Where is the line drawn between obsession and belovedness? What boundaries exist between the soul of a place and that of our own? Is place a mere projection? Something imaginative, held together with the duct tape of our memory and endearment?
My days, when I am most attentive to my inner rituals of care, begin in the diner/bar, first floor to the left from the street at the East Austin Hotel. The charm of this hotel is not the subject of this missive, but bears a placeholder for future, deeper reflection.
Today, I want to re-member Poeta, and the mornings I am greeted with the one sustaining — and arguably the best — bowl of overnight oats in Austin. By “the best” I mean it is the first such bowl not to disappoint, after Soho House supplanted its own pristine rendition with a bowl of chilled oat soup that may have even contained an ill-conceived greenish matcha approximation so far from its context as to disturb the would-be mindful eater.
You may want me to think of the kolaches Poeta displays at its quaint counter from 9am to lunch. I may want to save all of the oats for myself, with the little dried berries and (house-made?) granola. But let it be. There are perfect oats, and even more satisfying lattes to be had.
I meant to be telling you about Poeta. I mean, about the place I’ve come to know. It would want me to start with its untold glory, not the temple sanctuary of a dining room in which I’m sure you must already be a supplicant. No, I want us to venture a moment into the interstitials of the hotel, to walk with contented pace and wait for a too-slow elevator to travel the distance of two floors down and deliver us back to its second-story secret. This is the cocktail bar, which haunts itself with the aura of a salón between the hours of 8pm and 9pm in the summer. I do not mean to say these are its operating hours, but rather its hours of illumination. A painting on the ceiling appears only in certain light and rewards those who prefer to recline along the amply pillowed huddle of couches leaning in the bar’s southern corner. Curtains recalling the feeling of velvet, but lighter, invite the sun in its golden hours to play catch.
This is the cocktail bar, which haunts itself with the aura of a salón.
If only to stay for an hour, before dinner, or to find our way back to the too-slow elevator, to walk at a contented pace along the quirky corridors that speak in Austin’s indelible dialects, and then again, arrive and sip a Savvy Savory.
I wanted to tell you. I wanted to say the word without saying it. But here I am again saying the word that only means itself to those who stumble upon it again and again, when the late summer’s mercy has all but dried up what spring’s deluge dealt. Poeta. A place to love. Alone, in the solitude of its adjacent and strange passages. In the full swing of evening laughter, with Lambrusco shimmering. Let’s go. Let’s meet, and walk, and sit, there and there and there again.
