The Bridge

Notes

2011-02-04T18:03:00.001-08:00

Lives at a hostel. Free room in exchange for a few hours a week at the front desk. Earns pocket change playing guitar / casio in the subway.
Also change any mention of "river" to "bay."

Part Four

2010-08-14T02:57:00.001-07:00

Madame Joanne said a lot of things that night, and maybe it was mostly nonsense. Hard to say as so much of it was barely intelligible. The part about the beetles though - coincidence? Possibly. It bothered me though. I finally somehow negotiated my release from Madame Joannes lair, though it took some doing, even after I emptied my wallet.
The rain was coming down when I got back on the street and it came as a relief. That place left me feeling like I wanted a shower anyway. There was a sticky sweet smell that seemed to stick to my clothes but I hoped the earthy smelling rain would wash it off.

Part Three

2009-07-20T02:25:00.001-07:00

I was relieved when it finally got dark. The streets were somehow brighter under the streetlights than they were in the half light. I had set out so deliberately that it didn't matter at the time that I had no destination in mind. So I set out on a sort of aimless yet determined wandering.
I don't know why but I found myself reflecting on my childhood habit of retracing my steps everywhere I went, always going back exactly the way I came. Of coarse, I had dropped that habit along time ago, but I was thinking about why I did it to begin with. I guess it was a little strange. I had said once that it was so my path wouldn't get tangled up behind me, but that wasn't quite right. There was something else. Even now it's a hard to put my finger on it, but I think it had more to do with being able to "undo" something I had done, and the importance of keeping track of what I'd done and where I'd gone so I could undo it. It's a powerful idea, the thought that you could take back something you'd done. I used to think that was possible. Words like, repentance and reconciliation come to mind, but unfortunately that's just another thing you do on top of something you've done, it doesn't actually undo it. Wouldn't that be nice.
There's the tug again. Is there really another place where all the things you've done don't matter? A clean slate? The thought was exciting and terrifying at the same time.
I looked up at the night sky to see if I could glimpse the great chasm of space I saw in my dreams. The clouds formed a low ceiling above me. It was a sickly dull orange reflecting the city lights below. It figures. I started feeling claustrophobic again.
"I have got to get out of here." I said aloud to myself. Maybe I could hop a train. Stow away on a freighter. I felt the need for motion. Quick movement away from my current position. Of coarse, my current position is always where I am so the urge to move would never really end would it? Another dead end. Even escape is a trap.

I had been wandering without paying attention to where I was and I suddenly realized that I was in an unfamiliar part of town. I tried to look around and get my bearings but the street was buildings just tall enough that I couldn't see where the river was. There was nobody on the street either and I began to get a little nervous. It was too early for the streets to be deserted. I must have wandered into some abandoned corner of town. The streetlights gave off that pale orange glow and the windows of all the buildings were dark except for one shop window that was lit up with a neon sign in the shape of a hand that said "Readings."

While I had no intention of getting a palm reading, I had no intention of sticking around that part of town either. I wasn't really sure how I got here but I knew I wanted to find the quickest way out. I decided to pop my head in and ask directions.

The shop door as well as the window were curtained with some tacky looking material that kind of detracted from the sort of mystic feel I had always associated with palm reading. I expected to just be able to walk right in but there was a sign at the door saying "ring here" indicating a little plastic button taped to the wall next to the door. I rang the bell. It reminded me of elementary school when we had to sell chocolate door to door. The next moment an older woman cracked the door open and dog shoved his head through the gap in the door anxious to greet a new visitor but she scolded him and pushed him back inside. I stood awkwardly on the threshold wishing I had never rung the bell and remembering how much I had hated selling chocolate.

Words began to stumble from my mouth, "I'm sorry...um...I've got myself lost, and uh, I just need some-"

"Oh, yes! Come in! Come in!"

That was a relief at least but I was not entirely sure if I wanted to actually go inside at this point, but I couldn't really say no either, so I said, "Thank you" and entered. My attention was drawn at this point to the woman who had invited me in. She addressed me in the slurred voice of someone who had lost the physical capacity for speech at some point and only recently regained it. She was dressed in sweat pants and a sweatshirt with a picture of a bouquet and some birds on it. The woman herself was probably in her seventies, or maybe younger - it was hard to tell but either way the years had not been kind and the mileage showed.

The dog was sniffing and pawing at me despite the old lady's attempts to restrain him.

