Baffles

Most of the places in Seattle that I would never have been to I’ve been to on Thursday night rides and I’m pretty sure that every time I’ve been politely asked by the authorities to pack it up and get out of here have been, too; but even though I apparently missed the second of the two times out of three places that happened last night, it was still more than plenty all around as tehJobies overachieved as usual (which, I guess would just make it achieving) what with the two-wheeled mobile disco party, many scary cocktails, and a set-up under the freeway that for the life of me looked like something right out of a music video beer commercial in its post-apocalyptic splendor.

You could stand on a metal ledge around a freeway column and gaze right at the subterranean cathedral of vaulted concrete or eyes front at cars barreling southward mere feet away or, by sliding down gravel, descend into a bunker where, word has it, raves once took place and it was easy to see—and hear (that is, not hear)—why.

And if that weren’t enough, the shadows cast by moving bodies made for an hilariously apt allegory of the cave scene; I imagined being, like Plato’s famous prisoners, bound by the neck so I could see nothing but those pale imitations of reality before me, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t, at least for a while—as it was for those sorry souls—enough of a glimpse of the ways things really are to satisfy.

In the story Socrates tells Glaucon, of course, one certain fellow is released from his chains to ascend from the cave into the light; he’s blinded at first by the intensity of it all, but eventually acclimates to see even the pure form of the Good. Funny how back in the day, those ancient Greeks did it all on foot; these days it happens by bike.