Spectrum

Standing around the fire’s dying embers talking about the late afternoon’s double rainbow—which, to my way of looking at it, arched from Windermere to Kirkland for over an hour on my ride home from school—with Darcy and Paul, both of whom had documented their views of the phenomenon on cellphones, it occurred to me that I’d found the perfect metaphor for the human psychological condition:

We’re all at the center of our own rainbows.

Wow. Heavy.

Photographic evidence demonstrated that the same heavenly arc that to me spanned Lake Washington was, from another standpoint, over Lake Union, and to another, behind Beacon Hill.  So, even thought I thought the pot of gold was to be found somewhere around Magnuson Park, someone else would be just as certain it lay near the Hutch and someone else, insistent its location be by the Jose Rizal Bridge.

And this would also explain why there are some many treasures to be found in our fair city; case in point, the aforementioned blaze in Seward Park, upon which I happened thanks to the directions of vintage bike gang rider, Evil Mike, whose path crossed mine as I pedaled down Lake Washington Boulevard in search of drunken bike idiots.

It was a jewel of an evening, the waning gibbous moon shining diamond-bright in its center, several dozen bike riders loosely arrayed around a cheery campfire in the southern part of a Northwest city, each and every one, like me, at the center of his or her personal rainbow.

Even Joeball.

And then, eventually, as the coals’ glow faded and the beer ran out, it was back north, until like moths to their proverbial flame, we arrived en masse (albeit in stages) at the International District clubhouse where Dead Baby Terry and Fancy Fred with the Professor Dave Orchestra customized the Commodore’s hit ballad “Easy” in three-part harmony, heard, of course, from within the central perspective singer’s personal audio-visual rainbow.

Wow.  Heavy.