Broke Down Palace

My older daughter enjoys The Grateful Dead as much as I do. Something woke me, a feral cat at the compost heap, and I went out on the back porch to pee, decided I could have a wee nip and rolled a smoke. Turned on the radio to the Athens NPR station. There they were. Garcia in good form, unraveling "Sugar Magnolia" and they glide right into "New Speedway Boogie", five in the morning and I feel like dancing. Stoke the fire and put my omelet pan on to heat, one of several 6" cast iron skillets I keep for specific purposes. They hang from nails in the beam that runs through the kitchen area. Kim made me a skillet. He pours cast iron. That skillet I only use for frying eggs, but I leave it out all the time, next to the cookstove, on the sandstone counter, because I like looking at it. The very idea that I know someone who could make me a cast iron skillet. He also carves the most beautiful spoons in the world. I have a wood-fired pot (I have a lot of wood-fired pots) on the glossy black lab-stone counter top, under which I keep dishes and cookbooks, that is filled with his spoons. I often just stand there, looking at one. He sometimes puts a full twist in the handle, other times he carves scales, he's always had this fish thing. The omelet pan is hot, throw in a walnut of butter (a unit of measurement you find in early cookbooks, a nut-sized chunk), two large brown eggs beaten with a dollop of cream, mushrooms and shallots, fold it over. There's a warming rack on the stove, so my plates are always heated, which is a nice touch for a hermit. Hot food hates cold plates. A cup of tea, a piece of toast; it's still not light but I've started the day. I surprise myself. Lucidity, I think, is attention to detail. Doesn't matter so much why, as what was noticed on the way. Heavy frost has penetrated all the hollows, nothing is green but the bull-vine, which seems to be made of leather. Ice around the edges of the little water-falls. I've never known the leaves to be so deep. One crow in particular seems to have adopted me, it took me a while to notice, it's just a bird, right? But it followed me around, squawking. The message was, and this is fabrication, that I was too obvious, that I should move like the wind in the trees. Right, sorry, can't do that, more like a thorn in your side, or a pebble in your shoe.