Bossy

You get a notion and run, or as the case may be, ride with it--which could explain why you’re convinced that the headwind you’d been fighting all the way from work would place its outstretched hand on the small of your back and propel you up the oldest and fanciest of our seven hills and that wasn’t wrong, at least for that one moment when it felt like it, ignoring half a block earlier when the wind was right in your face, but oh well, a person did get to be outside almost all of an early evening on a fall night where, most of the time, rain pants were suspenders and a belt, and even though numbers were small, commitment was large, if not, on my part, anyway, really all that long-lasting.

A fellow’s got preferences, after all, and even though nobody, except maybe everybody sometimes, wants to be the one who’s least flexible, who doesn’t want what they want?

The problem is, it’s hard to admit—or even recognize—mistakes in the instant, and that’s part of the reason why babies are bottled and crises averted.

One thing, not necessarily the main thing, is to get home safe in more or less one piece.  Whatever that means after all.

And if that means late outdoor fires are missed, so be it; at least, for a time, there was the incendiary pleasure of circumnavigating a mysterious mansion more or less.

In her 1944 Seattle novel, Great Son, set among homes perched like miniature medieval castles on Queen Anne Hill, (hence the original interest in an evening’s ascent), Edna Ferber says of our fair city: “There was too much of everything.”  Two lakes, two canals, two mountain ranges, two rivers, “a colossal feat of Nature,” a “godlike production,” “too much for the average man.”

Of course, that’s obvious out and up on Thursday two wheels; where time and again, even not enough is too much.

Bisected

I feel bad that I disappeared with the twelve-pack of Rainier that Topher mostly paid for, but sometimes, you just get separated, and sometimes the separation is confounding enough that it seems the Universe is explaining to you that it’s time to pedal home even though it’s still well before midnight on an almost perfectly clear perfect night for being out on two wheels.

I lost track of taillights leaving the market and so chose my own adventure to the next bridge but when I arrived it was deserted and so, reasonably (I thought) concluding that I couldn’t possibly have arrived in front, headed to where I thought things were headed afterwards.

I was met only with a fabulous view of downtown, a lonely fire, and an angry dog which, taken together, I took as evidence for homeward bounding and so, soon enough, found myself pulling up in my backyard—warm, dry, and sated.

Half an evening, half a story, and with an unopened half-rack to boot.

Hearth

How good is good?

If you faithfully fulfill the bulk of your professional, familial, and social responsibilities, for more than a fortnight at least, does that earn you the right to several hours of misbehavior?

When the big old guy in the sky with the beard and the book tallies up your score, does He cut you a break for being a reasonably good employee, parent, and friend and overlook the part where you failed to abide by all the requisite local ordinances and traffic laws?

And doesn’t being under various influence of various influences earn you a “Stay Out of Jail Free” card, too?

I took the long way around the Lake to my backyard in order to descend (literally) upon a covey of forest elves (figuratively) warming themselves in the open-air living room of an invisible house.  The quarter moon’s half-pie hung in the west and disappeared behind the trees at about the same time the aforementioned pastoral scene appeared before me.

Fortunately, I had gotten a head start on my own evening’s interior by way of a corporate watering hole painted with football screens in the neighboring hellhole across the pond, and so my own egress was sufficiently lubricated that even Derrick’s jokes were already funny.  Normally, such proximity between home and hearth tends to give one pause, but, at this point, having banked away hours of the commendable, who could give a damn, really, about a few sparks here and there?

Sometimes, it’s the person who doesn’t live nearby who’s the best guide; the everyday route home may not, in fact, be the most efficient and picturesque path to the next thing.  Your own pace, however, will eventually secure your arrival, albeit at your own pace, which is perfectly fine when you know where you’re going if not how to get there.

There might have been more but enough was plenty, a full night packed into half of it, well-deserved rest, well, deserved.