer, perhaps more than he realized, the quick pencil checks to the left of particular stories--Pan Apolek, the Road to Brody, My First Goose...

Read these--they are your life...

Analect 2.731xc

11 June 2010. Ancient Danish woman with sunglasses tilted back on her head, bending over copier, perplexed but winning smile...

La Belle Helene, her entry into Pierre's life, bending over in low-cut gown to look carefully at a snuff box from Anna Pavlovna's dotty aunt. He'd prefer, of course, to have joined the other table, where affairs of the world are under discussion--the Tsar's new alliance with the Prussian King, against "the enemy of mankind..." But, detained by the view, impossibly so--and given that he's Pierre, he decides he must marry her on the spot...

Passage marked in 1965, on first reading. But it's the following paragraph-the beginnings of Pierre's doubt--that I found myself marking late last night...

Analect 2.730xc

10 June 2010. Solano soldier. Twenty five years of service in the army of Alexander I. Whose childhood name, after all, was Sasha. Sasha, like all the other Sashas--a flop of blond hair, military dress in play, the first wooden bayonette...

He (the soldier) returns to marry the sister of Sergei Aksakov. Their small home, the garden, animals. A marmot, even, who'd hide under the bed, darting out to steal the old soldier's slippers.

Yesterday, Baker Beach: a crow on the sand, bay wind. Fluffy neck feathers blown back to reveal pure white...

Analect 2.729xc

8 June 2010. Four hats and a bird. Morning sounds. An impossible leaf blower somewhere in the middle distance--winds of industry.

Listening to Aryeh Leib as he expounds on the fine points of Benya Krik's rise to fame. Kak eto delalos' v Odesse. How it was done in Odessa. The Russian, with its particular twists and turns--pauses and pilings-up, and a sweet irony throughout. Here we encounter neither pragmatism nor guilt, just a river of song. Well, more a stream--one with lots of rocks, and some deeper pools, breem hiding in the shadows, and a few seemingly aimless minnows darting about just under the surface...

Four hats and a bird...

Analect 2.728xc

7 June 2010. Reading Babel' in the car. Say that again? Reading Babel' in the car, 7-eleven lot, fairly early, with all the appropriate street noise and passers-by. (Go to the people, Gorky said.) A small woman swings by, American jeans and a foreign air...

Benya Krik and the "poltora zhida"--Jew-and-a-half, in old Odessa...

Last night, late--with Prince Andrei again, on the edge of the battlefield, Austrian town below, swarming with French troops. Battery commander Tushin--the true hero to date--holding his own under the relentless fire of ten enemy cannon...

Enemy, in Russian: "nepriyatel'"--the unpleasant one...

Analect 2.727xc

4 June 2010. Two young deer at top of Stockton--brown with white, appearing in early evening...mother just ahead...

Filming of War and Peace--Soviet-era production, with all due assistance from the Red Army. Field trucks, open-backed, from which emerge a clump of dragoons. Later--close up of woman's hands, attaching a small, bristly moustache,,,

O, tsen', v kotoroj videm ruzhnyx lyudej--cegodnya i vchera...

Kinds of hats--low brim and the hugh plume. Reflective of an age. The loan, made in 1913, in Mozyr--to someone in the family--to open a hat store, as it were...

Analect 2.726x

29 May 2010. Sun, white clouds, interspersed with lots of blue...

Jennifer's face this morning, appearing at my side, near the window, a drawing in the works. Holbein and retraced lines--a shifting copy of trees. Avigdor Arikha--"I can't bear to go back," and the meanings of language... Each other's presence...

The goodness of moments, every layer somehow intact...

Analect 2.725x

27 May 2010. Rain in late May.

Analect 2.724x

25 May 2010. Return of a sunny morning...

Life of Aleksandr Vertinsky, an emigre in Paris, the Russian Pierrot. Novella within a song...

His return to Soviet Russia, during the war, and later marriage, in Shanghai, to a woman 33 years younger. Pictures with their two daughters. Also, film footage of Vertinsky in wide-floored apartment, jacket hung over the frame of a painting on the wall, his tie alongside, one pant leg rolled up, block of wood wrapped to one foot, sliding back and forth in some kind of vigorous exercise... His hands in the air, moving in lyric time...

