Wealth

The Revolution may not, as they say, be televised, but it sure has been made easier to get to, courtesy of the Washington State Department of Transportation’s beautiful SR 520 bike trail on the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge across Lake Washington.

When the tocsin sounds and we storm the barricades, we can do so in luxury as we pedal on the double-wide path into the land of one-percenters so as to requisition their ill-gotten gains for the deserving masses.

In the meantime, though, we will continue to marvel at the abundance of our region. 

Even those of us who don’t reside behind perfectly-groomed twelve-foot high hedges and ornately crafted wrought iron gates, are still able to enjoy the lavish gift of cycling together through neighborhoods and downtown cores where—if the streets aren’t exactly paved with gold—they certainly glitter like precious metal with an undeniable burnish of wealth and power at every intersection and byway.

I mean where else have you been cut off while riding by a Bentley convertible, the driver so content with her station in life that she merely waives like the Dowager Countess dismissing her handmaiden for tea?

It’s a place where a playground, even one in the part of town in which houses are permitted to touch one another, has a jungle gym that fairly oozes privilege, its complex system of ropes and rings like something from LeCorbusier via Chanel.

But then, lo and behold, after a rousing chorus of “Sleigh Ride,” you eventually pull up at a friendly watering hole that would be right at home in your humble homeland, illustrating that, in spite of what F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, the rich aren’t so different from you and me; after all, who doesn’t love tater tots no matter what hedge fund you manage or multinational conglomerate you own.

Eventually, the complete loop of luxury is completed, and you bed down, feeling, like George Bailey, the richest man in town.

Aligned

The root of the word “disaster,” as we know, refers to the star, the “astrum,” being “dissed,” that is, out of alignment.  So, there ought to be a word something like “enaster,” meaning, broadly, a time when the stars align, and everything comes out just right, or, that is, with all the right wrongness included in heaven and earth.

If so, then this year’s annual Point83 holiday “enaster,” "A Pointy-Three Christmas Disaster” would qualify as current poster child for term. 

It all came together in a glorious mess with a galaxy of stars, topped off with a Christmas miracle of singing Sugarplum Elves who twinkled brighter than that mythical stellar phenomenon whose scintillating rays supposedly led the Biblical Maji to the manger where the source of all this holiday fun was born.

It’s a fucking gift, really, to be blessed with such room in one’s life to enable bike-riding through paved forest paths, booze-swilling on lakeside promontories, and leg-wrestling on reasonably dry plastic fields even as, throughout most of the world, such luxuries are not of this world.

Most of us, in most of our lives, are kind, compassionate, responsible people, doing our level best to make the world a little bit better place, so it’s an almost indecent pleasure to be gifted with such a unique opportunity to tear off the wrapper of rectitude and celebrate insensitivity with such abandon. 

Hip-hip-hooray, surely Jesus, (and Allah, and Shiva, and Buddha, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Bigfoot) loves us all. 

And Santa and his anagram Satan, too!

It’s been a rough year, no doubt about it, so perhaps that gift that keeps on giving the most is to just be kinder and gentler to each other but maybe that also means more forgiving of our trespasses especially the ones on two wheels in public parks around fires of palettes and logs.

The holidays have only just started and already we’ve got it all, thank our lucky stars.

Sparkle

Beauty is dangerous, as illustrated by cliff edges, thunderstorms, and all those femmes fatales in noir detective novels by Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain.

Also, icy streets, glittering with frost on a cold and uncommonly clear night in December out on two wheels.  At one moment, you’re remarking to a friend how remarkable it is that you’re still upright in spite of how slippery it looks, at the next, you’re circling gingerly back to check on another colleague who’s just bitten the dust, so to speak, although the “dust” in this case is actually asphalt coated with a frozen water glaze.

But all’s well that ends well and pretty soon you’re re-assembled in a cocktail lounge that looks too fancy at first, but soon is transformed into a reasonable facsimile of a living room, albeit one that serves pitchers of beer and French fries along with something that appears to be baby shrimp in a glass—another example, come to think of it, of dangerous beauty.

It was a throwback to the old days when bars came first before fires and resulted, for those who hung in there, in a legitimately late night of burning things, Jenga-type fires being one more instantiation of the lovely but perilous theme.  Fortunately, no human animals were harmed in the act, even with boiling accelerant in beer cans as part of the fun.

Of course, the stage was set for hazard much earlier as longstanding guidelines were eschewed by following Fred down a gravel road that, after a short spiral, became more like following Ben up a mountain; surprisingly, however, not a single angry homeowner came out their back door to complain; although leaving Westlake, accompanied by the Pedicab’s sound system blaring the prog-rock standard “Roundabout” by Yes, at least two sets of methheads leapt up clapping in support—a fitting send-off, I suppose, being a fine counterexample of that which, though almost certainly dangerous, is not at all beautiful.