"Oh, Szthpenzser, down! down! I'll hafvtzo putz himmin bachkk..." she slurred.

She shooed Spencer into a back room but reappeared before I could decide to take that opportunity to leave. Inside was nothing like I'd imagined. It was like being in some old crones home. There was an old tacky looking couch with a hand knitted afghan on the back that successfully clashed with everything else in the room. There were a couple of miss-matched recliners, a table with a lamp, and stuffed animals and dolls everywhere. Across from the couch was the bar. Not a min-bar, a full restaurant sized bar. It's impossible to describe how strange it was to see a bar in that setting. Just picture there being a bar in your grandma's living room and you'll be pretty close. Nestled between the stuffed animals and dolls lining the back counter behind the bar were several picture frames that looked like they should display pictures of grandchildren but instead displayed several oddly dressed women with names taped to each one. I assumed they must be other palm readers. Other than that, the floor was covered in old stained beige carpet and the whole place smelled like cigarettes, burnt cooking, and some kind of cheap fruity air freshener. I stood for a moment trying to think of the most polite way to leave having already intruded, and not even being a customer.

"Iamm Mmadamm dzJoanne. Pleazd tchoo mmeatchyou." she sputtered and squeezed my hand. I wondered if she'd had a stroke. Maybe that's how she got the gift. I was straining to be polite at this point and tried to smile and nod my head.

"Idzs dthisz you're pfirzst timme here?" Madame Joanne asked,

"Uh, yes - actually I just needed direc-"

"Evryone needzjdirectenz! Thetz why dthey comme to Madamm Joannz! hahaha!"

"Ha. Yeah, I guess so." I wondered how transparent my attempt was at this point. Madam Joanne didn't seem to notice. Maybe palm readers aren't totally psychic...or maybe she was just being polite.

"Szit down! Szit!" She insisted patting the couch.

"Lemme getzchyou sumsing to drrink."

"I really, um, didn't come for a...uh...a...um...reading...I just -"

"R'laxz! Relaxz! Just szit! What d'you wanto drink? We havf beer or vvodka or szodaz..."

"Uh...do have seven-up?"

"Szure, szure...one szevn-up..."

Some strong liquor probably would have done my nerves some good but given the circumstances I preferred to stay sober. Finding myself alone with Madam Joanne made me wish the dog was back. Maybe Spencer had been begging me to take him away with me in his own dog-ish way.

The whole experience was riddled with awkward silences.

"Hmmmmm....."

Her acrylic nails tickled my palm as she traced the lines. I started feeling a little queasy. Then she said something that hit me so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of me. "The beetles were real..."

Part Two

2008-07-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

They were brown. I don't know why I suddenly remembered that. It was the sort of realization that comes to you when you are thinking about something else entirely. Her eyes were brown. Ok. Duly noted. What does that have to do with anything? Without meaning to I had lost my train of thought wondering why I should care what color her eyes were, and a new train of thought embarked from that starting point. Ok, so they were brown.

People think of brown as a dull or dreary color. It's not. It can be as rich and warm as red, and as deep and soothing as blue. It's the color of dirt - not dirt, I mean earth. Of coarse it's the same thing but "dirt" sounds so flippant. The ground, the soil that produces life. I love the smell of earth especially right after it has rained.

It was raining when I left the library that day. Not the usual torrents that just turn the world into a huge soggy mess, but a sort of heavy light rain. Big drops, but fewer and in short bursts, like the rain they get in Los Angeles. The rain made me think about her eyes again for some reason. Not in any sort of mushy, sentimental, amorous way. Just as a sort of mental note. Brown eyes. I filed it away mentally in my mental catalog of her other features, thinking to myself how easy it is to forget something as trivial as eye color. Why I even kept a mental catalog of her features was...complicated; easy for me to understand but difficult to explain. Though there was no real emotion attached to it, it was not voyeuristic, or shallow, or base. She was a friend to me (even if she didn't realize it) and I noticed features that I enjoyed the same way I noticed things I enjoy about nature or art or music. Especially music.

Just as I decided then, I have decided now, that it's best not to dwell on this too much. It really has little to do with anything.

I took my new stack of books home and fixed some hot chocolate. They had been serving free hot cocoa in at the library that day, and I figured since they were free it wouldn't hurt if I brought a few packets home. I actually stocked most of my condiments in a similar manner, usually just to save money but some, like the Del Taco hot sauce packets, were not available at the market so it was the only way to have it at home.

