Revelations From A Rooftop

Sometimes it takes new eyes to see something for the first time. Consistency is what slowly, numbs the spirit and desensitizes the mind. Desensitizes the mind from its intimate relationship with the luxury of imagination, thought…and revelation. Seeing new things can resuscitate the heart, and awaken the soul to needs native to our nature. My physical and literal incapacity to explore renders me searching the earth with new eyes, or in this case through someone else’s eyes.

Above a place I am often in, where I spend most of my beloved moments in solitude and in coveted company. It took a singular roommate applicant to elevate my perspective, and open my eyes to what has always been there. A place so close, and at the same time so impossibly far.

As I toured the applicant through our quaint Queens apartment, I found her enamored by the subtle details about the rooms that I cherish so dearly. As her eyes drew slowly up the stairs to the attic room; she asked “who lives up there?”…

“That’s my room”

We crawled up the stairs to my room in the attic, and continued our conversation about the apartment rules, among other things. Halfway through the conversation I followed her eyes as again they wandered, up towards my attic window. Even with a lifetime of preparation, I could not have anticipated the question that followed. She asked a most novel question, and thus my heart opened wide and I was born anew in its wake.

“Have you ever gone on the roof?”

And to my absolute and utter dismay, I had not, despite my hypnotic fascination by rooftops. How could it be that an otherwise complete stranger can read the unwritten thoughts hidden deep within my consciousness? I had met her for the first time, and she had managed to drill right through to the core of me. A formidable challenge to most who attempt, but she succeeded with the ease and elegance of a ballet dancer, twirling a whirlwind of possibilities straight to my soul.

I was awestruck, that before me was a girl, unafraid of the consequence of her remark. She so boldly asked a peculiar question that exposed not only my clandestine fantasy, but revealed the same rare quality about her as well. A quality we shared, altitudes above the humble roof overhead. A revelation that was oh so much more about our desire to see, than to be seen.

There is indeed much to see from the rooftops of New York than the expansive ocean of stars above you. For just below, is a sprawling reflection of the sky, in the endless collection of ‘stars’ just below. ‘Stars’, so akin to those above, if only we were to look. A paradigm of creation so beautiful, contemporary parables displayed clearly for anyone to see.

But only visible from a rooftop…my eyes are open, are yours?

a photo album

We all have these moments. Ones we tell ourselves to hold fast, and remember. I covet these moments in a photo album that I carry with me where ever I go, somewhere between the place behind my eyes and my heart.

Sifting through the photographs I find:
Image #1: not the first, but the first that comes to mind. Taken from my bedroom window on May 20th, 2005.

It was surely my racing heart that woke me before dawn. I awoke with a sense of urgency, and after offering the morning prayer, I prepared to go back to sleep. It was like a magnet that drew my eyes out the window. This was a magnificent dawn ascending from the heavens. My eyes could not resist. Spellbound by the stoic tranquility of the clouds, as if they were waiting still for me to distinguish the multitudes of lavender, and crimson that dimly illuminated the background.

I lived the vague lull of sunshine, rolling in and simultaneously replacing the dark blanket that was the sky. There were distinct pockets of feathery white light refracting through the lofty clouds. A cold breeze blew in through the window, the kind of air that you can almost taste in your lungs. The dawn has an intense scent and you could unmistakably smell the morning approaching swiftly. I wanted the day to wait; I was not content with its transience, I longed for just one more minute to memorize it.

It is an amazing thing, about the dawn, how it somehow manages to rouse the heart. It precludes your eyes from closing, renders the soul to abhor a simple blink, for fear of missing a moment of its splendor. I wonder if it’s me that makes moments, or if these moments are always there.

Are moments made, or just noticed?

I suppose it might be me that discerns these minutes, me that refuses to let them go by unnoticed. I will be bold and say, that it must be for me that these moments are waiting, wanting wishing to be noticed. Existing to be noticed.

