This post has been over sixteen months in the making.

Yesterday we spent most of the day at Ariel & Michael’s, hanging out with banter, books, and Boggle. It was exactly the kind of day we’d hoped to have when we realized we were going to live close to Philadelphia, and I think all four of us enjoyed it immensely (though Em had to spend a decent portion of the day working on continual Spring Break Midterms).

For me, though, a key factor in the enjoyment is their apartment – and specifically the apartment’s third floor, a spacious, airy kitchen/living room space with high ceilings, an immaculate varnished hardwood floor, and tall windows offering a view of the Philly skyline at one end and Orwellian tenements at the other. Being Ariel & Michael, they have adorned the interior almost entirely with books and comfortable eclectic furniture, adding to the locale’s aura of a place where I was destined to be. Emily and I have spent no small number of hours coveting their place and further trying to convert our trailer-park hovel into something bearing a resemblance. But it’s just not possible.

Yes, the space is cramped and thus innately crowded. Yes, the best hope for this spot is cozy instead of airy. But the real problem, the ultimate sticking point, is that we’re on the first floor of a one-story building.

Sixteen months ago, I toured the new Glide building at 125 Mason Street shortly after it opened to its first residents. I was immediately captivated, not only because of the features and amenities Glide was making available to lower income San Franciscans, but simply because of the elevation of the upper floors. I’ve always been enthralled by heights, seeking out overhangs and railings, canyon cliffs and overlooks. The idea of being able to wake each morning in the sky, look out at the city or countryside below, and evaluate every action from the vantage of a high-rise, it simply strikes me as bliss.

I had one year of my life from such a height – my junior year in college. I was on the sixth and tallest floor of Pomerantz Hall in the infamous East Quad, living alone for the only time in my collegiate career. I had an east-facing window that offered a perfect view of the Boston skyline and woke me each morning at dawn. My computer seat was right under the window and I spent the year gazing at the layout of Waltham beyond the smokestack, at Boston, at the glimmers of the Atlantic, feeling utterly at peace. I’m not saying that room and its window height were entirely responsible for my junior year’s remarkable run at saving my belief in Brandeis, college, and even my life in general, but it sure helped. There were other factors, like getting the job at the library, being able to live alone in general, and debate and all its associated successes. But I attribute a huge part of the daily improvement of my mood and life to living up in the air.

There were other times when I’ve at least been off the ground floor. Indeed, every other collegiate year was spent on the second floor of one building another, though Scheffres (freshman year) was sort of built into a hillside and so the view was of the rising side of ravine. It was more like being in a basement than above ground, unless of course one counts the fact that I spent most of the year in the top bunk, constantly at risk of bonking my forehead on the holey styro-tiles that comprised our ceiling. The Castle was pretty sweet, but second floor in the Castle was a little like getting an 89% – the 4th- and 5th-floor towers were really where it was at. And unlike our friend Greg down the hall, we lacked the Boston view and had to settle instead for a view of the lines outside Cholmondoley’s (the coffee house), which was its own little layer of depressing. Senior year, meanwhile, offered a view of the walkway between the labyrinthine buildings of Windsor Village, a massive amalgam of apartment buildings of various elevations. More or less like Scheffres.

I was also on the second floor in our tiny rowhouse in Washington DC during second grade, and this almost counts. Maybe because I was half my current height, so it was like being on the fourth floor, but also because the street view was really something there, especially as it snowed a great deal that winter and Poplar Street held this tiny scintillating set of neighbors and happenings, not all of them positive. Visalia seemed to have a moratorium on buildings taller than 12 feet, so getting to look down from above was a special treat at the time and may have inculcated my earliest glimmers of love for heights.

Not too long after I’d become captivated by 125 Mason Street (jumping here from 1988 to 2008), we went for a trip to Seattle in which we stayed way up (forget which floor exactly, but it was in the high teens or twenties) in the Sheraton overlooking Union Square. I was again overwhelmed with how my mood was elevated by my body’s elevation. The whole world seemed full of possibility, promise, hope, and excitement. I watched the window like most people watch TV, utterly engrossed. I came up with the idea for a novella, toward the back of the line in the queue, but with no less potential than any of the other ideas.

I’m even beginning to theorize that this might be a big part of why people love New York City, despite the city’s obvious failings. The fact that more people by volume live off the ground floor than anywhere else in America is probably no small part of the captivation people have with the city. My experience of New York heights has left a lot to be desired, of course, largely because the buildings are so jammed together that one’s view is often of windows across the street or a very narrow view of the street itself. Heights for heights’ sake don’t seem to cut it – one has to be able to see some kind of breadth and distance. It doesn’t have to be the kind of space one holds visible at the top of the Grand Canyon (though that might be the ultimate), but something more than a smorgasbord of neighbors across the way is probably necessary to really fulfill this phenomenon.

In looking ahead to life after New Jersey, still sixteen months (!) hence itself, I can only hope that we end up in a city in Africa or thereabouts and have the opportunity to get our feet off the ground. Combining this incredible boost with views of a deliciously foreign and intriguing city might prove the ultimate boon for my creativity. In the meantime, I guess, here’s to looking up.