Side Roads

Side roads.

Where do they find me? How do I always manage to reach them? Why can I never just drive exactly to where I want to go?

Even at the mercy of my GPS, I still somehow manage to get mixed up and miss exits, finding new roads that wind miles outside of my city limits.

All I wanted to do was drive downtown to find the coffee shop with a brick wall and high, open ceiling, pulsing with hipsters who take their coffee seriously and baristas that judge me by my order. I followed my GPS, who I have affectionately named Tomi, into the curves of the city, and just as smoothly out of them. Before I knew it the skyline was a scene in my rearview mirror and I was crossing over the river on an old, rickety bridge. An old, rickety bridge that veered and jutted in irregular angles and led me out of the city and around the downtown airport. There wasn't another exit for two miles, and the first one I took led me across wayside streets that stretched into developing land. Two roundabouts later, I merged myself back on the route highway I remembered wrapped around the river and spilled back into the city.

I decided to wing it once I made it onto one of the main streets of downtown, trying to recall familiar signs or buildings that had been shifting shadows in the twilight when I came here once before. I made a few squares, crossing the same streets over and over, gave up on the organic pathway to finding this place and pulled out my phone. It gave me street names, and from there I could determine where exactly I was and found 6th street, then the side street, then rolled onto 3rd. A parking space sat perpendicular to the cluster of buildings, and I quickly claimed it.

I finally made it inside, to the bustling, crowded café teeming with students and artists. Most made me feel super old, for the dawn was just beginning to shimmer its light in their souls. I like to disappear in crowds, but to find a seat I had to be bold and assertive, grabbing my latte and darting to a deep wooden table looking out over the street.

Finally, there are so many words and rumblings within me, so much I want to say, so much I need to ponder and form and stretch into the sound of my mind. But some things cannot be expressed, no matter how much I press them through my lungs.

Baristas are giving each other bro hugs, flannel shirts stitching together in the movement. The guy at the table next to me has a cup of coffee and a notebook, where he is scratching away pen to line and lingering his eyes out the window. Smattered across the rest of the room, girls dip their heads in concentration over textbooks, wrapping their fingers around the ends of scarves and covering the table with crumbs and Confucius.

And I am a girl in purple, pink and blue plaid with my heart against the keyboard, with a distant observance, unraveling brain and wandering eyes.

This place makes me pensive. Only in the city can I see two guys hauling queen size mattresses across the street to maneuver into the bed of a truck. Only in the city can I stand and stare at an expanse of sky that includes brick and window, that stands as a piece of history and clamors for its future.

I wish my friends back home could be here with me, sitting at this table, in this coffee shop, sipping espresso and daring to dream. This place could make me slip to spaces I've long since buried, bound to get me thinking and motoring my mind, and that is not a road I want to drive.

Yes, I've somehow gotten myself lost more times that I'd have liked to already here. But I have always righted myself, always found my way back to my destination. And as I gripped the steering wheel tightly, white knuckled, I found the space to breathe, to undo all that's wound me up and let the roads ahead just flow. I don't need to see where I'm bound to end up.

Maybe life is in the moments when you find yourself down a side street that doesn't look familiar. Maybe there is an unexplainable joy in the detour, a beauty riddled with cracks in pavement and a world of iron gates and bare branched trees beyond the light of a window. Maybe the crowds crunch you in just to see how far you'll push.

But maybe life's just meant to be savored. No gulping, no straining to see what comes beyond. Simply turning to the side road and idling your way around the bend. Simple navigation to linger, to soak in the scenery, the pulse of humanity and it's ever breathing hum.