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...