Midnight Rooftop Roundup-->san Francisco

San Francisco, CA - moebius rex - Thursday, September 19th, 2002 : goo

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midnight rooftop roundup-->san francisco

one am thursday morning and i'm typing this from the roof of my apartment building. i came up here mainly for some respite from the heat still trapped in the apartment after a long, hot indian summer afternoon. maybe i'll find some writing inspiration, too. it's been a hellacious work-week so far, and it's only going to get worse before Friday's over: i need to recharge.

i wonder if any of of my neighbors will chance a glance out of their windows and see me sitting here, my face lit up ghostlike by the eerie glow of my laptop screen. hi there, sleepless people.

it's an amazingly beautiful night. the clouds are gone, the stars are out, and the air is almost perfectly still--there's a slight breeze, but it's more like a sleepy caress: there for a brief moment and then gone, lost to slumberland. twelve hours from now that could be a perfect recipe for a scorcher of a day. but right here, right now, it's nice and cool. if molls wasn't waiting in bed for me downstairs, i'd consider bringing a sleeping bag up here.

the light speckled cityscape sparkles like an intricate collection of jeweled boxes. i feel like i could reach out and touch it. i can see about half of the jumble of skyscrapers that compose the Financial District; to the right of that i can follow the shimmering spans of the Bay Bridge as it stretches all the way to Oakland (with an interruption midway by Treasure Island). tiny headlamp and tail light specks gradually make their way across the length of the bridge. here and there stationary flashes of orange light mark the position of the structural engineering crews who nightly tackle the apparently neverending earthquake retrofit project for the bridge's western length.

living in this neighborhood has also opened me to a new world of everpresent urban surround-sound. it all blends together into a calming ambient composition of distant machine drone, ongoing freeway car wheel whisper and shush, electric bus power-line twangs, low-flying plane rumbles, occasional train clackity click, and foghorns. when the morning dawns, you can add birdsong to the mix. bay city music. it puts me at peace and lulls me to sleep.

and to my right is what i originally came up here to see. it seems like there's always a large sea vessel of some kind parked at the Mission Bay docks, but usually they're fairly dull cargo liners of one kind or another. this time we've got a stunningly beautiful ivory white cruise ship--one of the largest i've ever seen. it's illuminated both inside and out, revealing layer upon layer of staterooms and ballrooms and observation decks. from here it looks like something out of fantasy, out of an alternate reality of glamour and opulence. i'm both shocked and seduced by its sheer enormity and grandeur: every time i glance over in its direction i fantasize about stowing aboard and sailing off to other bay cities in lands far, far away. time to head down before i get carried away.

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