Friday, December 8, 2017

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment