Grail

photo by altercator

Among the central tenets—if not THE central tenet—in the Advaita Vedanta, (which is one of the philosophical schools underlying Hinduism)—is that, as human beings, we routinely misidentify ourselves as an individual self as opposed to what we really are: the Universal Self, the fundamental ground of all Being, Pure Consciousness, the Atman, identical to all of Reality, the Brahman. 

Or, something like that.

Contemplative practices like yoga or meditation are designed, as the sage Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, to “still the fluctuations of the mind” so that our true nature is revealed and we can see ourselves—to use a common analogy—as the whole ocean rather than as individual whitecaps upon the sea.

As it turns out, however, instead of say, retiring to an ashram to chant the 108 names of God from dawn until dusk, you can achieve the same result by gathering up about fifty people on bicycles, have them ride to a wooded park on the edge of a warm, glassy lake, where—inspired by so-called “distributed scalable cocktails”—they will mingle and dance to a bicycle-mounted sound system whose highly-efficient power diodes make possible an audioscape in which it becomes impossible to deny that we are all part of the same thing, at least when Lil Jon’s Get Low is blasting through the speakers.

It makes you eternally grateful to be part of an entity in which whiskey-aided field repair of complex electronics by the light of bicycle headlights takes place and soon results in that classic marker of authentic transcendence: girls and boys dancing on tables in their underwear.

And while, in the Western tradition, spiritual pilgrims searched far and wide for their Holy Grail, mine was right there: a night-time swimming hole with an outdoor fire to boot!

Seems just like what the Vedanta is saying: this is simply too much for a single self; a more likely explanation is that it’s all our Awesome.

Merge

photo by altercator

Solipsism is the view that one’s own self or consciousness is the only thing that exists in the Universe.

It’s easy enough to see how this perspective arises: all we know of the world is our own perceptions of it; we conclude naturally enough that everything in nature is simply a product of our own minds. 

But as the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out, even people who purport to be solipsists deny their view just by reporting it.  After all, to whom am I supposed to be defending solipsism if there’s no one out there but me?

Another puzzle for solipsism is to explain the incredible diversity and complexity of all nature.  I may have a reasonably good imagination, but really, is any one mind creative enough to come up with phenomena like the platypus, or the Milky Way, or especially the myriad and ever-shifting array of human interactions and experience? 

Even the mind of God, where someone like the 18th century British Empiricist George Berkeley has everything taking place, seems too puny to account for the vastness of it all.

Case in point: one group of several dozen bicyclists sets out from its usual Thursday evening spot and, after amply provisioning, pedals to a relatively secluded, but reasonably familiar platform strung several stories above a Superfund site just in time for the spectacular summer sunset; unexpectedly, another oddly sympatico gang of two-wheelers rolls up soon after and instantly, Venn diagrams overlap like crazy. 

Even the most committed of solipsists will have to admit that no one could possibly see this coming; it’s simply too marvelous to be conceived of from nothing.

Moreover, the night continues and former strangers—now instant best friends—are reunited in one bar after another and while one’s own consciousness contracts under the influence, the possibilities continue to expand. 

All this, and a three Scott night to boot!

Sorry Mr. and Ms. Solipsist, you just can’t make this shit up.

Unimaginable.

Prom

photo by lizlemon

Time so sweetens memories that most of us, ten years afterwards, will recall an event that featured torn streamers, deflating mylar balloons, and an impoverished sound system puttering away in a shadowy high school gymnasium with the fondness reserved for Broadway extravaganzas designed by Hollywood musical directors especially for one’s own personal enjoyment,; so imagine how warmly we will regard a truly delightful evening a decade hence.

Think of how sweet it will be to look back in a tenth of a century on a perfect summer night where pink clouds are smudged across the horizon above a smooth disc of water in a park in which honey locusts glow golden before the setting sun and you get to amuse yourself by cozying up under a banner celebrating a dance that begins on two wheels and makes its way, by twists and turns, through familiar streets made satisfyingly unfamiliar by the assembled multitude, the shared frivolity, and the ongoing promise of unexpected expectations and unanticipated anticipations.

Plus, consider the stories you’d have to tell at your own high school graduation if you had a dad who rode you across the high freeway bridge on a trail-a-bike; if that isn’t at least as memorable dry-humping in the backseat of your father’s Oldsmobile, the forgetfulness is coming early.

The most memorable proms typically feature some heinous event: think of the final scene of Stephen King’s Carrie, or they way it unfolds in untold film comedies like Mean Girls or It’s a Wonderful Life.

For me, though, being able to get all Footloose is what it’s really all about; the opportunity to kick off my Sunday shoes and savor the fewer than seven degrees of separation connecting me to Kevin Bacon and the world-at-large means that the desired level of losing the blues has been achieved.

I could have stayed at the dance a little longer, but I already had enough to remember and already, happily, a bit to forget.

Slippery

photo by fatasian

I’ll tell you, Officer, that Cascade Bike Club sure knows how to throw a party, don’t they?

The term “Felliniesque” comes to mind (or maybe Kafkaesque), but if we’re in the business of neologisms based on people’s names, then perhaps we should add Jobyesque to the list.  This would refer to an event whose carnival-like imagery is something out of the Parisian demi-monde of the Belle Epoque as performed by Cirque du Soleil on mushrooms; you’d see a lot of things that you could never believe were happening and even more that you could never unsee no matter how hard you tried.  And it would all happen pretty much on two wheels.

When I was a rambunctious adolescent, my mom used to counsel me as I headed out the door on my latest adventure to first, not break my neck, and second, refrain from getting arrested.  Some of her acquaintances, I’m told, reproached her for setting the bar so low, but, when you consider all the kind of trouble that such joyful boyful energy can get into, it’s not so obvious that this isn’t a fairly conservative admonition after all.  It’s clear, in any case, that when one pushes right up against the boundary of those two limits, that nonsense can expand to fill all the available space.

It was a spring-loaded visual feast as one more pale body would disappear down the slippery slide and suddenly detonate an exploding rainbow of multi-colored wands being launched skywards; the leftover ordnance from our nation’s birthday celebration was hardly warranted, but why the hell not, in the name of Seafair and all—relatively speaking, 'tis barely a whisper compared to the afternoon’s Blue Angels and hydroplane races.

And while the campsite rule was probably violated, it’s hard to feel too terribly guilty given how lovely the hemlocks and Doug Firs looked with their glowing adornments.

Maybe Cascade can send out someone in a kayak to pick up the pieces.