everything happens so much

Several months ago, a New Yorker magazine article highlighted the accomplishments of two young men who turned random postings of sentence fragments into an internet sensation. At its peak, their site had a million followers waiting for the next random phrase to be posted. My favorite phrase from this article?

Everything happens so much

Think about that for a minute. Yes, they did it as a prank, a massively cerebral joke, really. But if you take it at face value, that statement is deep, the implications huge. Because every minute of every day in this thing we live called life, a million everythings are happening so very much, all the time, all over the world.

How many of them are we aware of? How many of them do we truly see, hear or feel?

Tonight, as I rode home from a gathering at Velo Cult, I found myself pondering that phrase.

Everything happens so much

I turned the cranks and glided quietly along neighborhood streets under a beautiful sky filled with fast-moving clouds, dark orange after-sunset-glow in the west deepening to cobalt blue in the east. Every time I rode past a brief clearing between treetops and houses, and caught a bigger glimpse of that sky, I forgot my pondering, and simply stared, and caught my breath.

Everything happens so much

And it happened before my eyes. I parked for a moment, made friends with a kitten sitting outside a darkened house, and watched the sky change. Resuming my ride home, I felt a small chill -- it was a night between summer and fall, one of those nights where I'd sweat if I rode really hard and I'd shiver a tiny bit if I didn't ride hard enough. It was delicious, and it was happening all around and in front of me, and I really took the time to notice it. To breathe it in and see it. To own everything happening before me -- and in me.

Everything happens so much

And tonight I got a beautiful taste of it.

May your rides be as beautiful.