when I was seated inside the oddfellows cafe and bar

when I was seated inside the oddfellows cafe and bar for brunch,

I immediately thought of a scene in an episode of “war of the worlds”

jeni and I had watched the night before, not because I felt extraterrestrials nearby,

but because that packed and noisy restaurant reminded me of when bill the scientist says

the big contraption they’ve found in the aliens’ hideout is what’s called a faraday cage.

composed of a mesh of conductive materials, those things

block external radio frequencies, electromagnetism, and other electric currents,

such as lightning strikes, from harming people inside or interfering with their devices.

in the same way that the faraday cage does this by producing its own electrical field,

I felt protected there in that restaurant and able to operate the device that is my mind

thanks to the high charge of sensory input buzzing all around me in that place.

while getting increasingly hungry next door at the elliot bay book company,

I had fantasized about eating at one of the outdoor tables I had passed earlier,

but then, due to my phone’s battery running low, I ended up asking the hostess

if I could be seated somewhere inside where I could plug it in, which led to this poem’s forming.

the feeling of static and off-kilter confinement began immediately

with my being seated nearly elbow-to-elbow beside a brunching couple

on a bench before a tiny square table a few inches from theirs, and it continued

with my having to stand up again and almost crawl under all that to access the power outlet.

when I stacked the books I’d bought before me, I had no room to crack one open,

even after shifting the salt and pepper and water carafe and drinking glass around,

so I stuffed them back in my backpack and begrudgingly began to survey the room.

soon, though, a sense of wonder took hold of me, as does tend to happen

when I’m stuck in one place for a long time — at an airport, say — and must

make the most of my limited resources and the limited sensory input all around me

to suck the marrow out of what the world has to offer and feed it toward an endeavor like this.

first, however, I had to order, and here again I was hemmed in in a whole new manner

as no tangible menus were available and I had to pull up my charging phone

to scan the qr code on the little table placard and then zoom in on food options.

conveying what I wanted was quickly accomplished because to my right

I was hemmed in by something else: the settings/bus tub station

to and from which the waitstaff bustled throughout my time at the oddfellows cafe.

while waiting for my french toast with fruit compote and mocha to arrive,

I admired the architecture of this building the establishment was so proud of

they had a drawing of its facade with its array of many windows printed on t-shirts displayed

on the brick wall across the room from me under a felt marquee with merchandise items listed.

items seemed to be listed in a sense all around me, though not with prices attached

and not even always with clear details or purpose, adding a layer of mystery to what I took in.

certainly, I understood that there were patrons seated at sturdy wooden tables

throughout the space, like pieces on a life-sized board game, but what they were looking at

on their phones and laptops and what they were saying to each other remained opaque to me.

similarly, while the stalactites of lights and fans made pragmatic sense,

they also still mirrored all the smaller accoutrements sticking up from tables and counters

and together contributed to a vibe that the room was alive with encroaching entropy.

that needn’t be a bad thing, though, especially in light of the fact that

so much of what floated before me unknown I chose to keep in that state,

savoring exercising so much control, like idling a spaceship on the edge of a black hole.

the contents of that white counter island crowned with three sides of plexiglass squares,

for example, poking up into partial view, could have had to do with food prep,

although I didn’t see staff over there much, so I liked imagining it as an honorary, vestigial thing.

likewise, all those bottles on the tall, wooden shelving unit against the back wall —

those could have been every flavor of italian soda or some uniform-looking booze for later.

the music on the sound system was audible enough over the cacophony of conversations

to pique my interest as maybe being a good fit for a future mix cd, and yet neither did I

ask a waitperson if they knew what was playing, nor did I finally download the shazam app

to figure that out for myself, because the buzz of not knowing was its own reward.

I did make one exception for this laissez-faire approach, though, but it was in service to another

layer of sensory bombardment at work there: memory and its flow of associations.

while finishing my tasty food and gone-too-soon mocha, I had been stealing glimpses

of an open doorway at the back revealing an attractive sunlit something,

stealthily so as to not get caught seemingly staring at the couple wrapping up brunch beside me.

so after signing for my bill and standing up and hefting my backpack over my shoulders,

I sidled between tables deeper into this place, as if I were a new patron being seated again,

to take a peek at what turned out to be an idyllic, cloistered back patio.

tightly surrounded by brick walls with vines crawling up a lattice propped against the furthest,

ferns and other potted plants contributing to that bulwark of greenery and also placed

under and on some of the delicate tables and chairs arranged in two rows back there,

the flooring under all that just a continuation of the long wooden planks I walked across inside,

only darkened with aged weather staining, while above, in addition to the sun, the few people eating

were graced with the beautiful, superfluous illumination of eight or so low loops of party lights.

I couldn’t believe how much that spot reminded me of the grotto-like back patio

at barney’s on piedmont avenue in oakland, where I had my first greek salad and espresso shake

and where I shared meals with important people in many different eras of my life.

as I crossed back through the oddfellows cafe to go into the hallway to the bathroom

and then out to more meanderings across seattle’s capitol hill neighborhood

before getting picked up by jeni on her way back to olympia from work meetings up in everett,

it certainly would have made a lot of sense to regret not having asked the hostess to seat me

in that nostalgic oasis of a back patio, rather than in the tight, clamorous interior eating area.

except that — leaving off the fact that I didn’t know about it until the end —

that slice of warm, quiet perfection wouldn’t have gotten me started on this poem,

nor would it have comforted me with a hug of buzzing, half-comprehensible stimuli,

like a hint of the whole body of mystery I’m privileged to be able to wrap around me.

just as the door in the kafka parable “before the law” turns out to have been made

for no one except exactly who’s arrived before it to be denied entry,

so too is the faraday cage that works for each of us composed of a unique kind of current,

one that certainly may manifest in different situations to different degrees, though,

something I was reminded of when I got in jeni’s car on broadway later that day,

after having walked fourteen thousand steps on no food since that oddfellows brunch,

just the sporadic chug of water, and she seamlessly took charge when I meekly said

an orange or a granola bar wouldn’t be enough sustenance for my immediate needs

and she found an italian place across the street with all my dietary accommodations

and quick service, so I could stuff ravioli in my face while taking in her work stories

with ravished parts opened up all over me, because you see the protective cover that lets

our insides function the best, when the world’s shocks try their worst, is the electricity of love.