On my way to the doctor this morning up Washington Street, watching pedestrians in sarongs and suits standing on either side of me passing. The sun suddenly looked different. Like the opposite of a blink, more light than ever. Not right for ten in the morning in July. Not the same, like hard white gold and pinpoint illuminating. As if it were being reflected and condensed off of thin sheets of platinum.

They didn’t seem to notice, the downtown-outside-people who had suddenly started glowing white and gold, but I did. For a moment I started thinking about a short story once read to me at night in an apartment, Larry Niven’s Inconstant Moon. Wondering if something had just gone supernova, perhaps these were the last few seconds of known life and these were the shimmery things I was seeing. Waiting for nuclei to disintegrate, for matter to end.

Then the light–the one that indicates go-and-stop–turned an appropriate shade for continuing and the sun’s metamorphosis took a back seat to my consternation about finding parking. These are the losses we suffer every day to the distractions of reality.