On the 19th floor of a downtown office building, the view down the Columbia and Willamette rivers to the West is achingly beautiful when one is working in a temp job that keeps one chained to a computer doing discovery fro the defendant in a major law suit--outside on the thermals above downtown a peregrine falcon floats lazily, looking for prey. Pigeons, rats, other rodents and birds--the day is clear and sunny, the falcon is almost too obvious a symbol of "freedom" that one had recently and bitterly complained of, for freedom did not come with a paycheck attached.
The August rent is now paid and there will be a little extra money this week. A query about the possible placement of my novel with a literary agent was mailed today. I look out into the distance and imagine being at the local nude beach, carefree and walking in the shallow water carrying a book of no obvious literary merit. However, I will go home and do the laundry and drink inexpensive red wine, trying to ignore the democratic national convention. Coventional, indeed. The worlds we live in are so different, each of the people in this room with a view going home or wherever to pursus the life none of the others knows of, nor wants that much to know of.
The falcon swoops down, presumably for the kill. Airliners take off in the distance from PDX. In five minutes I will go home and begin the process of forming the evening into my own image and likeness. I will not fly into the sunset, my wings afire with the colors of the setting sun. More's the pity. Later.