Analect 2.723x

24 May 2010. Bluster and cloud, maybe rain...

Analect 2.722x

24 May 2010. Gray, clouds, wide spread gray... Small mid-altitude bird darting across the avenue, upwards trajectory. The eye follows...

B's story--a cat at the movies, en route to Alaska. Sports films. Her small gray head darting back and forth, following the action...

Or, a living room in Moscow, 2002. Jumble of books, and an Alexander Vertinsky song--Your Fingers Smelling of Laudanum. A young man with darkened face, bending over his guitar as he sings. Scene at the table, listeners gathered after a meal. A woman, her chin raised slightly--the skeptic's owl, banished for the moment... a worldly enchantment...

To tolerate the impossible...

Analect 2.721x

21 May 2010. Nicola, curled on white comforter, tucked against my side...

A Moscow street, older buildings, steep green roofs with dark windows, tan parapets, and an omnivorous construction crane in the distance, on the right, against snatch of pale blue sky. Two women--from two different eras. Isabella Yurieva and a much younger friend, who reaches out with her right hand to pick lightly at something on Isabella's dress, then, with the same hand, smoothing her sleeve. She soon leans forward to kiss Isabella's cheek, now touching her other arm now with her left hand... They part...

Tol'ko Raz, Only Once, recorded before the war.

Day and night a heart radiates tenderness
Day and night the head is whirling
Day and night like an agitated fairy tale
Your words resound to me
Only once in a lifetime a meeting
Only once fate tears a thread
Only once on a cold winter evening
Do I so much wish to love...


* * *

Tol'ko Raz, as recorded by Isabella Yurievna

Analect 2.720x

20 May 2010. Morning sun through white curtains, Natasha curled on white chair--impending mass of tortoise shell fur...

Russian hussar, enters stage left, through the mist. Prince Andrei in clattering mail coach, dispatched by Kutuzov to announce victory. Odna pobeda... Sounds of guns merging with those of the carriage itself. Night thoughts--on the edge of dream. As if this were the moment he'd always lived for...

Entering town--the tall Austrian houses, lighted shop windows--also a kind of stage.

A miracle...

Analect 2.719x

19 May 2010. Yesterday's day, morning in May. Neighbor's car pulling carefully over to bumpy curb for short talk with city tree guy--his Southern accent...

And a sketch from the Soviet past. The line of heavy-fendered motorcyles, each with metal stand welded to side-car mount, on which, high above, two young women take a striding pose--sotsialisticheskaya rabota--each with one arm forward to grip banner staff. (A metaphor of the times--the staff itself being being welded in place, so that rather than carry the flag, they hold onto it for support...)

No true knowing. Like the Ed Sullivan show, which Dad would watch on Sunday night--a line of Chinese acrobats with spinning plates, or the magician with long-toothed saw--inky voice of a yet-unknown crooner, or the five appealing youngsters in modest afros and platform shoes...

High metallic sound-stage curtain, narrow wires, fame...

Analect 2.718x

13 May 2010. Sun, early, pale sky. Javed at the ready, just behind 7-11 counter--a little more stocky, a little more gray. Feeding the birds each morning at dawn--a line of a hundred gulls, all along the parapet, swooping down for yesterday's bread... But that was then, now only a line of vertical wires--cultural impediments--the management in action. He smiles, just a little, "These people, they don't love god..."

Allegories and doubles--as in mother and child. Fuller forms, where the knowing of the one implies knowledge of the other. A history of philosophy, written in the flesh--curve and bone, hooked to the meaning of the meat...

Boat awaiting, like something out of Böcklin or Sickert... Or maybe the Boy Scout's Handbook, where each line serves a purpose--the well-tied knot (half-hitch, bowline) or wobbly signal tower--thirty foot lengths of over-sized bamboo, lashed together at the joints.

Odor of hemp, evening fire...

Analect 2.717x

12 May 2010. Sun, early pool. Emory high on guard stand, waving broadly...

The Wanderers. Peredvizhniki... Two figures on a twisty road, narrow tracks amidst high grass...

