Warszawa (Pool)

Zampano, umber wash, whites painted back in. Akademia Sztuk Pieknych... Photographs of Warszawa during the war--single figure with heavy bundle, carried on his shoulder, one arm reaching over. Street of blasted buildings, rubble. Other smaller figures in the distance. One carrying a pail? Grainy black and white--000653 the only title.

By contrast, Hotel Polonia, on Jerozolimskie. Still there. Where Soviet-era businessmen would gather in a dingy lobby, old-time waiters, shadowy Polish girls... Now gleaming with sconces, off-white walls, irises in vases, a brilliant orange--and shining table settings. Next image: view out plate-glass window towards the Palac Kultury, indigo sky, while in the foreground, on a linen-covered table, two drinks, and a lighted cigar. Alongside, framed photograph, leaning back--Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra...

No one else about...

Lantau

Two clumsy completions. "You've always been a formalist," this from Steve, yesterday, visiting here for the afternoon, en route north to Laytonville, with Zoe. Two shapes--lanterns,maybe--one light, the other dark. La Vida es Sueño--Calderon de la Barca. Two ships, in the night--or a dark lane in Tai-O, Lantau. Guangdong water town... Something austere--as in the film--starkness of the shapes in an otherwise empty courtyard--voluptuous and severe--all their contradictions intact...

Jerusalem, Evening

The Hotel Palatin, Jersusalem, 1991. Such a homely association, each time, perhaps becuase we arrived there in the very middle of the night. Up Bab il Wad from Tel Aviv, leaning out the window of the cab, into the springtime air, balmy and fragrant--the orange blossoms, just as Avram Unger described. From a different time. But it's always a different time--that's how things work. Touchstones of gold, mineral earth, lasting forever--or so it seems. What is a stone? Refashioned, sometimes--the Hyksos, Tel Amarna, David... Hezekiah, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar. Ezra and the Persians... Rome, Godfrey de Bouillon. Mamaluks, Seljuks, Ottomans... Allenby and the Brits... But aways the same stone, a terrace, a wall--what else can one build?--planting olive trees as well--a thousand years old, gaunt, dry, enduring...

Feyerabend

Mako or minnow? Sharks and sardines. Who would know for sure. You put your foot in the water and see what happens. Water, fire, fire and and water, fire in the abend, abend, evening, evening fire... Paul Feyerabend, making his way across the Berkeley campus--on crutches, one finger in the air. Eyes sharpened--challenging. But playful, too. Then, in a small kitchen, standing at the sink, somewhere in Europe--his ruddy face, small yellow light off to the side, golden-orange fruit in a basket. He's wearing an apron, holding a small cooking pot, at an angle, washing up. "Against Method," that was the idea. No one path to truth. A smile, perhaps...

Pimlico

A willow walk in Pimlico. Gray ale house dawn, bending for that last nibble of grass. Seabicuit, the Preakness, Baltimore of old. Checkered pants and jockey's cap...standing by the machine. Ancient mores, carried across the sea--creaky wooden, staves carved in oak, rolling through the storm... But today--all fog and mist, canal banks lost in gray. Church bells tolling, bells, for whom, tolling, bells...

Elephant

These things happen...b'yvaet, as the Russians have it. Loping herd, seen from above--across the face of the Sudan. Mothers, fathers, children, all that same packy form, loose folds of skin, floppy ears, but lithe as well, in some ancient unnamable way. History of the race--unacceptable speech, to so characterize the past. "Something Korean..." They didn't like it when I'd say that. Wanted me to be Mr. Neutral--like a 7-eleven, or Miramax. But there WAS something Korean--like Hojin, yesterday--on her first visit--bowing at the threshhold of my studio. I asked her about it later--"My mother taught me..." A recognition.

Words following seeing following feeling...

