DO SOMETHING YOU HAVE NEVER DONE

 I went to bed a bit on the early side last night but this in no way justified waking up at 4:00 this morning. I remained in bed wishing to be pondering the life of Montaigne, thoughts on Rumi or Indian Philosophy as some of the book titles around me suggest I might be. Instead I am strapped with the nature of my personal reality being kept awake in my mind’s very own hamster wheel.

 

I am distressed to be thinking about things I have no control over. It is not like I am worried because "Oh, maybe I left  the keys in the car!" I know I left the keys in the car and I am worried if it will still be there when we get back. I want new thoughts. I want to freshen my mind and I think I will meditate myself back to sleep. Clear the mind…. this state lasts approximately 20 seconds when I decide in order to change my thinking I need to do something I have never done before.

 

So it is in my zombie-morning-state wearing an oversized Notorius B.I.G. t-shirt, leggings and a red ribbon in my hair that I trek down the hall to the elevator and push “R” and the mechanized voice recognizes my destination and says “Roof Top Terrace.”

Because you know what I have never done? I have never watched the sun rise over New York City and the Statue of Liberty from a roof top terrace with 360 degree views and a full moon still hovering above. I have never.

So I am on the roof, barely dressed, no teeth brushing, no morning ablutions at all, no shoes either. I am watching the light spread its way around me and I am clicking. “Click. Click.” My camera is clicking and then there is another click – not my own – and I think, I am not alone. I look around and see no one but there are several levels of terraces and I am filled with a bit of dread and excitement at whomever else would be on the rooftop taking pictures at 4:40am on a Tuesday morning.

 

A kindred spirit! Clear the mind. Do something you have never done. You are never alone…and all of this washes over me as I hear another "click" and catch a glimpse of the other person’s camera. But there is no other person. There is just a tripod and a camera!

This morning I had leapt off of my mind’s personal hamster wheel, made a pot of coffee, contemplated the full moon and the rising sun, breathed in the almost-diesel-free-air of a new New York morn. While some other intrepid chronicler of life lay sleeping, time-lapsing away at the Statue of Liberty, perhaps dreaming about Montaigne or maybe having a nightmare about their $5,000 camera being stolen from a roof top garden by a girl in a Notorius B.I.G. T-shirt under a full moon and the rising sun…

…Woops, I mean dreaming of Montaigne and Indian Philosophy and secure in the knowledge that no one, prey no one, would be out on that roof top terrace at 5 am except their own proxy. Because if someone else were out there, who would that person be? “Click”.