And a purse with gold coins, old and new, tucked away under a pillow--Tolstoy--this unexpected domestic touch in a young Russian hussar's bivouac... The hinterlands of Brno...

The year 1969, heading across Czechoslovakia towards Vienna in an old car, we see a likely hilltop for our picnic--overlooking a broad rolling Central European landscape. We pull off, winding our way up, to find there at the top a large round bronze plaque, mounted horizontally, like the land itself. Here stood Napoleon, Austerlitz below...

Analect 2.716x

11 May 2010. Sun again, chilly dark... Nicola curled alongside, minor purrs...

Nikolai Rostov, camped in an Austrian wood... Tall horse with injured hoof, and a purse with gold coins--old and new...

Sebastopol, Russian family by the sea. Galich--his home town...

A version of Oceanside...

Analect 2.715x

10 May 2010. Gray clouds, scatter of rain on hatchback glass...

A Russian officer, as drawn by his own hand-- Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Geroj Nashego Vremeni. Figure of Pechorin--the "superfluous man," an existential character avante la lettre.

And Prince Andrei...? His irritability. Razdrazhenie, a kind of impulsive dissatisfaction with the world as is. Dreams of a hero set against bedrock of shame. Pozor. The loss of 40,000 men--Austria's folly--and for Kutuzov, the greatest challenge...

A century hence (my father, quoting Lenin): "Freedom is the recognition of necessity..."

Analect 2.714x

7 May 2010. Workaround Analect--after the mac's internet demise. A clear and sunny morning, nonetheless. Squirrels delighted on the appearance of their peanut supply--as are the towhees, with small pieces of last week's challah. Smaller birds at feeder, too. On Monterey pine...

Last night's event--music and art, with a luxurious table of food. Quietly good moods all around... Mauricio, with guitar in hand, and David's arrival, after 9--with violin, played in the old way--a pure and responsive evocation...

Late night streets, 1:30 am--young couple crossing Oxford towards campus--the girl with small bag of chips in her right hand...

Vperyod...

Analect 2.713x

6 May 2010. Bright morning after gloomy afternoon. But is any afternoon truly gloomy? Lermontov, for example--po ugryumomu lyesu--through a dark woods...

As with Auden, in the downtown apartment--Manhattan--a mad exile, repository of wisdom... Brimming...

Social history of the cigarette--in it's commercial form. Of the Russian kind--papirosy--tabac set off by a paper tube, squeezed between thumb and first finger, first in one direction then the other--a kind of Volga filter. Truck driver's head, leaning out window of cab, on a Siberian road, in a storm...papiros...

Or Galich (an acronymn)...scene at table, younger people close around, listening, smiling at his words...

Becomes a poem...

Analect 2.712x

5 May 2010. Drawing only today.

Analect 2.711x

May 4, 2010. Glorious days, early May... We moved in at just this time--in 1976. Miramar, "behold the sea..."

Aleksandr Galich, as a younger man. A playwright, and recognized figure in Soviet letters, who in the late 1950s found himself writing and performing his own songs... Something opened, memories included--often of a darker kind--and the need to speak. Matroskaya Tishina--Sailor's Dusk--banned for Galich's "distorted view of Jews in the Great Patriotic War..."

But why go there? His songs, passed by magnitizdat, from hand to hand...

Video of a performance, after his exile, filmed in Norway in 1971--he greets the audience a in tentative English. Aleksandr Ginzburg. The song-- Ya vernus'--I will return...

* * *

Image of his burial place--the Russian cross, the Russian name...

Analect2.710x

3 May 2010. Warm sun, early. Filtered light though camphor leaves. One low-flying crow swooping down the street, under the canopy...

Everyone's stories. In this case, Sergei Nikitin, with his white hair, kindly voice, holding forth to an audience of Muskovites--their attentive and intelligent faces--almost self-consciously so--as he tells of his mother lifting him up as a little boy, standing him on the wardrobe so that he can hear a song by Aleksandr Galich--the one being played by their neighbor just over the partition. (I think this was the gist.) His mother's face, just below, weeping...

Speaking in a quiet, even pensive way. To share, to relive...



* * *

And a recording of Galich singing...

Analect 2.709x

30 April 2010. Backyard, early. Green ivy leaves in beginning sun... Nicola, insistent, darting down the stairs, rounding corner into kitchen, heading for back door...

