Vintage

This old journal entry has been on my mind a lot recently, for one reason or another, so here it is today...

July 25, 2004

Back to the city. The routine. The life.
I found myself atop my roof, sitting, dog scurrying about my feet, at that time of day much smarter men have referred to as "the violet hour," when the sun has set but light is everywhere and the city just glows. It is violet, but also faded peach and silver because of all the reflective surfaces. It's absolutely beautiful.
Peaceful, dormant, interior but living.
And amidst all the things -wondrous sights really- that a pair of eyes could land upon, I found that mine stopped (puzzled) to gaze northward and squint at a most peculiar sight.
Flashes, too erratic and inconsistent to be operational, coming from atop the Empire State Building. Flashes, at one corner and then the other. Wait! Four at a time in the center! Two more simultaneously on the right... Again, a solo burst on the western edge!
Security device? I found my mind racing. Too low to warn off airplanes or the like. But in a row... A solid line of alternating bursts.
It can't be. Is it? Visible from more than 34 blocks away
-camera flashes!- photos being taken from atop the observation deck of Manhattan's signature landmark! Silly to think of. Impossible.
The memory of my first ascent so ancient and faded that my own photographic proof barely brings it back. But cameras going off nonetheless, in THIS moment, at THIS time- memories being made, film being put to use.
The Empire State Building, a city bows at its feet in all directions- rooftops rising and falling for miles.
From its balconies, people experience the wonder of this city and of this time on Earth, presumably with the ones they love- and higher than they'd ever dreamed possible.
And if you look very closely into the distance, there's me -far off- a speck on a rooftop in the scrapbook of a memory.