Stopping (fiction)

It was there on the day that we embarked on a mammoth run that would take us further than what rational beings deigned normal. We came around the seawall, enjoying the tangy salt air and the sun and the sight of our breath misting up in front of us. I did not enjoy the bevy of people meandering aimlessly, the walking version of Sunday morning drivers, but I tried to tell myself that not everyone was as endlessly uptight as I was and they were entitled to as large a swath of the sidewalk as me.
I heard it before I saw it. A rhythmic drum beat. At first I passed it off as the bass of a car nearby, but it wasn't. The more I listened the more I felt it primordial and primitive and alluring. I found the source of the raucous beat: a gathering of people that looked straight off one of the more granola-esque Gulf Islands resplendent with matted hair and overall grooviness. I started to pass by them, to get onto the trail that leads around Lost Lagoon but I felt bereft when I realized I wouldn't be experiencing that thing which I had to admit I was drawn to.
"I'm going over there," I yelled ahead, simply, shrugging my shoulders.
I veered across a few lanes of pedestrian traffic and hopped the curb up onto the damp green grass and there it was. The sun shining down on some of the most beautiful expanse of shoreline that I've ever seen. Tankers anchored in the bay. People walking, sipping coffee, chatting and shaking off the doldrums of winter. The drummers were banging on hand drums in a endless loop of rhythm that was so simple and so basic and so easy to become lost in.
I thought, how fortunate am I to be here at this exact moment? To capture this music, this view, this particular feeling and happenstance on such a random afternoon?
And then my partner was looking at me quizzically - not understanding - and glancing at his watch and, with regret, I backed away, feeling conscious of my overall appearance with a couple of Nike swishes on my person and a half depleted water belt and beads of sweat trickling down my temples and neck.
It was there that day that I was stuck in traffic on Lougheed - or maybe it was Broadway - and I was winding my way through construction sites and getting hung up on red lights and trying to avoid getting stuck behind buses and I was listening to this music that was unlike anything that I had ever heard, except that I was sure that I had heard it before. It was jazz. It was guitar. I knew I was listening to Django Reinhardt and I appreciated the absolute beauty and virtuosity of his work and I was simply grateful that such a talented individual existed and that I was fortunate enough to be able to catch the live recording of him at this random Friday afternoon and I was awestruck.
It was there the afternoon that the sky darkened with a murder of crows that were flocking to roost somewhere southeast of me and I saw someone roll down the window of the car and just start randomly recording with their camera because it was such an awesome sight, like the North Shore mountains are when they're dusted with snow and I'm wearing my glasses and I can see each individual tree with its sugar coating and there are mountains of them, all pressing up against the brilliant sky with its wispy clouds and I find myself happy to be simply commuting, while there are people skiing and snowshoeing on those very mountains and I am content simply to have them in my purview.
In all reality I think it's there more than I give it credit for. I think people don't let it in or they don't catch it. I missed it yesterday when I got a phone call directing me to look at the luminescent moon and I did and I said, "It looks like the moon" but then today, I looked out the window and I saw the moon, and I called back and said, "You really need to see the moon" and we laughed.
If you slow it down enough, I mean really, really slow it down, it's all just so incredibly overwhelming.