Journal rdewald's Journal: Life bookmark: Up on the terrace. 4
We inturrupt your regular programming to bring you a life bookmark, a moment in time I want to remember and come back to. Specifically, just before midnight, eastern standard time, Saturday, June 11th, 2005 AD.
I am sitting on my friend's terrace in SoHa (here's about one-fifth of the view during the daytime). I can see the George Washington Bridge in the northwest, Riverside Church to the West, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in the southwest, Farmer's Gate in Central Park to the Sourh (pictured, sort of), and the Triboro Bridge to the East. It is a hazy summer night, giving the sky the effect of imbuing a translucent, very soft, golden halo around the skyline and horizon. It's soft-focus architectopr0n, shot in hazy light pollution..
The moon is but a sliver in the sky just to the right of the green dome over the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque directly across from me. It looks very Islamic with the moon hanging low. The City's quiet. I'm relatively downtown for Harlem, in SoHa (South Harlem) and this area is acquiring it's own separate character, apart from the more hiphop vibe uptown and the pounding life-force perseverence of the latin beats on the east side. It's usually quieter down here. There's still plenty of life in the streets, just fewer collisions, literally and figuratively.
The wind is calm for a change. My friend's terrace wraps around the southwest corner of a building and it can often feel like the bow of a fast sailing ship up here, a constant, unrelenting cold wind that will even kill a Canadian evergreen in the winter. Now, it's perfect, you wouldn't want to tamper with either the temperature (74F/23C) or the humidity (93%), it fits like of glove over the day-end exhaustion of NYC heat, just languid enough to discourage much activity.
My friend has gone to the mid-atlantic beachery of St. Myrtle, the golfistic restland. My official duty here is waterer of plants, but there was a frog choker of a storm here this afternoon, so everything's clean and smells fresh. It's just beautiful out here, truly as magnificent a sight in its own way as the Front Range of the Rockies, or the Texas Hill Country Savannah, or Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.
I just wanted to notice.
Thank you for flying rdewald. Please return your seat-backs and tray tables to their upright and fully-locked position. All carry on luggage must be stowed in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you. Laptops can not be placed in seat pockets. If you do so and we have a water landing, please feel free to use your laptop as a floatation device.
We do not anticipate a change in cabin pressure, or we would have never stepped foot on this plane today, but should we experience one, please stay out of our way, we're not sure which oxygen masks work.
Thank you, please put your phasers on stun.
New York, New York. (Score:2)
The first time I was there, an old friend of my (now ex-) girlfriend was an engineer at NYNEX. He got us up on the roof of his building in the middle of the night, which was one of the WTC buildings. We laid on our backs and looked up at the towers against the night sky. Even though we were ~fifty stories up, it was like we were looking up from street level.
Architectopr0n. Good'un.
You know I'm not hot for the city (Score:2)
Thank you, Richard, for that wonderful getaway!
....Bethanie....
Beautiful Writing (Score:1)
lost luggage (Score:1)
Yes, it was a pleasant flight. The view was breathtaking and the cashews were delicious.
Can you provide me with the number of your reservations desk once we have found my glasses?