P'ROSE: Book 1 - Cliff Becker: The Death That Breaks the Poet's Line; Or, On Hobo Cookery

Charles asks, if I could have an office to write in anywhere in the world, where would it be?
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Somewhere in a stack of recent Bon Apetit's there is a 2-page spread of a kitchen. As in any house, or house related space, it is what is outside which immediately sells me on buying, the rest of the house left sight unseen. My old house I walked into and out of, into the back yard and the arms of a giant blue spruce and an expanse wooded slope over granite in less than a minute before walking back in and saying, I'll take it. Maybe two. I don't notice kitchens. I never notice someone's shoes, unless they are artfully crafted, like tinted leather appliqued Quetzalcoatl boots from (Tony Lamas?) See, not for me. Good for someone else's feet. I don't notice ads at all unless it's for books or a show. Whatever percentage materialist I am as 'Heidegger' (see What Kind of Existentialist Philosopher am I) I am confident it is historical. I could give a good fee fi fo or fum for much, 'cept love and art—in all it's pickled glory.

It's what's outside that makes me want to stay here, inside. That and the stainless steal magazine rack standing like a right-hand man, pages spread-eagle to whatever you hunger. But, that expanse of sudden blue from the six slabs of window. A Pacific blue. Clearly. The rest is dark (aged?) wood, a trace of black (ebony?) . The rest is white, a punning of milky blue appliances: a pitcher and a bowl, and primary stars laid out as stripes on a bunched towel on the (outside?) deck; and metal, a repetition of bars. The center chair, pushed back before blue scissors & a stainless rack of labeled (categorized?) comestibles laid out on the marble slab ready for the Final Operation (I imagine) is glass. The task of someone's passing now vitrified ash for the work ahead. The eye (ay! I? Hay... ) of that indefatigueable dream played out on the course as blue (beach?) ("fat Frisco seal"?) - the blanched wheat & Indian corn colors of the six magazines - (acrylic?) chair - ridiculously tall vaselike thing (crystal phall...? what I won't spell on the blog) going up where swan-neck pipe of the faucet on the far sink heads down - to the single (white) sling-back chair waiting for a poet in the window.

Then I see the white bowl of yellowed salad waiting on the black slate of someone's coming dinner, like a Brautigan haiku. Then I see the bowls under the stove situated a leaning arm's length from the flame. Then I notice: this is SO SMART. A world that makes sense, where the primary act (text?) is the wave. A partical of intaglio, a golden triangle tarnished to the color and texture of unfinished concrete points the way: Jenn-Air. Bored with it, the eye ( ... ) leads up to a flowering of titles the color of someone's fall. The caption reads (says?) "For the Love of Cooking." Love, art, the sinless sea, the possibility of a single chair ("...un riconcito del cielo..."

Yeah. I could live here (hear?) Let's go outside.

Time to walk up the mesa & pick up my son. My love. Hay, and there in the reddening shadows the old blood color of indigenous eyes.

Yeah. I could live here (hear?) Let's go outside.
(to be continued)