EVER CATCH HOLD OF THE edge of a metaphor that no amount of teasing will out?

That’s why I call the blog “Metaphorager” in fact: I sometimes feel like Newton’s beachcomber looking for the one bit of seawrack which will reflect the whole in some previously unseen and unillumined way. And on this sunny morning in Sonoma, that would be the brawnshouldered road crew about to plumb our street for waterpipe repairs. The pipes provide and conceal a transparent service; like the paint on a wall invisibly thick with wires, joists, nails, sawn trees and whatever curse-thumb swearing filled the builder’s moment. Unseen — but take them away …

We walk within, upon and under miracles and mysteries; it is no less a miracle that our tools uncover mysteries than it is mysterious that our miracles resemble our tools. Is it any wonder that our first fumblings toward God recall our reaching up from the crib? We are looking and reaching toward a future vision of our own perfection, and if we now say “God” instead of “Gah” it’s only because we’ve learned the sometime value of silence. Perhaps tomorrow we won’t say anything at all; maybe through leaving nothing undone.

Those workers certainly aren’t. I hope they don’t scare the cat.

THIS MATTERS.

EVERYTHING IS INEVITABLE — BUT ONLY in hindsight. (This is the truth half-known by determinists and freewillians, and fully by those oracles of the more honest sort. You know who you are.)

IN ANOTHER LIFE, THIS DISH is what saved Prosatio Silban from being the main ingredient in someone else’s meal(1); in this life, it’s what ballasts me at table long enough to read the Sunday morning papers. Random Eggs assumes that the cook knows how to simultaneously brown a variety of different ingredients in a single pan; i.e., the denser the longer. (If you don’t know how, this is a good way to learn.)

Leisurely Eggs (Serves at least two, or one who won’t eat again until dinner)

First, arrange some nice background audio (Django Reinhart, say, or NPR’s “Weekend Edition”). Then add to a large medium-hot pan in the following order, and as art and experience dictates to balance facility with substance:

- Olive oil and/or butter (one keeps the other from smoking)
- Potato (diced)
- Onion (likewise)
- Sausage (sliced. I like chicken-apple and chicken-artichoke. Add this first to forego the olive oil/butter)
- Mushrooms (sliced or quartered)
- Capers
- Olives (kalamata or pimentoed, sliced or quartered. Stuffed with garlic is also good)
- Artichoke hearts
- Spinach
- Green onions (chopped)
- Garlic
- Black pepper
- Anything else as palate and physics suggests.

Meanwhile, scramble at least two eggs with a complementary cheese or cheeses (I prefer either sharp cheddar or the “Italian blend” of fontina, asiago, mozzarella and Parmesan).

When everything smells and looks right, pour in the egg/cheese scramble and lower the heat. Stir briskly for less than a minute (to coat; you don’t want a frittata, although those are also tasty); just before the eggs are cooked to your liking, turn all onto a plate and garnish with rye toast (or sourdough or whole-wheat or English muffins) and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee(2) — tea or milk won’t stand up to the flavors — and don’t forget the newspaper!

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(1) From the yet-unpublished “Light Breakfast”:

The dish could be thrown together in any fashion, and indeed looked that way on the plate no matter how talented its maker, but was also a time-honored test of skill. A bad cook would toss everything into the pan and hope for the best (including a forgiving palate); a good cook could use as many ingredients as obtainable in such order as to bring out the purest and most complementary flavor of each. So well-known was this principle and so beloved its application that Uulians frequently cited it as suitorial standard (“She’s beautiful, son, but how Leisurely are her Eggs?”).

(20 Actually, seltzer will clear the palate and aerate the esophagus. I like to have both, with sometimes maybe a glass tomato juice to honor the practice of the grandparents who taught me the importance of a leisurely Sunday breakfast. (But I have no idea why they were into the tomato juice.)

“GENTLE FUN FOR ENGLISH TAOISTS” is as good a description as any of A. A. Milne’s two booksful of stories of the Hundred-Acre Wood’s most famous resident. These are not children’s tales any more than “Bullwinkle” or “Le Morte d’Arthur” are children’s tales: unless it’s for the child that reawakens in us when we read these stories. (And yes, S*TO*R*I*E*S: If you only know Pooh through Disney, you don’t know Pooh.) NOTE: That reawakened child may have difficulty getting through the increasingly nostalgic-for-what’s-lost second volume House at Pooh Corner; I personally will never read the last story again without handkerchief or, better, towel. But this excerpt is from the very first story in Winnie the Pooh, titled “Chapter One, In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin:”

Here is Edward bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.

THE GUY IN THE BACK seat of Cash Cab
is heavily into the Neo-Beat Chic
(hip snap-gnosis, deprecate gesture):
Shirt buttoned horn rimmed open face serious sandwich,
And I guarantee he’s wearing
although I can’t see them
scuffed brown oxfords.

O my tribe, my freakish tribe;
freaks and smarters, lovers and waders;
It seems sometimes we’ve been us all:
timorous t-shirt wearer
ardent bandplayer
elder statesman
louder advocate
interoutcast
audient
spotlighter
extra.

And I know this, him, us, the shoes, all and none, because:

Mine are in the bottom of the closet,
road-kissed soles of a tale that’s its own telling
ready and waiting
and definitely
on the bus.