Elfin

It was more about sleigh rides than bike rides as the Thursday night sojourn, such as it was, assembled at the annual Sugarplum Elves calendar release party to quaff quaffables and bask in the holiday glow of pure adorableness that is the preferred festively clad troupe of singing and dancing elfertainers for all right-minded people, not to mention those associated with Point 83, ba-dum-dum.

Less cake, more frosting to be sure, which was my experience, too, coming from up north on a dry moonless night to arrive just in time for the final few numbers on the Elves’ set-list, so while I got to enjoy their dulcet tones and charming arrangements (and the way they put the songs together, too) for a couple of tunes, I bemoaned the fact I didn’t get to see them perform a few of my longtime holiday faves, notably the ever-popular, “I Want a HIppotamus for Christmas,” alas.

On the other hand, the good news is that—unlike last year—I did manage to arrive home with my calendar, although that did require my acquiring a second one, after my first purchase was apparently snatched up (when I set it down on the pool table) by someone more avaricious, or perhaps, drunker, than me.

But in the holiday spirit, I bequeath that one to whomever walked away with it; I sure hope you appreciate Kablouie’s signature on her Golden Birthday day, customized for yours truly, so help me God.

I’m generally opposed to Christmas celebrations prior to Thanksgiving, but was glad to make an exception in this case; it felt like December 20th, not November 20th, albeit, thankfully, without the endless loop of country music versions of the holiday classics that will inevitably predominate our shared audio space a month from now.

As it was, the whole evening felt like the best kind of gift—one that keeps on giving even abed and beyond—as visions of sugarplums dance in our heads.

Fullness

photo by altercator

Technically speaking, the moon wasn’t full—that, the internet tells me, happened at 2:22 in the afternoon.

But it was the night in this cycle upon which luna was fullest, so bright, eventually, that we stood around the backyard barbecue bathed in milk, our shadows sharper than they’d been in any daytime all week.

And I didn’t need no world wide web to tell me those concentric moondogs rippling out from our planet’s satellite like fried egg rainbows were a once-in-this-lifetime, anyway, phenomenon that all but made the cannabis-induced visuals superfluous, albeit enhanced.

You don’t have to ride lots of miles to go far on such a night; the ghosts of our Duwamish predecessors and even whichever later settler left us his chimney gather ‘round; Tim Burton does the set and when the music’s turned off and you can hear yourself think, you really don’t have to: all that’s required is a set of eyes to drink it in—well, that, and a six-pack of beer, a box of Duraflame logs, some lighter fluid, and three dozen or so of your old friends and new acquaintances out for a bike ride together, more or less.

“The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao,” says the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tzu, but, of course, everyone knows that; language fails to capture the totality of All; and you can no more put into words what such experience is really like than you can enclose God in a box. 

Suffice it to say, then:

And let the empty space speak for itself and remind you of spidery flames climbing the fireplace, clouds parting to reveal the smilingest Man in the Moon and his French rabbit counterpart gleaming like crazy, the soft ground underfoot, useless hills beneath your tires, and just how unlikely yet inevitable these scenes are.

I mean, really: the moon reaches fullness only once every 28 days; this shit I’m not talking about happens every week.