up on the roof

[written a couple nights ago, not at an internet café]

I am having a sublime moment, and I am going to tell you about it.

The roof of my house is a flat, tiled deck, completely open but with a four foot fence. This is where the laundry is done, and the dog and some large houseplants live up here. Tonight I didn’t have that much homework, so I came up here after dinner to do some smaller assignments on my laptop and listen to music in the open air. After I finished the homework, I put my computer to the side, set it to play some of my favorite music, and laid down on the ground (there are no chairs). The tile is still warm from the day, but the night air is perfect and cool with a slight breeze. I just lay there, watching the stars flicker. O’Ryan with his belt is right above me, and I can just barely make out the shield and club and his opponent, Ursa Major. The sky is clear but not that much different than southern California, because Tegucigalpa is still a big city. The moon is about ¾ full and very bright. Tonight I read a story in which some anthropologists were trying to figure out the word for “why” in a certain culture. For some reason, the people there didn’t ask “why” very often. They finally discovered the term when the anthropologists were telling the people about how Americans sent humans to land on the moon, which prompted a natural response: “Why?” Staring back at the moon tonight I was thinking about the concept of sending little persons up to that huge, shining ball of nothing which is being hurled around our planet with profound constancy (despite what Juliet may say), and it made me laugh out loud. What an idea! And what fantastic ambition. And if we can go to the moon, why can’t we solve other, more practical problems, like the eradication of extreme poverty, or of AIDS, or of Latin American soap operas?