Or, a scene from Zhuravli--The Cranes Are Flying (1958)--the score in 12/8, for that beautifully ponderous Russian touch... Paired (in my imagination) with Mark Bernes again (he later recorded his own version of the song). Still lost in Tri Goda Ty Mne Snilas' (For Three Years I've Dreamed of You)...

A younger man, in an earlier time...

Analect 2.708xs

29 April 2010. This morning--an empty table where my copyshop computer once sat. Dust and scratches, Plan B...

But what is Plan B?

Listening to a Mark Bernes song, seat by the window, view onto Solano. The year is 1946, from the film, Bolshaya Zhizn II (A Great Life). The song-- Tri Goda Ty Mne Snilas'--Three Years I've Dreamed of You. Bernes face filling the screen--cap tucked back on his head, simple guitar just behind. A Soviet everyman, but with thoughtful face... "I keep my dream of you..." Minor chords, hinting at the major, something brighter, then returning...

Both strength and tenderness...

* * *

For the song itself: Три Года Ты Мне Силась

Analect 2.707x

28 April 2010. Sudden shower at dawn, steady downpour--then sun...

White helmet of construction worker, far across the street, his gray sweatshirt with touch of red ochre, heading up Solano, 7-eleven bag in right hand...

An older woman from the Ukraine. Posture universal? Pulled into her chair, shoulders of dark coat molded to her own. Becoming noticeable--the strength of her arms and wrists. Somewhere the meaning--and result--of a lifetime of labor. Set against filigree curtain--a floral print with folk motif, the swirled curves of a dusty Soviet-era drafting template, even the tassles below no more than one thin layer of ink...

Shum vremini... The sound of time...

Analect 2.706x

27 April 2010. Rain, insistent. Umbrellas and frowns...

Nikolai Bolkonsky returns to Lisye Gory with his new wife, Liza, who is expecting... Encounter of Liza and Princess Marya... "who although they've met only briefly, one time, at the wedding, now immediately clasp each others hands...and burst into tears." Hands abandoned, for a moment, then rejoined, again with tears. Prince Nikolai frowns... Entire universe in one moment of feeling...

An Odessa street. Na Deribasovskoj. Pelican's view. The Russian sailor and his girl, "like a proud Grechanka," or so goes the song. The shepherd, without his flock, and a woman from the past, Ottoman times, cloistered in the ways of the Prophet. The Pontus even before...

Mariupol, Odessos, Tira...

Analect 2.705x

26 April 2010. Early, April light. Nicola heading up bed, step by step, curling into her preferred position, high on my chest.

And, of course, Vasya-Shmaravoz. Na Deribasovskoj Otkrylasya Pivnaya (On Deribasovskoj There Opened Up a Bar), a song from the late 1920s. Author unknown--and there are many variants. The one here, recorded with appropriately louche Soviet-era backup band, each instrument sliding in almost unannounced, adding a subtle but necessary touch of the declassé. Which was, after all, the whole point...

Also: an Odessa "anekdot"... (The great cities announce their radio broadcasts...)

Attention! Moscow speaking!
Warning! Here speaks Kiev! (in Ukrainian)
Achtung! Hier sprecht Berlin!
Sha! Odessa needs to say a few words...

* * *



In the original:

Внимание! Говорит Москва!
Увага! Говорэ Кыив!
Ахтунг! Хир шприхт Берлин!….
Ша! Одесса имеет сказать пару слов!

And, naturally, the song itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdkFes0Guwg. To the tune of El Choclo, an Argentine tango...

Analect 2.704x

23 April 2010. Sunny April day, arms churning at pool...

And why so obsessed by a song? Shalandy Polnie Kefali, voice of Mark Bernes. But something else as well--harder to pinpoint--the Russian-ness of the melody line--the particular ups and downs in a sequence of tones. Having to do with the shifting tones in a landscape--an Odessa sky...

Here, a zaftig lady, sitting alongside. My Russian instructor (this I'm inventing), in long dress, dark shawl with amber broach. Her smile--also a set of shifting tones. And why not? She comes from there...as do we all...

