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?