So in spite of the bird flu, I had to drag myself out to the shop. on the way back, i’m trudging along, laden with groceries. it’s just stopped raining and there’s a fresh breeze blowing across my face, lifting my spirits as dusk descends and the city lights emerge. ipod snugly in my ears, suddenly an old skool “de la soul” track comes on…

and i’m transported to a brooklyn rooftop in 1992, and it’s a thick summer evening with a film of smog hanging over manhattan in the background. the bulwark of the brooklyn-queens expressway overpass separates us from the glow of downtown manhattan, where *everything* happens, all we can hear and see are the cars and horns and rumble of trucks, but it’s magic just knowing it’s there on the other side. it’s me and garnett, shelly and dre – friends who chose each other to stick together and became family. and we’ve got a dime bag of weed, a cheap cigar, and a 40 oz. bottle of malt liquor (which we probably bought with subway tokens at the corner bodega, because we bought a lot of things with subway tokens in those days). that and a portable radio is our only entertainment, but it suits us just fine. we’re broke and tired from working long hours for no pay, but there’s something exhilarating about it all anyway, so we don’t mind so much. and we spend our summer evenings hearing police sirens mingled with the music and getting drunk and high and running our mouths and thinking about what we can’t see on the other side of that overpass. we spend those summer evenings being family in the way only friends who’ve fallen in love can be, and sitting on the dark rooftop in a haze, bone weary and busted, but it’s all good. because we’re high on a rooftop in new york with friends who are family.

and we’re on top of the world.

song of the day (with apologies for the quality) De La Soul – Eye Know

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(and yet more technical difficulties plague us – my internetz at home is broken, and won’t be fixed til the end of the week. grrrrr.)

(oh wait! it’s fixed! hooray!)

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