Part Five: A View From A Kitchen

A View From A Kitchen is a series on what meets our eye when we look up from our dirty dishes or half-full coffee cup.



Cowboylands

I don't often sit at my kitchen window in the morning with my coffee--if I'm imbibing caffeine I'm either writing, working at the latest editing gig, or catching up with My Private Coney and other blogs. What I will do is when stuck on a scene, or tired from squinting at commas, I walk restlessly through my apartment, and I will stand at my kitchen window and look out, catching the drift of the clouds, the look of the newest green shoots on the garden below, the cheery red-headed whatever-they-are birds at the feeder on the fire escape. It's my way to leave my body and get some peace. To fugeddabout myself.

Seeing sky is crucial for me--just as I feel closed in by something, panicked or unhappy, a scan of clouds or blue blueness or the distant Empire State Building keeps me, well, nicer. Note the new fucking condo to the left, which cut into my sky. MY sky! Anyway, at least it's a light color. If I squint my eyes, it looks like a desert bluff.

The growing garden below. I pretend to be God and make flowers and plants grow where I want them. There's a stray cat down there sleeping because he has sex nightly. Go forth and multiply, saith the Lord.

The birds also cheer me up--some kind of sparrow that's scrappy but melodious, with a bright red head that becomes almost fluorescent red in the summer. Writing, a compulsion, can be dismal or incandescent, but it's solitary. These birds remind me there are beings who exist, happily, to eat, drink, and fornicate. Amen.