A GOOD CUP OF KARMA - from 2002

Good Karma has a smell and a taste, like the way a can of ground coffee smells when you open it or the way a freshly baked brownie stimulates every taste bud on the tongue before it even touches them. It oozes from every pore of existence and rains down upon you like a soothing April shower upon a bed of Iris. Good Karma is awakening and makes every worry and every care disappear until you are wrapped completely in its spell like a warm blanket in winter and is as infectious and giddy as teenage love. The Columbia Café is awash in good Karma.

It felt like I had waited forever for the café to open its doors to business. For two years, Mathew Linn, its owner and proprietor, had told me upon many inquiries as to its opening, “Two weeks. We’ll be open in two weeks,” he’d shout to me from his perch high on a ladder while painting the eaves or from the porch while sawing a piece of molding for his pastry cooler. On a glorious crisp autumn morning, two weeks had finally passed. My bottomless cup of coffee, with the beans roasted on premises, was brewing with the anticipation of my arrival. I swiped a complimentary Times from the stack, pointed out my apple turnover, and took my seat in the front dining room, with a view of the corner of Creswell and Kings and the early morning traffic hustling for work, and sipped my morning Karma.

Copyright © 2007 Tracy L. Carnes