Analect 2.703x

22 April 2010. Open lane, wavery lines deep below...

Cheremukha--the bird-cherry tree--as in Chekhov--or Mark Bernes, blooming over an Odessa fountain...

And the Ryabina--also in an old song. Tyonkaya Ryabina--the Slender Mountan Ash, longing for her oak tree across the way... To cross the river, and press him close amidst her branches...

Lands with horses...to travel over a long distance. Rolling fields and wind...

Analect 2.702x

21 April 2010. Gray morning, some rain... Old Chinese pines off Moeser--now gone...

Mark Bernes, his strong face, close cropped Soviet hair, brushed down a little over the forehead. Singing to a Russian woman, blond, just alongside--the camera holds on her impassive face, questioning eyes... Shalandy polnye kefali... The Black Sea skiffs are filled with gray mullet... Much too prosaic in English, where the Russian has all the lilt that arrives with years of inhabiting and enjoying a particular place. Lore of Odessa...the shifting tones...

Ya vam ne skazhu za vsyu Odessu
Vsya Odessa ochen' velika (here the tone modulates up a half step)
No i Moldavanka u Peresyp' (back to the minor)
Obozhayut Kostyu-moryaka... (and then the major again...)

I won't tell to you about all Odessa
For all of Odessa is surely very grand
But in the Moldavanka and Peresyp'
All adore Kostya the fisherman...


* * *

(Shalandy with Mark Bernes singing, 1939)

Analect 2.701x

20 April 2010. Gray clouds, racing high. Rain though the night...

Struggling drawing--that's how it is, sometimes. Too many glimpses of too many figures from the past. Aunt Ruth for one--but more on my mother's frame. Here--girl at edge of screen in Lyubimy Gorod, at the very end of the song... Turning away, thoughts of what's to come...

Mark Bernes--his jaunty face, at the piano, filmed in 1939--singing of home...

* * *

Tone of the different stanzas. First, in the voice of a crooner--major-minor, with an American lilt. The second, a Russian folk march--launching in, even and upbeat, ending on lyric note. The third--positive and unforgettable 2/4 bounce--the folk march with even fuller spirit--again resolving into slower, more lyrical, sadder, maybe even darker, finale...

Lyubimy Gorod.

Analect 2.700

19 April 2010. Slow takeoff for local aviation--Nicola up on her back legs, extra long stretch at front door. Open, please... Natasha's approach--more slinky, the lovely fur ball slipping down back stairs, darting into side room, waiting...

Requirements and requests. The stuff of life--Smuglyanka--infill runs and trills. Schematic score for the garmon--Russian accordion--tiny numbers below each note. The mystery of where each finger goes...

Girl's face, the Bravo cafe, Fergana, Eastern Uzbekistan. Ancient mountain town high in the Fergana valley, original source of the great Chinese horses--as given form in T'ang dynasty pottery, where they "resemble the animals on the golden medal of Eucratide, King of Bactria..."

Kara Darya...

* * *

(Note: Smuglianka Moldavanka--the name of the song from smuglij--Russian for dusky. And Moldavanka--the Jewish Quarter in old Odessa (later the setting for Isaac Babel's stories.) And so, a Fergana girl, whose snapshot is labelled "Ax, Smuglianka Moldavanka." The Kara Darya--Black River...flowing though that same valley...) 2.700x

Analect 2.699x

16 April 2010. Nicola heading up the bed at dawn, her small head and delicate ears, leaned towards my own... Rapprochement...

As with Natalia, yesterday evening, singing Smuglianka, the partisan song with Ukrainian roots. Pure liveliness of each line, an even start, quickly building. She's inadvertantly demanding--no way to slow down here--no "wait for me's." You're in it or you're not, dancing with a country girl in the Podole, flaring skirt, flashing eyes... The maple tree--memory of something brilliant and vast...

Narrow paths, disappearing into the marshes...

Analect 2.698x

15 April 2010. Quiet spring sun, almost to those mornings in early May when the world feels entirely remade...

"Here the birds don't sing
The trees don't grow
And only ourselves, shoulder to shoulder
Rooted here on this ground..."

Okudzhava's voice, almost tender--a song from the war, twice distant now. Story told, and retold...