Image#2: taken on the #4 train, 3/9/06

Unflinchingly absorbed in my current read, I vaguely deciphered a young boy enter the train on my way home. He slipped so cunningly amid two large, I would say ‘thugs’. His small, slender body fit like a glove between them, occupying the scant area behind the metal support pole. Or so it seemed, his eyes revealed something contrary. It was noticeably evident, that this young boy, age no more than 10, has been exposed to more than I may ever know. With dark circles under his eyes, where was this boy going with no guardian to speak of? So curious, and engrossed with the child, I could not help but look at him intensely. We shared a glance, and in that moment, I looked through a window into his reality.

Here, was a boy navigating through the Bronx, a solitary mission. A level of independence at such a young age, I was oblivious to. His eyes than fixed on a group of high school adolescents speaking audaciously about some lewd topic matter, that I dare not recall. His ears open, eyes wide. This was his life, and for an ephemeral moment, I descended into his ennui. He sat, with a quiet calm, almost disappearing behind the pole. Invisible.

It is the nuanced collaboration of a community that shapes a life. In his eyes I saw the culmination of this community, within a single soul. The product. I am not sure why I was drawn to him, why it affected me that he was traveling alone. Why I wondered where he was going, wondered where his parents were, I am unable to articulate.

I turned my head, and followed him with my eyes when he got off on 170th street, unable to shake the image of his penetrating eyes that flowed so expansively deep.

I closed mine, and tried to sleep.

---

…This is an ongoing album, I have some more ‘images’ to document, they will be coming up soon. Thank you for your patience.

ode to bro

Many thanks to the brother that rekindled my elusive obsession that is the seduction of the ink in a ball point pen. The almost involuntary movement of my fingers across a keyboard meticulously recording my stream of conciousness. He reminded me, that I have a special ability to see the world with different eyes. Eyes, that the pages of DiPiro's pharmacotherapy almost destroyed!


It started.
The inspiration to my heartbeat, the brother...the archetype of a brother. Eternal thanks.


P.S. also, thanks for this sweet new machine!

the mirror reveals itself

Subtitled: “holy moly” in past tense.

It was a Sunday night, and I was in the last place I wanted to be, doing the last thing I wanted to be doing: standing at my job.

Life often finds me, rarely where I want to be, when I want to be there. So, against life, standing on the borders of a dream, a figure approached. As my vision re-focused into reality, I saw it was a gentle old woman tottering up toward the register. She was dressed, appropriately for the frigid conditions, in a floor length fur coat.

What first went through my mind was interestingly NOT, “who does she think she is? Or is she not aware that fur is murder!” Albeit, my views are indifferent, I caught myself wondering whether or not the coat was a genuine fur.

“Can I help you?” (as I say in robotic monotony)…her answer no more than a whisper, but I understood. She mumbled her last name, and I scurried to find her prescription. I stood there, as patient as a squirrel waiting for spring, listening to her quiet muttering while she documented the check she was preparing. As this archetypical granny handed me her check, irony struck me like an arrow, straight through my white lab coat. What precision, as if aimed directly at me.

I saw in her silence, that the woman was resonating volumes more than those whispers. The moment after she extended her arm to hand me the check, I saw the hint of a mirror reflecting her soul to me. I was caught by surprise as her motions exposed a gaping hole severing her fur coat, at the seam where the sleeve met the bodice. And through that hole, more was revealed than just the sweater underneath. I saw through the old lady, to a once beautiful young woman, a visionary, a lover. But it seems time tore through that reality, leaving another.

I saw a woman, striving hard to sew together a former life… what was left of her youth. The vanity of youth is verily a transient bliss. Its allure so seductive, we wage war against time, in a fruitless attempt to grasp the remnants of what appeared to be of such cherished value. With disingenuous assurance, she flaunted this paradox, perhaps completely unaware of the proverbial Judas betraying her in the back. Lurking behind her, following her like a shadow. And as a mirror reflects in merciless detail, she was exposed through that hole. Uncovered.

I had never imagined being in the presence of such palpable irony. Its purpose only for me to understand, and articulate the anthology of meaning that resides within a simple hole. I indulged in the lucidity of my introspection, amused that I drew from that hole, like water from a well. I contemplated the thought of divulging my secret, but perhaps she was already aware of the phenomenal betrayal taking place right behind her. I muse over the likelihood, that she would never realize the transcendent poetry emanating from the emptiness inside.

She faded into the distance, like a mirage.