The Tiki Room (Remnant)

Brown wood, long-bladed knife, the one with the pearl-yellow handle. Dad's own, from the produce market, San Diego, maybe 1925. "Do you have a picture of your parents?" Nathaniel, yesterday, in youthful innocence--no more than a trip to Santa Cruz... Years ago: Peter's room--the mahagony desk, small and compact, three drawers on the right--each with a layer of the past. The letter from Count Basie, for instance--in his own hand, on tan stationary, with risqué printed drawings. Dave Brubeck, too--typed out, single spaced, on three sheets of onionskin... Answers to questions--even the questions unasked. Then the tiki, just below--an image of a god? More a childhood dream--that carved shape--like an image of the rest of one's life. "The downwind ama...", under sail, across the wide Pacific...

Loon (for Leonard Nathan)

Dear Carol--

This painting is, again, as so often this past year, with Leonard in mind. I know I've told you this before, but it's even more true now. I'm remembering the last time he and I took one of the walks through Tilden--over the bridge near the pond just below Lake Anza, with Leonard hearing all the birds call, so quickly that I'd notice him hearing before I even knew to listen. We didn't see a loon that day, but this one has appeared, and it seems only right. The most ancient of birds.

Art is not a solace precisely--but it is what we turn to. Painting has kept me going, through much.

Leonard asked me, several years ago, when you were having trouble, about prayer. I remember thinking about his question very carefully. The easy answer would have been to recommend the siddur--and all the Jewish prayers that were not really a part of his life. Instead, I told him that in my mother's last month, when I was down in Oceanside, it was in the middle of the night I'd find myself reading the old Chinese poems. Po Chu-i, Tu Fu, Li Po...Wang Wei...

This loon is for Leonard, watching...

Painted Bird

Gray sky at a gray dawn. Hint of sun through screen door to the east, narrow strip of yard, dark brown fence, white vine blossoms trailing over from the other side. A fig tree, too, but later in the year, branches heavy... Full of starlings, their squawk and chatter--appearing suddenly, ready for lunch. Thinking of Su Tung-Po, alone on the river at night, everything still, he considers the spider, the lonely mud worm... Man's fate, Leonard's as well, also alone...

Eternity and a Day

Bruno Ganz, on a quayside, somewhere in Europe. Photo in the NY Times, a decade back. Saved, the figure in the long coat, alone, walking with his dog...one ship, somewhere in the distance. Transposed here, more the sound of foghorns out on the bay, the Golden Gate, hidden, in the mist... Walking along the docks, that would have been 1955--a working port, freighters and longshoremen, cargo nets, cranes...the sailors' joints tucked away under the Bay Bridge, more by reputation... Staying somewhere downtown, awake at dawn, first cable car to Fisherman's Wharf... Crab pots, Monterey hulls, the life of the sea...

(for Nathan Kernan)

Zwanenburgwal

White swan on gray-green waters. The Zwanenburgwal, Amsterdam--old city, built on land reclaimed from the sea. Down in a basement, you lift a wooden trap door, and there, just a few feet below, the waters again, dark and disconcerting, and very very close. But then you become accustomed to the idea...the dam, the wall, the river itself...

Where these names come from...where they carry us...

Bucharesti (Winter)

A dry drab Warsaw-pact sky, Roumania as evolution--the year is 1945. A single suitcase, Gara de Nord. The only ticket available. Basarab--no--more Beregovsky's Khasene, the one with the newlyweds, their serious faces, veiled smiles, from sometime before the war. Now just a suitcase--quality luggage, on Lars' recommendation. But also, painting as a kind of reliving...first Portbou, the Hotel de Francia, steep cliffs to the sea, early autumn light. The Angel of History, looking back. But no, this is Bucharest, the Gara de Nord, a maze of tracks swerving urgently to the left, power stanchions, muted sky. Just the lights of one monstruous hotel parked far in the distance, poplar trees, even, almost green...

De Mi Abuela

No hay quien pueda, no hay quien pueda,con la gente marinera.
Marinera, pescadora, no hay quien pueda,por ahora.
Si te quieres casar con las chicas de aquí, tienes que ir a buscar capital a Madrid, capital a Madrid, capital a Madrid,
si te quieres casar con las chicas de aquí.