"Someday we'll remember this
And will not believe it
But for now we need a single victory
One for all--
For less we will not stand..."

Photograph, for many years on bedroom wall, in Oceanside--from a friend of my parents, made somewhere in Italy, also during the war. A group of children together in a doorway--one of them holding a crust to his mouth. Written below, in pencil-- "Bread for one..."

To learn these truths...

* * *

(The scene here, again, from "V Boj Idut Odni Stariki," (Only Old Men Are Going to Battle). Hillside, in silhouette--handing out potatoes to gathered children. Filmed in 1973. For the song, Okudzhava's voice: Десятый наш десантный батальон

Analect 2.697x

14 April 2010. Late, late. Bucket bath in back yard--water over head and shoulders in open air... A la Russe (except that the water's not freezing, and it's not mid-winter...)

Smuglianka-Moldavanka. How much better the words look in cyrillic--where the "smug" disappears entirely. A partisan song, as sung here in Soviet film of a certain vintage (1972--Leonid Bukov: "V Boj Idut Odni Stariki.") Man and woman at unseen table, Red Army, musicians (balaika, accordions, a drum and guitar) launching in, spirited director in cossack shirt, expressive gestures (again a la Russe). She turns her head towards him--face in full profile for a moment, then back and slightly down--a touching mix of formality and modesty...

Entire spirit of song as counterpoint...

* * *

As R.B. Kitaj once put it, "Art needs a job to do..."

Analect 2.696x

13 April 2010. Birds calling at dawn, over Solano, Javed's gulls...

To fed the poor, the animal kind. A brace of squirrels, tohee and jay. Their box of seeds, peanuts scattered under lemon tree, wobbly water bowl. Family...

Or three women, small boat, in a Russian woods. Auden's line. Or Okudzhava's--On the Smolensk Road. "Po Smolenskoj doroge--lesá, lesá, lesá..."

The terrible reach of history simply won't let go. Gaby wrote me this morning of someone who died on that plane--"a very very dear friend of mine. I still can't believe it..."

How close we were to all of this, and at the same time, how far...

Analect 2.695x

12 April 2010. Slanting sheets of rain, gray skies, dimpled pool...

Catalina Island, maybe 1955. Girl in home-made summer dress, sitting on stucco parapet. Her posture almost formal--the inheritance of a day when women wore gloves--but veering gently here into the world of thin-strapped sandals and higher hems. Holding in her lap a straw hat--somehow then the rage, with each strand of weave extending out beyond the rim... We never knew quite what to do with them--their floppy and almost useless insistence. More a reflection of the I than the straw itself--as in Don the Beachcomber, or the Tiki Room. Imaginings...

We are here...

Analect 2.694x

9 April 2010. A year's end, a year's beginning. California, sunshine...

The claims of Gauguin, as in deep-sea diver or mining engineer. A room filled with technological gadgets, layed out in long rows like the county fair--Del Mar--where in early summer the horses are brought down to the surf. Large and graceful creatures stepping gingerly in the waves...

A continent's edge--under-sea world--the strands of kelp flaring up from unseen depths--wide, waxy leaves, golden-brown in deep blue-green, a garibaldi's brilliant orange spine--twisting in the filtered light. Sudden massive shape appears--a male sea lion, banking, turning, in his own realm...

The flowered cloth, the rubber fin...

Analect 2.593x

8 April 2010. Window seat, Solano on the world...

Reading at dawn--the house servants gathered at Count Bezukhov's, a German doctor, and a one from France as well. The three princesses, their darkened room, with small lamps placed in front of votive pictures. Candle smoke and flowers. The house servants gathered--their Russian phrases--the boundaries of life...

A figure with a flute, in a clearing. To accept and to soar...

Analect 2.692x

7 April 2010. Beauty sun, spring... Mother with young child tucked to her breast, another on it's way...

Beginnings. Sergei Orekhov, performing informally, in a room with worn walls, tall brown wardrobe just behind, painted decorations--a Russian shape, like an egg or an eye, black and dark dark red, moving towards gold. Sitting casually, legs crossed, the precision all in his hands...and face. A woman alongside, listening intently, head to one side. Warm, muted light...

Zhavoronok...