On my bike ride home from the gym, a 10 minute ordeal through downtown San Francisco, I felt like I was in an extravagant, over-funded movie set. There was no wind and the air was room temperature. The late sunset was a perfect gradient from the warm orange of the horizon to the toddler blue that speaks “no the night isn’t actually scary”. These properties distorted the sky to feel more dome-like. It carried the impression of the work of an overly ambitious set design intern who was just given the job to pick out the sky so he’d stop asking questions. So wondrous and picturesque, it almost felt out of place. Fixing my gaze on that gentle, smooth waterfall of colors, I imagine that intern must be getting a return offer. The atmosphere was exceptionally clear, and I could see all the sparkling white lights in the hills miles away. It was precisely at that time of day when the street lamps turned on — a time when those lights aren’t exactly needed, giving the scene a life and energy that’s leveraged beyond the time of day. I had just gone swimming during which sounds are muffled under that thicker medium, so now sounds of the activity around me were astonishing clear in contrast and resembled the audio tracks of Hollywood conversations in which despite the two lovers being in the middle of a packed restaurant in downtown NYC, their whispers to each other are as clear as day. I let out a “woooo! booodumm!” and was amazed that I could affect this scene, to put a part of my will and my construction into this world that seemed removed from reality. I’m happy I just biked through a movie. I’m only slowly realizing the nonlinearity of the parts that make up an experience. A certain combination of the everyday could be once-in-a lifetime.
