The Rooftop Perspective

7/5/2002

Aral and I watched the fourth of July fireworks from up on top of our four-story building this year. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer holiday evening. Our rooftop is joined with two others, forming a flat L-shape, and almost everyone who lives in our building was up there, just quietly sitting and watching the shows.

We had a pretty good vantage point to not only see the big Boston show, but we could also see fireworks from Brookline and a town past Brighton, and of course the illeagal stuff people in our neighborhood had snuck in. It was one of the few times I wished I had a video camera, because not only were we surrounded by our neighbors from the building on our roof, but we could see lots of other people on all the roofs around us as well. The streetlights and billboards and fireworks made all the lighting dramatic and shadowy, as if the rooftops were filled with hundreds of twenty-something crimefighters far above the streets, drinking and laughing and flirting and looking for explosions in the sky. It was one of those nights that you don’t want to end, quiet and breezy warm without being hot at all.

I was sad I didn’t get to go to D.C. to see my cousin Joe march in the big parade, but I was also sort of glad I avoided crowds this year. I went to the big celebration with the Pops last year, and I usually love crowds. But this fourth I just wasn’t in the mood for that. Being on the roof top was just right, surrounded by people but anonymous at the same time. I love that feeling.

As I drank a beer and lounged back in my plastic chair, I just blissed out to be on the flat black roof surrounded by city. I’ll never live in anything resembling countryside again.

Boston has had another heat wave, thanks to global warming. It was 95 degrees the other day here in New England, which was really unheard of just a few decades ago. What makes a heat wave extra-special here in the Northeast is that because people aren’t used to weather above 85 or so, they just don’t put air conditioners in most buildings. Apartments don’t come with air. And because Aral and I are pretty darn poor, we spent last week with my one little wimpy box fan chasing hot air around in circles.

Due to the heat and many other problems, my temper went through the roof. The national news has just gone bloody stupid. The entire state of Tennessee shuts down due to general poverty, four states out West are on fire, we’re killing civilians in Afghanistan and the television news is that a billionaire balloons around the world and a handyman’s assistant who might know something about a little rich girl’s dissapearnce was not arrested, but brought in for questioning? No one outside of the South is even aware that Tennessee is bankrupt, and Kentucky will soon most likely follow. No one is paying attention to the slow loss of civil liberties in the nation. Congress doesn’t understand the difference between Theocracy and Democracy. Happy Independence Day.

At least this week I found out how to get access to our rooftop whenever I’d like. I can’t believe I’d lived in this building for over a year and never explored the rooftop – I guess I just lived in suburbia way too long as a teen and I’d forgotten that in every city there’s this whole other world on top of buildings. When you’re on top of your building everything looks much different, and you can see so much more of your neighborhood. Sometimes back in Tennessee I would climb on the roof of our shed or even the house, and people would think I was crazy, or when I was laying out reading, an exhibitionist. They didn’t get it because they didn’t understand that what I wanted from the rooftop was not just a warm spot in the sun, but the ability to see farther and to look at where I lived in a whole different way. You can see farther here in Boston, and watching the fireworks on the roof this year was perfect, just right, and absolutely Boston.