People often forget to take into account the last part of the morning commute, counting only the time spent in cars, buses, or subways. For many, the final leg of the journey is made by elevator, to some more or less lofty location in a big office building.
And those minutes spent ascending – in silence or awkward small talk – are what finally puts a person in his or her place every day.
For me these days, that last little stretch takes me to the eleventh floor.
There, a short walk leads to an unadorned cubicle, plain beige with walls surrounding the desk on three sides, intended for my privacy. Their real effect is to act like a horse’s blinders, to prevent me looking out at the lake, and instead to keep my eyes on the virtual horizon of my computer monitor.
Still, there are windows all around, and if I remember to stand and simply look, the view is quite breathtaking —especially as the building is octagonal. It’s amazing how different and glorious familiar things look when your perspective is from above, and a few degrees off the cardinal points of the compass.
Just yesterday I swung open a door, and surprised a peregrine falcon hawk resting outside a wide window, on a ledge, high above the street. It took off calmly with a quick, casual flap of its wings.
I watched it for some time, as it soared over the city, in a gorgeous gyre that owed nothing to the works of man below and all around.
A pane of glass and the power of flight were all that stood between us, way up there in the thin air of the eleventh floor.
wait… what? elevator?
what? when did you install an elevator in your house? or build 8 more stories?