The Wächter of the Kitchen Floor

A note on equipment, readiness-to-hand, and one very attentive Bichon Frisé

There is a concept in Heidegger's *Being and Time* called *Zuhandenheit* — readiness-to-hand. It describes the mode of being of equipment when it is functioning properly: the hammer that hammers, the knife that cuts. When things work, they recede into the background of a smoothly functioning world, transparent, simply *there*.

Prince operates in my kitchen in precisely this mode.