Sage Said So: Untethered

I'd been trying to make it to a Saturday morning yoga class for maybe eight weeks or so, but couldn't time it right with the morning dog walk. This morning, Jon took matters into his own hands. In an unprecedented series of events, he dropped me off at yoga class at 10 a.m. and kept right on driving with the dogs to Forest Park. As I was bringing breath into the strict cage of my body, gently teasing the locks of fear and clench open with each reach and stretch, Jon and Hamachi and Henry were galloping six muddy miles of trail together in the deep womb of urban wilderness.

I had dressed for the walk home, and was warm and relaxed as I headed out from class into the mild gloom of March afternoon. Digging around in my purse to no avail, it struck me that we had used my keys in the car, and that the car--and keys--were with Jon; I'd be locked out until he got home. In my entire life, I don't think I've ever been locked out of my home. Jon didn't have his phone with him, and I had no idea when he would be home.

With destination erased from my trajectory, I felt like a balloon cut free, floating purposeless and weightless down Clinton Street. I remembered seeing a cafe on my way to class and walked east another three blocks to Broder, a Scandinavian cafe. The cafe was long and narrow, about the size of a train car, and had been polished with care to a modern minimalist sheen. The patrons had clearly emerged from a Portland other than the one I inhabit: one of high-style, where darkly framed, dramatic eyegear and strangely proportioned clothes in shades of black and brown slung over heroin-chic bony bodies. The waiters and chefs were waify, underweight young men smattered with tattoos and too-tight black pants with a slick of aloofness greasing down the errant eagerness beneath their cool facades. In my sloppy stretch pants, bunched-down wool socks, fleece jacket and unwashed hair flopping around in a loose clip, I was blissfully out of place. In an urban environment, not looking the part is as close to invisible as you get, and I love being invisible.

I took a seat at the bar, retrieved a small pile of index cards and a pen from my purse, and started writing. Card after card, the ideas kept coming through me, through the pen. A lifelong practice gone dormant for a few years, my body needed only assume the position to turn on its freewriting tap. As I wrote, a glorious glass mug of fragrant decaf coffee arrived with a smart glass jar of sugar cubes and a silver carafe of half and half. Then came the large, frothy orange juice. And then three aebleskiver, quarter-size Danish pancakes dusted in powdered sugar and circled in dollops of lingon berry jam, maple syrup and lemon curd. Compliments of the chef. I had fallen through the rabbit hold to a Swedish heaven.

As I wrote, my baked scramble with wild mushrooms and caramelized onions materialized on the counter steaming in its square, cast-iron baking dish, aligned with a square white plate with a perfectly spiced potato pancake accompanied by a fan of triangular slices of walnut bread. I tasted, marveled and wrote some more. And as I did, I was transported to the life and times of Sage of yesteryear. This Sage had free time. She paid $300 in rent, made $8 an hour and lived for the indulgence of her weekend cafe breakfasts. With no car but plenty of notebooks and one divine poetry book at a time, she'd ride the streetcar and listen and look and FEEL and write and weep. This old Sage was spontaneous. Not yet the precariously over-committed and over-scheduled adult she would grow up to be, this young woman had room for surprises.

For a brief hour of homelessness and exquisite food, I returned to this lost wilderness of my 20's: the Sage of open spaces. I carried her home like a pressed flower-- fragile and old and new. More than I have yearned for anything else in my life, I want her back again. I will court her with words and sunshine, beaches, potatoes and public transportation. I will write her love letters because that's all she really ever wanted: something big and impossible and gloriously alive to get lost in.