Magic

I left work today tired, but somewhat satisfied. A wrong had been righted. A kind of tawdry, squalid little wrong. And another more sizable, potentially a legitimate evil, wrong had probably been squelched before it came to pass. Some people's egos were trampled on in the process, and for once I actually did feel a little bad about that, even though they deserved it. But I had helped accomplish some good, and other good people had helped with it, too. It was kind of a good day.

And when I got outside, I was dazzled. The weather has been shit here for weeks. Particularly bad since Monday afternoon, when we got hammered with the first of two serious bouts of winter storm this week. But today, the clouds broke and I got outside just in time to see the sun before it set.

It was very low on the horizon, starting to fall behind the mountains, and it shot a pure, golden light straight up the streets downtown. It shot down on the water and bounced back up at shallow deflection, giving us twin beams of that pure, golden light.

It was gorgeous. White buildings turned to solid gold. Red brick turned to shades of red, brown and gold. Every inch of downtown with a line of sight to the water was bathed in gold. And it seemed entirely rational, for the moment, to believe in magic.