Molly asks, "What is a moment?" Could one ever successfully identify a moment? What is the maximum precision with which we could identify a moment? Relativity and the speed of light cloud the issue.
Sixty one hours and eight minutes after my 28th birthday (QUIZ: how old was I?), Molly said "Stop. Step back a few feet. Now, look up there." She motioned with her hand to an attic window on the other side of Masonic. As we walked back up the hill, the shattered reflection of an almost full moon shimmered amongst four large panes of glass. "Another rose window", she said wistfully. What an interesting tangle of events that brought us to this rare sight (How rare would it be to see the reflection of the moon in the window? How rare would it be to see at that time of night?)...:
Just earlier, we had been good samaritans by yielding our parking space to someone with a "dead car". I have known the joy of pushing Rosa up a hill (a San Franciscan who lives in the Haight for any length of time gets to experience something like this), so I willingly conceded the spot to her. The interesting tidbit about this parking space is that we passed it by to take home a friend who lived nearby. Molly gave us 50-50 odds on finding the spot unoccupied when we returned. Did this leave a 50-50 chance of it being occupied?
Are there other possibilities? We experienced three - two that we discussed on the way back to the space, and one that we did not anticipate: (1) "It's unoccupied now, but will be occupied when we get there." (2) "It's occupied now, but will be unoccupied when we get there."
It was unoccupied until we turned onto our street. As we headed up the hill, we witnessed a car pulling into the spot (1). How ironic! As we drove further up the hill, the car pulled out of the spot (2). How wildly synchronistic! And then, as we pulled in, the dead car owner asked us to not park there (3) - we drove off.
And Molly says this is evedence, perhaps, of a puposeful moment - allowing us a view of the reflected moon.
Reading Comprehension Quiz: