Solstice

“You don’t know what I’ve been through!” barked the angry meathead outside the Bull Pen Bar and Grill in Seatac and I had to admit I didn’t.

But clearly it had something to do with why he was getting so worked up about the bike pile, which, truth be told, we were in the process of disassembling anyway. And maybe it was the arrival of the cops, but somehow, we got out of there without anybody getting punched in the face, an outcome that was probably too much to hope for given how the night unfolded, what with mechanicals galore, bike routes chained closed, and hibachis eventually ejecting their grills beneath moving cars that just kept going despite all the sparks.

The so-called “problem of other minds” reminds us that nobody really knows what anybody’s been through, but at least we were in it together for as long as the near-solstice light lasted, and even after we broke into groups, there were still enough perspectives to be a problem, apparently.

And yet they all happened under the same spectacular nearly-full moon on this same insignificant dust mote in a sunbeam we inhabit together and the mere fact that strangers can get surprisingly exercised over more or less that same thing proves that maybe our experiences aren’t so different after all.

I do know this: if that guy had been through what I’d been through—a ride on which even the long uphill doesn’t seem nearly so long when it’s still light out and where the descent through the woods on the unopened bike trail goes on forever, and which includes an opportunity to stand beside the Puget Sound on the longest Thursday of the year drinking beer and eating Cheez-Its—he wouldn’t have been nearly so pissed-off.

In the end, what are we but our experiences—what we’ve been through, known or not—anyway? And to paraphrase that old saying, with experiences like this, who needs enemies?