Suds

Photo by Joeball

Everything is a metaphor for everything.

Mist, for example, represents our inability to see what’s right in front of our face.

Destinations remind us that getting there is an arrival itself and being in one place a way to continue the trip.

Daniel Featherhead’s cantilevering split bike stands for the simple truth he does everything biking better than you.

And beer illustrates that we are all just bubbles in the common vat, froth on the shared primordial soup, self-aware suds arising from a single container that holds and is holding everything everywhere always.

And thanks to the fine folks at Peddlar Brewing, it’s all free!

Sometimes, there are miles and miles to go before the libations flow so liberally; on other Thursdays, you’ve barely broken a sweat and already you’re in your cups.  I’m pretty sure that never before, though, have so many ridden so little for so many pints; and I’m absolutely certain it’s unprecedented to do so in a place where you get to walk behind the bar and tap the keg yourself.

Of course, it’s not how far you ride, but how far the ride takes you.  And when you can stand around with a bottomless Solo cup of pale ale, the potential for movement is, like the amount to be drunk, limitless.  Metaphor, no?

The Angry Hippy conjectured that matter and energy precede time; the Kantian in me resists that: my mind’s categories make it harder for me to imagine an event outside time than a thing without dimension.  That said, one does experience timeless moments, especially when a ten o’ clock curfew really means 10:30.

Unless there are beer cells, there would be no beer.  And yet, without the beer, there would be no beer cells.  We’re individuals, of course, but only against the backdrop we share.

No riders, no ride.

Yet without a ride, there are no riders.

Metaphors become metaphors for metaphors.

And still the beer flows freely.  For free.