Darkened rooms in late summer, heavy wooden blinds to hold out the light. Los Porteños buscan...buscan...pero buscan a qué? Romancero. Quiet tree-lined streets, cobble stones and gray walls...balcony above. Figure half-hidden behind white curtains. Si te quieres casar...

Pasqua

White doves, just under the eaves, on Miramar. Yerushalayim, also just this time. Small window in a tiny room, opening to courtyard below. Calling before dawn, hilltop to hilltop, morning to come. Of that place--embedded, if a song could be so. Awakening, rather. Sound of muezzin, from somewhere far off, a tower on another hill...also of the place. And a lion's roar, in the darkness as well--from the old British fort, on yet another hill... All together, morning light...

Rock Dove

Rock Dove--early morning shadows outside a New York window, 9th or 10th floor, Zette's, in the garment district, not far from Port Authority Terminal. Winter light--that particular cold sun-filled brilliance. Moving along a ledge, just outside the frosted glass, no thoughts at first--only an awareness of other living beings. Everything alive. On a street corner in Oakland, a few years later, 14th and Broadway, in the shadow of the Pelli tower, late afternoon, veiled California sun... Life of the pigeon--life of anyone. Wet feathers in wet evening rain. Sound of cars and cabs, whoosh of water on glossed pavement. Annonymous accomodation. What would it be like to be gone?

Red Sparrow

Da zdrastvouye sotzialisticheskaya revolyutziya...or something about like that... All those case endings, armored trains. Trotsky in the snow--Siberia, sometime in winter, maybe 1919. At the end of a long season, just before Passover...today, that is, a possibility, again, this becoming. To Tom, esta manana: Clifford Still, the new museum in Denver, to be devoted solely to his work. "Like Robinson Jeffers, but without the poems..."

That's not the right note. Wander rather into sweetness--touch and accomodation. The bird is on the branch--his eyes are on the sparrow...

Calypso....

Pajaro de Noche

Lone bird on a lone branch. Evening sky...run of dark clouds coming in off the bay, light of the first few stars...

Pajaro de Noche. La golondrina. A swallow (have to check), appearing again on the same afternoon in a tango as sung by Charlo. From Buenos Aires, in 1935--after the passing of Carlos Gardel. Recuerdos de la Pampa, su barrio propio--Avellaneda, San Telmo, Constitución. With trenches and foxholes carved by nineteen-year-old recruits...los Rojos y los Azules--1961--two sides of the same force, marching on parallel streets until someome screws up, and they meet...test of manhood, perhaps. Violent, unbelieveable, absurd. Always so. The town of Berisso--close to the river, rickety shacks, open fields. Gray-brown expanse away to Uruguay. In clay: the figure of a Russian woman--that's how she's described. An immigrant, like all the rest (Italia, Grecia, Cabo Verde). Kneeling, with a basket of fruit. The strength in that pose, also ancient...

Espero sin Esperanza

Espero pero sin esperanza. When I told Mauricio the title, I had to add an immediate disclaimer. Was that for myself, or for him? Of course, sin esperanza...where to wait becomes to hope. A cloud--white against blue, ruffled edges, they mill about, constantly changing. Imagined beings, at least from below: a figure on horseback, a dragon, a knowing cat. Nicola, yesterday morning, for example--I lean down, put my face close to hers, at the very end of the bed. A meow of acknowledgment--and disregard. She jumps to the floor, and with four quick steps to the bedroom door, pauses for a long long stretch...then disappears suddenly down the stairs...

Ojos Tristes

Tienen tus ojos un raro encanto,
tus ojos tristes como de niño
que no ha sentido ningún cariño;
tus ojos dulces como de santo.

¡Ay!, Si no fuera pedirte tanto,
yo te pidiera vivir de hinojos,
mirando siempre tus tristes ojos:
ojos que tienen,
ojos que tienen sabor de llanto.
¡Ay!, Si no fuera pedirte tanto...


