Outer Rim

This morning is an adventure morning. I woke up early, unable to fall back to sleep, and pondered my day. My roommate is driving me around more of the city this afternoon, but until then, I have time on my hands. So I decided to do a little exploring to find a new coffee shop I hadn't tried yet, in an area I hadn't stopped. Pulling out my laptop, I looked around the wonder web and found a few places and wrote their addresses on a piece of paper. I got in my car, headed towards the general vicinity of one of them and made my way into the correct parking lot.

This place is called Revocup, an Ethiopian café specializing in pure brewing methods and close knit, community feel. They're working with their home country to provide for the people and creating  sustainability. This is a place where older groups gather to catch up on the week and chatter on about the news. I'm in a little corner at the front, sitting in some striped cushion chair, coffee and cinnamon scone close by. It's a very welcoming and nurturing place- cozy and full.

I'm hoping to get here and clear my mind and put to words all the thoughts tangled in me. Maybe work a little on my Bible study, even write a few paragraphs in my story.

I bring up the Bible study, find a section to begin and type. About four sentences. And then I'm frozen. I've run into a few road blocks. First, everything I want to describe or say resonates with my life in Wisconsin. I keep trying to think present tense about the quiet, beautiful gifts of God and my brain stalls. Here in Kansas City, I can't relate to what was so full inside me a few weeks ago. Everything that comes to mind doesn't mesh with my mood. However I want to encourage comes from my memory of Wisconsin and the life I used to live.

When I think up the emotions and settings of my story, I'm at a loss because I'm thrust into the unknown, dropped in the middle of the ocean and expected to find my way to shore. How can I begin to create anything when my canvas is muddled and I'm seeking somewhere I feel familiar?

Words. Where are they? Where is my heart that is the stream from which they flow? If this is where I'm supposed to be, how come I can't feel it? I move my words and mind to stitch together, to find my place and pursue what constantly eludes.

They days are consistently cloudy and gray. On the Kansas side, there's a tint of yellow across the fields. I don't know why, maybe to match the corn? But it illuminates an eerie feel, a wide continuous vastness that has no end but filled with space to imagine.

If I were home, my brook of connections and wisdom would be overflowing. But I'm not. I'm in the middle of that yellow field, hazy silhouette, face shrouded.

This chair is comfortable and the chatter of more patrons keeps the buzz ablaze in this coffee shop. The people around me are all familiar with one another. They smile and wish good tidings to the days to come. Bodies and skin, all tethered together and warm, blood veins and palpable connection.

Everyone knows someone. And I am far along the outer rim.

This is where I am to be for the duration. Lost in the disappearance of my stories and on the search to one day claim them.