The Ride

Today I took the bus down to Palos Verdes to shoot for one of the School of Cinematic Arts films. I was supposed to be done by 15:00 but a sudden realization that the sun was setting at 16:57 delayed my departure to 16:00. I had a rehearsal for Acting class at 17:00 and I was two hours away from home by bus.

The school we filmed at was in a community kind of cut off from the rest of the town in that it was 1.4 miles up a hill. I had a bus transfer on the way there but it was taking too long so I took a Lyft from the transit center all the way to the school. I had no cell service to order another Lyft, let alone was I willing to spend money to be driven a mile, so I took off running down the hill.

Three minutes in, a lady pulled over and asked me if I needed a ride to the bottom. Desperate to get back to campus on time I accepted. She worked in the admissions office of the school we shot at, and she was very, very nice. Nothing about her scared me or threw me off, she was just a genuine good person, something of a rarity these days. Her name was Andrea. She got me to the bus stop in three minutes, saving me twenty minutes in time, and thanked me for the opportunity to perform a good deed.

There's something in that.

On the bus I sat across from a man in a Chevron shirt and behind me was a woman in a Target shirt. She cried the whole way. He was listening. Sufjan Stevens' The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! was playing in my earbuds.

There's something in that too.

Things I'm stealing from today:

Good people doing good deeds are a blessing to us all

Exploration is inspiration

Buses are some of the best places to find stories

The tones created from the music you listen to versus the world around you make for some interesting juxtapositions

Sufjan Stevens is a god