Trestles

A plain of color over brown, water seeping into the tiny folds, rivulets, crystallized…

Taking their own path, then: apprehended…

Who is the guide?

* * *

No other life but this…

* * *

Stillwater…

* * *

To describe a painting, to return to that moment—where the off-gray will coalesce into a kind of mist—an atmosphere—without meaning, but understood…

* * *

A forest. Kampinos, outside Warsaw, early autumn. The Polish fields, taut air. An expedition, grzyby—Roman, his girlfriend (did she not limp?), myself, a bystander cow… Welcomed into a life…

And a past as well…

* * *

Later in the day…



(18 September 2009)

Stillwater

To be true to something specific—the beloved, the branch…

Trees on the coast at nightfall, a winding road. The Russian fort, rebuilt. Shale bluffs, indigo sea…

* * *

Colors over colors, pale and gray, articulated from within—the run of the eye…

* * *

Again, the specific, this. Unapproachable by words alone. They follow.

Like shale—“ a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite…” (clastic—“of or belonging to or being a rock composed of fgragments of older rocks…”)

Of or belonging to or being…

* * *

Words--luminous—a shimmering…



(18 September 2009)

Kippur

The silhouette of a man who, his arms half raised at different levels, confronts the thick mist in order to enter it. (Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1913).

Oakland studio, 1980. Downtown light, filtered through high factory windows. Guston’s drawings—the figure with the pointed hair, poking out in front like a sword, or a wand. Reappearing three decades later--unexpectedly, down below and from the side of the screen in a video of the Red Army Chorus, singing Kalinka… their uniforms and Soviet-era regalia intact, but no Red Army now, just the puffed-up voices awaiting a cause.

A father…

The summer following, in a shaded west Los Angeles living room, Pacific Palisades, there high on a shelf, a strangely elongated shoe—more abracadabra or boat—a genie-in-a-bottle—but recognizable from the same film footage. Part of the outfit—the pointed hair, the long pointed shoes…

Enter stage left, electric guitars… (Mayakovsky: Levy! Levy! Levy!)

Does one really want an explanation? Isn’t the fact itself enough—the apprehending, or the memory. Does it matter about the Leningrad Cowboys, D’s role as ambassador (Ambassa-Dude inscribed on a plaque—letters on thinnish square of bronze…), or how this entire spectacle was arranged…

Arranged…

His face as he tells me, quizzical, bemused by the events of the world—as always--but they haunt him now as well. Casey, now Brooke—both gone…

(Brooke. I see her name in my address book. It means she’s there; but she’s not… But she is…)

The good, strong way in which Judaism separates things. There is room there for a person. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better. (Kafka, Diaries, 1913).

A self-assessment, is that it? Atonement? The Eritrean father and son, behind their 7-eleven counter, up on Stockton, while the louche highschool kids parade in and out. A dark-dark-skinned girl with golden band around her beautiful hair, large and immaculate white blouse, gathered at the waist. Nile queen…

This day…



(18 September 2009)

For recent paintings see lugares sueltos

Triunfo, otra vez...

Triunfo, otra vez. The white handkerchiefs in the dancers' hands. A dusty stage, La Plata, 1962. Creaky floorboards, warm-up act. The troup of Argentine folkloric dancers, preceeding a radiant Carmen Amaya, de España, la gitana. And yet they remain the more true--in memory's home--the hand-sewn skirts, long and modestly graceful, their dutiful young men, attendant, in country clothes... Attentive and unsure...

A train platform, half a century later. Also the handkerchief, now more worn, but equally tender. The the same dance, the same embrace...

Jardín

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 98

La Cautiva

Yo sé que te tienen cautiva
y que no te puedo ahora yo librar.
Pero sé llegará algún día
y a tu prisón mi amor he de escalar.
Porque mi alma se apena
al ver que sufres de ansiada libertad,
y entonces verás, mi cautiva
todo lo que puede el que ama de verdad.

Ya verás la luz del sol
¿Y una gran día su primor?
pues anhelo con porfía
verte alegre como el día
y bella como una flor...

(fragmento de una canción)

Quilmes (Consitución)

The train ride between La Plata and Buenos Aires, moving impossibly slowly, stopping even, unannounced, and for no apparent reason, in the middle of a field--lush green expanse of the Argentine countryside--el campo--and then a bump and slowly again underway. The year 1962. Industrial suburbs to the south of Buenos Aires--names on signs along the right-of-way: Bernal, Don Bosco, Quilmes. Signs as markers--apparitions--the places unknown, even if right there alongside the tracks...(were they towns?)...but the land, being so flat, the perspective never offers a vantage point. Then, Avellaneda, rough, urban, and soon enough the grand southern depot of la capital federal--Constitución.

The names themselves a kind of memory. Or perhaps as anchors for a kind of memory. All still tucked in, un medio siglo después, waiting.

I was barely sixteen, so much not known. Just the names. Quilmes, for example. An indigenous people who once lived far to the northwest, above Tucumán, in the Cerro Alto. Their settlements built on terraced slopes, overlooking elaborate irrigated fields. Present now as ruined walls. Fighting the Spaniards, fiercely, but defeated by 1664--a remnant forced to march overland in the direction of Buenos Aires--kept under watch--and settled in an industrial area to the south of the city--the site of a brewery, to this day (Cerveza Quilmes) and soon the name of the town itself.

A sign on a railroad siding, amidst green fields.

Watteau (After the Chinese)

20 December 2007. Winter light, sun, long shadows, streets wet with last night's rain.

Ahn Dong Ni, hermit painter of the Lijiang. Perhaps you know him? Osmanthus blossoms in late fall, water buffalo and phoenix-tail bamboo. The cormorant dipping for fish in silver green-gray waters and the mountains of Guilin hovering in the mist. Fields with remnants of the harvest--wandering rows of rice on browned earth, the stalks tended and tied, each by hand. A child's braids. Effie just ahead, on her bicycle, turns suddenly and smiles, as she shows me her home. Do you know the poems of Po Chü-i? His small house with pond alongside--just as it is here, perhaps. Hint of winter in the still-warm air, farmer's smoke at dusk...

Thank you, Mao-Yun, for the name--which can mean everything... And David: "For water clarifies the spirit, no less than a perfect friend..."

Cosumnes Reserve

Gnarly oak on autumn hill, run of land to water's edge. Interwoven branches, Xs and Ys, now seen for what they are--a cork tree without its Ferdinand. Peaceful, that is--in the absence of the maker. At the same time: a kind of defiance. Long-term maintenance man. And Chinese Song--the dynasty, that is. Paintings from childhood, awkward and sincere--the obligation to represent--with every doubt about perfection. But wait--who was the judge? A wandering mallard? The cattails? The wind?

Yang Kuei-fei

Eucalypyus leaves just outside the window, touches of blue, sky and cloud....Yang Kuei-fei. Her eternal absence--a great beauty, brought to ruin. Fine and solemn profile, eyes turned down, even as her serving-maids help her mount the gray mare. Farther off, to the right--and separate--the figure of the emperor, Huan Tsung, devoted in his love...but (caught in) the exigencies of time: "This is necessary." Someone else's story, as with my father--quoting Lenin--"When the train of history goes around a curve..."

Winters

Gray branches on a gray field. Dark winter birds--grackles and crows--resting now, just out of sight. Valley land, furrowed and plowed. Gray skies, gray wind.

Weeping Child

Began with Milosz in his essay on Lev Shestov. His discussion of Ivan Karamazov--"Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last..." Would this indeed be worth more than the tears of a single child?

But here there's something more of the Caribbean--or even Africa--as the subject of those tears. And a history that was anything but hypothetical. Edward P. Jones, in his novel, The Known World. An invented county in Virginia, from just before the Civil War, slaves and slave-holders both of African descent. Scene at the end--the madwoman, who reappears as author of a mural wall in far-off Washington--a perfect rendition in great detail of the very estate she's managed to escape...

Vienna (Leopoldstadt)

Leopoldstadt, Alt-Wien. A man playing the violin, figure of a young girl alongside, her right arm outstretched, offering a coin. The old world--a certain formality, born of time--the overcoat, the hat, the leaning pose--gestures containing the past. As in a painting of two horses, by Gericault--beginnings of the modern world. In an alleyway or stall, seen from behind, their nobility played against an inevitable dailiness. Bulk and weight...

Nothing like it since the age of Rome: walls of Pompeii, figure of a man offering loaves of bread from a window, his arms reaching down... The people below. Gesture of plenty, all that can be known. Panadero...

Rosh Hashanah

Early Soviet version, perhaps--vision of the future, a time of hope. Roman Vishniac: young people, seated together at long benches, bandanas and scarves, plans for farming, olive groves, fields of wheat. Instead, a rocky landscape, water sparse, someone else's home. Sentries and stockades--another future, but still the hope...

Dark waters of the Moldau, Czechoslovakia. The old names... A sweet new year...

Munkacs (Rosh Hashanah)

Munkacs, a town in the Carpathians, once part of Hungary (hence the name), today in the Western Ukraine. Photographs in Roman Vishniac--the shul of the Mukachevo Rebbe. Described there, room awash with seforim, the books every which way on old wooden shelves. The year was 1938, R. Baruch Rabinowitz, "seated between candles...," his chassidim gathered round...

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...