Letra: Alfredo Aguilar Alfaro / Música: Guty Cárdenas

On Return

Wash of light, on return. Simply the possibility of beginning again--that phrase, each time, a wonder. Make it new. Pound in London, Venice, New Jersey--St. Elizabeth's, yes. Always the return, as if our roots would grow into an impenetrable forest, thick from the inside (dense hedgery just behind 801 Michigan--1954 or so, pathway and burrow). The child's mind--everything possible, bewilderingly so? Reading Steinbeck, a few years later, other times, other places. Cannery Row--Monterey, an edge of the sea, opening onto gray-green swells...

Thicket

Sister Rosetta Tharpe--I Hear Music in the Air. This morning, early, two doves--before the rain. Voices aligned, overlapping. Where one stops the other begins. Then a single voice. The sound distinct. Should there be two? A harmony of sorts--or a meaningfulness, in any case. Look into her face--the answer mirrored. Under eaves, tucked away--nest of sparrow, perhaps--small, dark bird with glittering eye--just behind the metal downspout outside Hearst. Precarious existence, no higher tha the hand. And yet we trust...

Door

The one white spot--an after thought, perhaps--but understood. Bringing indecision to a conclusion. Humorous? Jaunty, rather--to the degree that a small whitish square can be jaunty. Like the stone that Baucis (or was it Philemon) tucked away under a wobbly table leg--unsteady before--to make her home acceptable to the gods. Divine guests, that is. Did they know them? Two travelers, a bit tired from the journey, in need of refreshment and a place to rest. Wine unending... The only one in the valley... Their roots entwined forever...woven...

Alicia

Sound of the fado--Lisboa, a sleepy port, as if on the Mediterranean. But no, it's the open sea--L'Atalante. A kind of vision--the immediacy. Her hair, even before I might have known. Frizzy sometimes, in rain. Not so frequent, down there. In the twenties--mysterious sound. An unknown decade--prehistoric, even. The stories all seem to come later--Bert Gronberg and the bookshop, a gatherings of poets, someone sitting high up on a ladder--or was that the Gotham--from a photograph--Auden, I think--also up high, his perch, overlooking the rest. I'm looking at it now...Dame Edith Sitwell, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell. Horace Gregory, Stephen Spender. Tennessee Williams too.

She always preferred Tolstoy. We never quite got to the bottom of it. Something about the breadth--a social vision. An ongoing conversation. Or was that me?

Sea legs...

Early Spring

Possibilities of meaning--just that. A hope, a glimmer. Leaving out so much--or is it simply finding the right place to stop. Reticent--an appealing word. Makes sense, even in the ongoing rush of images and words. Not the route of apocalypse--rearing its head like some god of war--but more the gazelle, the earthworm, the butterfly...

Gentleness and accomodation--the LiJiang. Figures alongside a stream. Pale plum blossoms. Resilience, too...

Little Omie Wise

By the edge of the water, Adams Springs... Adamantly herself--and yet at the same time vulnerable. Anna Domino's reconstruction--a letter from Omie Wise to her aunt, morning of that day. Compelling, even with (or maybe because of) all the layers of the social history. That a girl expecting had to name the father--or risk losing her child to the state... A dangerous choice. But the form of the song itself is darker--not with this motivation on John Lewis' part. His act--more out of nowhere--and much more chilling.

Water spirit, descending. Harshness of the unknown land...a vast continent, faintly seen, even more faintly imagined. And yet, the local mountain air... Adams Springs, name itself, a coming forth, a beginning...

Horizonte

White shoulders against a gray-tan world. Figure in the mist, but all is clear. As to language--Bello Horizonte--the sound of it. From the Latin--where form supercedes feeling... How is that now not possible? Catullus, Horace...Ovid. Too much of a track record. And yet, the Mediterranean light--with fewer middle tones, shadings. Where are those northern shadows...the long, slow dusk in Amsterdam, fading into evening...

Primavera

Spring like days, mid-February, tiny white blossoms on narrow plum branches, shower of yellow on the mimosa. Playing by the edge of Thousand Oaks field--ring of old brickwork around an even older oak, tangle of alder and willow down to the stream... Seated there, with guitar, looking out at figures in the sun--the young Asian woman who tosses a ball for her three young children, squatting now on her haunches, in what must be the old country way, so that even her three-year old is taller as she stands wobbily alongside... Approaching, on the other side of the fence, and smiling as she hears the music--Roll on Columbia, in a low voice, blending in with the leaves... This Land Is Your Land, slow as well, thinking of the way Dylan handles it--a kind of recognition, a homage...times remembered, times known...

