The Labyrinth of the Griddle
Imagine yourself sitting in a small cafe in a strange town. It's time for breakfast.
You have made your choice from a menu of familiar and predictable entrees, but first there is the waiting. Hunger and sleepiness have put you in a distracted frame of mind. You examine the cigarette burns on the table, the criscross of telephone wires out the window, eavesdrop on local gossip you can't understand, note the promenade of morning traffic heading to work, read trivia off the backs of sugar packets. Through a door to the kitchen you glimpse the cooks shouting and flailing spatulae, but when will they finish your order? You are adrift in the delusions of hunger.
At last! The waitress returns, like some priestess of an oracle of the Vulcan-Hart, with your fate. She sets the steaming plate before you. You take fork in hand and are about to be done with it. But consider, for a moment, this mystery before you. In this moment of hesitation before consumption, look closely. Here is a microcosmic topography, scribblings and tracings like a map of a place you once visited. Or, like the scattering of coffee grounds in a fortune-teller's cup, is it a glimpse of some future destination?
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