i'm probably writing this because it's the first time in more than a month when i see the sun.
seldom leaving me, the sensation of approaching seaside permeates delightfully through every inch of my body when driving upwards on a town street that ends in clear skies. it's a refined taste from the broader trick that i experience from driving on a straight field road or something similar, but the urban background makes it complete and specific. it's something taken to extreme by the streets of san francisco, if you want, but with a much more bohemian-little-mediterranean-town-l'été-indien filter. quite the paradox, the horizon's narrowness lets my imagination run wild on those 20 yards of direct touch between the asphalt and the sky, towards a beach of a few umbrellas and a shore of few sails, with no cars and no music produced after 1995. it's like bits and pieces from pictures, movies, and music were brewed together with scattered blink-glimpses from passing cars to give me a memory of a time i never had.
and then there are the rooftops. some house and even block rooftops send me on the road to the mountainside, especially if the windows have shutters, and that usually means flash backing to my hilltop-fir-tree-black-cherries-amazing-grandparents-mischa-magazine-family-road-trip childhood, which is still great, but some blocks have the seaside rooftops. if you didn't notice them by now, maybe you will. they're the 4-story blocks with the terraced roofs, or the 10-story blocks with useless arcades and concrete beams. and, if just one balcony has a shade, that straightforwardly tells me that there is a beach right behind that building.
of course, when i reach the top of the street or corner the block, the landscape is usually unforgiving. but the salty air under my tongue, the smell of the sea in my lungs, the tuning radio and the seagull sounds in my ears.. ah, those few moments of complete disconnection are more than worth it.
unfortunately, bucharest is not known as a city of upward streets and block rooftops. so, if someone happens to stumble upon some of these places in bucharest, the need is dire and the location divulging is much appreciated.