Hazel and Blue

Began with a tape of June Carter, maybe fifty years ago, appearing on a Pete Seeger television show, a lanky and expressively nervous Johnny Cash seated right alongside. Her steadfast voice--beautiful, and like a rock. The song--"I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes," written by A.P. Carter, and maybe too true. Always so, in one like this--where the meaning of music carries even against woe. Frank O'Hara, The Day Lady Died. A world at hand--what we know best...

Hare

A rustic hare--or rusty, maybe. Winter burrows, darkened fields. Digging for scraps of root and seed. Seamus Heaney--the grain scoop, its heft and swing. Loaded words--something like work itself. A train of hares, bearing torches--from Teutonic myth. Or Andraste, goddess of the moon--sacred to her as well. Shape shifter--Easter, estrus--carrying an egg, fertility brought down in nighttime light. Cerridwen, too. Both tough and vulnerable--the two combined. "Hop little rabbit..."

Tujague's Bayou

Tujague's--the old Creole place on Decatur Street. Two-Jacks, is how they said it, no hesitation. But that was twenty years ago--New Orleans as she was, family-style, impossibly ample, all one menu, prix fix... Not far beyond, the mighty river, 300 feet deep here at the widest bend, with blunt-nosed tugs pushing up and down stream... The season was winter, an icy wind through Jackson Square, inviting lights of Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop--the ancient dame at her piano, visitors and friends gathered around, atmosphere of old songs... Beyond, the still brown gray waters, motionless, cypress swamps with limbs exposed, raw boards outside some shack--nutria hides stretched over the gray wood, nailed around the edges to cure and dry... Jack Smith includes them--Saut Crapaud by Columbus Fruge, The Acadian One-Step by Joseph Falcon, Home Sweet Home by Breaux Freres... Taste of something locale, something pungent, something old...

River Gray

Also from the Li Jiang, with two of the Guilin peaks, very faint. At first go, felt like the boat should be golden-sienna, but this proved too strong. Reworking it today, painting back that area, then drawing in a mueuzy boat with wobbly lines—faint wash of raw umber, with touch of blue and green, just enough to make it present, in the Chinese way. As if almost not there…a kind of quiet, disappearing. A world apart from Scilla and Charybdis, the source of so much melodrama…sounds of clashing stone. Here more an unending stream—whose mountains made it possible. Also, from somewhere, Calderon de la Barca: La Vida es Sueño. River Gray.

Mandarin

A brown field, reworked many times, different levels of detail. The wash both hides and reveals--a bit of texture in the pigment itself, mixed with white, the way it dries down. In part by accident--directed, though--a kind of intuition as to just what can happen. Nevertheless, almost always a surprise, when the color becomes light. Bonnard's idea--if he could keep a motif clearly in mind, he could work on the painting for twenty years. Morandi, though--immediacy, all in the touch. One pass, sometimes, and it was complete...

Marian

Wayside pool, touches of white, but it was her hair, finally, that took hold--the shape widening inexplicably, old style, as if gathered, and pulled in at the back--like someone from Ireland, recently arrived--Brooklyn, maybe, or Corlear's Hook--Pearl Street, St. James Place, Gouveneur Lane... As in Sebald, that specific sense of the past, carried by place names, scraps of print, a landscape happened on by chance... There's no knowing, really, only a rose-colored dress, from years before, now worn again, a kind of remembering...

Creole Belle

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

Windemere

That's Windermere--Cumbria, the Lake Country, not yet visited...so very English, with gray northern light, flagstone walls, trimmed hedges and flowing ivy... But the season here is winter--time of the solstice, banked fires upon the hearth. Maybe even older--like Beuys, in those early drawings--his creatures emerging almost by themselves, from a time of peat bogs and runes. No such telling here--La Californie--where even the shell mounds remain unknown--everything new, unfounded...

