The Fall of the Bridge

There is a small park close to where I lived during that summer. It's some sort of train station memorial or something. All that's there is the small memorial building, a short path, four or five benches, a couple picnic tables, a gazebo, and a bridge going over the old train tracks. The bridge is mine. I mean, not really. But it's significance to me is far greater than to anyone else. I know it. On that bridge I come to the brink of reality and life. I grapple with questions of existence and purpose and pain. One night I stood, leaning on the bridge's railing, breathing with the wind, and thinking of the fall. Not the season, but the fall from healing to broken, from wholeness to fractured. My mind can't contain the concepts, nor can my body. The whole being that is me desires to release them into the air as separated atoms that are nothing but lost particles in the moving air around me. That release is as varied as the elements of the earth.

Bridges are built to withstand great pressure and to facilitate the crossing of whoever would will the bridge to do its job. I once saw a bridge, not mine, collapse right in front of me. Simply too much pressure and the bridge failed. It fell. Cracked. Splintered. And every person on the bridge had looks of fright and confusion. Because it failed. And fell.

The fall is forever and infinite. Both separately and mutually. We are the fall. We are broken and fearful and splintered. When I stand on my bridge, I can jump and run or simply walk or stand upon it and I, naively, trust that it will manage to hold it all. But if it fell, even if it fell while I was with it, I would not condemn the failure of the bridge or its architects. I would only empathize. I am falling. So I stand on my bridge and breathe in and out as existence and failure and purpose float through my being.