A woman, too--time of warmth...

Cove

La Jolla, looking down from the cliffs, blue green water, golden kelp, eel grass around all the rocks... Everything shifting back and forth with the tides. Out beyond the point, a white foam breaker's edge, then calm. Swimming out from the beach, long strokes, summer air, like the day with Peter and Pat, out farther still, Pat's rocking ChrisCraft, athwart the seas, lifting and pitching with each new swell. A goodbye of sorts, mid-ocean... incomplete...

Sea of Okhostk

12 December. A little later, towards the end of the afternoon. Mixture of raw sienna, orange and umber, thinned down, and applied over translucent wavery dark-brown ground. Enough water so that it becomes misty, the touch of cadmium orange subtle but prominent. Also a boat—a ship, rather—like the one the Chinese girl gave me at school, an old freighter from Shanghai, piloted by her grandfather. Mark saw it in my office—real for him as well. “The things most real to us are the ones we experience before the age of five.” From somewhere in Marx. Feel of a surface—the material of a certain time, a certain place. Undefineable except to the senses. Like the dark brown masonite of Dad’s table, varnished by hand, the one my arm rests on now… A kind of bedrock, in it’s own way--perhaps only to me…

Sea of Okhotsk.

Maroubra

12 December 2006, Tuesday. Dark rainy day. Imagining a beach on the coast below Sydney—Maroubra--the name coming from an Aboriginal word which means “like thunder”—from the sound of the waves on the rocks… But here not so much melodrama as mood--all grays, with raw umber brush drawing of a single boat, the first one in several months. A surf boat, that is, or at least it could be…and which I always associate with places like this—Sydney, Melbourne, Perth…the Western oceans…

Owl Harbor

Late in the evening on a winding Delta Road...light breeze, darkened waters, stands of cattails and reeds. A few bars still open, hints of neon--the Saddle Club, Bullards, Johnny C's... Otherwise, it's only night sounds and the dark, sleeping cormorants and mallards. Su Shih, writing long ago, "On a Boat, the River at Night," his concern for spider, moon, mud worms in the cold...

Hong Kong Bound

Dark ship on a dark sea. Lighter lines scratched into umber...reeds on a marshy shore. Banks of the River Plate. El Río de la Plata--River of Silver--with waters wide enough to be unending, invisible, all the way to Uruguay.... And every other ocean as well--in a storm, off the coast of Sicily, for instance (Mike Richardson's story), sailing in a worn Greek fishing hull, running close-hauled between the capes, unable to make headway, too near the cliffs... But here we're well offshore, in the calm of a winter fog, harbor bouys far behind... Heading out for Hong Kong, Singapore, points beyond. My library books, in Oceanside, as a boy--sea stories, working ships just like this: the engine-room, a wiper... Reappearing again just last month as a photograph in the hands of a Chinese girl at Berkeley--her grandfather a Shanghai sea captain. Picture of his steamer--around the time of the war... His jaunty pose, leaning against the rail...

L'Atalante/Li Jiang

Two boats, two streams--the Siene and the Li Jiang. Jean Vigo's young river captain, Michel, and his bride, Juliette--a girl from a small country town. She boards the barge unknowing, dressed all in white--dark hull and river mist, bringing with her what she can--the freedom of tenderness... But can it last, amidst the channels and shoals, bales of river ware, chalk and grain... She flees at last, in Paris, lost forever; Michel lies dreaming, vision of a river maiden undersea... The Rusalka--water spirit--Warszawa's mermaid, sword and shield. In the east, who knows--does this story find its twin? Late evening, below Guilin, that was Yangshuo, another small town...darkened room, river night, a single lantern out on the water, but only the sound of soft currents lapping. Summer air, as it's always been, Po-Chü-i, Li Po..the river, my friend...

Rock Dove

Sometime in April...that was at the beginning. A rock dove, full body, strong bones. No great mystery on sidewalk or curb--but wait, once in flight, it's back to the time of Odysseus, or Noah--the messenger--another being, moving through the air. Gray city skies, building shadows, where the light never reaches the street. Like Giacometti, in his Swiss valley--a condition of the earth. But here the temperament is more southern--Mediterranean even, 14th and Broadway, downtown. Oakland, yes, all those years, slide open the narrow grate, step out onto the street...

Oh have you seen those lonesome doves
Flyin' from pine to pine
A-mournin' for their own true love
Just like I mourn for mine...

Herrington's

High in the Sierras, just below the Yuba pass... a small mountain town with steep metal roofs, banked for snow. "We close down at the end of September, open again in May." Wooden cabins along the river's edge...continuous sound of water, rushing, churning against stone...

But now it's high summer, later afternoon light. High above, the Sierra Buttes, craggy granite outcroppings. In front, near the road, the red rust of old barn paraphernalia (even if just for show) and a large, shallow trout pond, also rimmed with stone. Gray forms of fish meandering back and forth…moving slowly in circles, now seen, now disappearing...

Ballade

Down by the Salley Gardens
William Butler Yeats

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Erev Shabbos

From 13 August 2006. Then, late in afternoon, Erev Shabbos. Simple and singing. The greater light and the lesser light, whitish square, yellow oxide square alongside, dot of gray in between. Small bird below, watching. Haven’t done something for erev shabbos in a long time. Maybe needed…essential, even…

From Sunday August 15. This morning: Erev Shabbos on the easel. Yes. Scanned and sent to just a few friends. Note from Dick in Paris—Delcroix, Corot and a Korean woman in the Louvre…the meaning of gestures…

Forest

Dark Sunday, late fall. Beautiful gloomy air. Something to do with a forest—maybe from Margaretta Lovell’s course description. Evocative, half-read… Narrow birch tree to the right—just the trunk, and opposite, flame-like leaves, but very muted. Something like that.

Happy Valley

From 25 June 2006. Rather, an expanse of color, surface, weight. As in Minervalaan, from last week (the park in Amsterdam in summer of 1991). Or the pair Sheung Wan and Happy Valley… (The name used by the Chinese people of Hong Kong is Horse Racing Ground; that's where the British set up their track. Also known locally as Wong Nai Chung, Yellow Mud Stream, from creek of the same name. This fits well with feel of the painting, although curiously I didn’t know it at the time… In fact, I stopped initially at “Happy Valley” because it takes such getting used to…)

Persimmon Tree, Autumn

Persimmon Tree, Autumn. Delta fields, somewhere beyond Isleton. Two lane roads give way to dirt, pools of water on either side, endless furrows... All the colors of brown, jostled together in a wide stillness... Misty light, veiling the sun, even at mid-day, water in the air... Old marinas, after summer's fun--Owl Harbor, for example--with an ancient PT boat moored in the shallows, Navy gray against river mist . Thanksgiving day--this is how it is--a celebration, but out here, just a few Spanish-speaking men, fishing from levee rocks, their small fires banked against the chill. Down below, in the fields, a bevy of pick-ups--large-sized Dodges and Fords--pulled up in a farm house lot. Everyone inside, you'd imagine, gathered round the table. Leaving us the empty roads, the late afternoon light, the wind...

Rangoon

Golden temple against muted blue-gray sky. Early evening. The inset doorway green with incandescent light--glowing, like the faces of the worshippers, who pour out onto the street, some seated on smooth courtyard stone (also gleaming), their backs to us, tan and pink and yellow rust, costumes white as they near the door. A burst of light above one tower--interlocking rings, also gold--which dissappear into the darkening sky. Rangoon--it's the name, perhaps, the lilting air, warmth so very close to our own--enveloping...

Sorrows (After Po Chu-i)

From 8 August 2006. Today: again, raw sienna mixture for ground, lantern shapes emerging, but not really lanterns. The idea of the sentence. (B, last night: “What is syntax?” “The way the parts of a sentence fit together, and the rules that govern this.” Where did this come from?) / Last phrase this morning (OnPainting256): Pirates all. I did hesitate, I admit. But we are all part of all. / Today’s painting: back and forth. Very meuzy, but I like it this way. Nothing too definite. Sorrows (after Po Chü-I).