Anyhow, I found my favorite chair by the window and began reading. Reading by day light, especially the diffused daylight of a rainy day is, I am certain, the best way to read. I have no concrete argument to back that up; just my own personal experience.

I had not been reading for long when I felt my eyelids getting heavy and, having no more responsibilities for that day I let myself sink into blissful daytime sleep.

I dreamed I was floating in a calm but vast ocean laying on my back on a book case that floated like a raft. I could feel the wet bindings supporting my head and body. At first it was day but then the daytime sky dissolved into night and it was as if the canopy of the sky fell away and I could see out into space. Then I realized I wasn't looking up but down into those bottomless depths and I longed to go there - to be free and roam the universe. The stars were like islands. I was looking at the ocean now, and it stretched out like space endless, open and free.

I woke up with the vision still in my head, and a longing for freedom. It was the pull again. My hot chocolate was cold and it was getting dark. I felt a deep discontent come over me. I hated this time of day. The half light. Why did it always seem darker just before night than when night actually came? Not light enough to see, but not dark enough for the lights outside to illuminate anything. I was moody and restless so I went out.

Part One

2008-06-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

How did I get here? I stare down between my feet at the fog below me. I can see the toes of my shoes
poking out just a few inches from the railing of the bridge. Four seconds. That's what they say. Four
seconds of free fall. That doesn't seem like a lot of time. I'd hoped for longer. More time to take a last
look, a last breath. Do I really want to do this? I think so. Will I change my mind after I step out? Four
seconds. That can be a very long time. How did I get here?

♦ ♦ ♦

I thought my childhood was pretty normal. Now anything that seems "normal" is suspect. I suppose it
was more normal than a lot of people care to admit though. Divorced parents. Perverted babysitters.
Problems in school. Bed wetting. Nightmares. But I never ate paste. Or crayons. I knew that was gross.
And I never painted a sky as a single blue line across the top of the page. I guess that made me seem
smarter than the other kids. Maybe I was. I always retraced my steps coming back from recess, always
coming back in the same door I went out, even if I had to get out of line to do it. The other kids didn't
know to do that. They didn't know how important it was to always do that. Otherwise your path gets all
tangled up behind you. Anyhow, none of the other kids seemed to care or maybe they just didn't know. I never
found out. Every two years it was a different house and a different school. I still don't remember why.
Memory is a strange thing. I have memories that couldn't have been true. I remember seeing beetles
the size of horses at the zoo. I remember their slow movements, and the way the sun glinted off of
their shiny black backs. There were two of them in an animal pen much like the ones they kept the
apes and bears and other large animals in. There was a ditch, and a fence, and those fake rock walls
behind them. But no, they didn't really exist. There's no such thing as beetles the size of horses.
I remember the old witches house over the fence past the second hill on the path on the way to my
kindergarten, and the sorcerer's mansion next door to my cousin's house, with it's ivy covered walls of
blond colored stone. I remember the iron gates, the crumbling garden, the high walls and how the
property cut into the hill making the wall shorter on the outside than it was inside. I remember scaling
the wall with my cousins and peering across the garden in hopes of getting a glimpse of the sickly old
wizard. We never did.
I remember walking to school when I was in the 3rd grade. There was a hill with a stand of evergreen
trees on it on the way there. I used to cut across the hill to get to school, partly because it was a more
direct route, but mostly because I loved walking through the trees - like a little forest - and emerging
on the playground on the other side. That is except for that one time that I remember when I emerged
on the other side, not in the playground, but somewhere else entirely. I don't remember what I saw or
how I got back, only that it was somewhere else - somewhere very large and open - and that I came
back running for my life. But of coarse that didn't really happen. That's the stuff of fairy tales. Not real
life.
Real life was much more...believable. My parents did their best to teach me how not to end up a bum
on the street. Somehow I did end up there though. For a little while, anyhow. After that I pulled my life
together. Found a good church. Fell in love. Got married. Got a good job - a real job. Life was normal
- finally. For one whole year it was normal. After that it all began to unravel. It started when my wife
left. She never really said why. She said it was selfish. She said it was something she had to to do. She
said she just didn't love me anymore. I didn't fight it. I'm not sure I knew how. After that things began
to get strange again. I couldn't concentrate on work anymore. It just didn't seem as important. My boss
told me to get help. He said I had problems. I went to the doctors and they gave me medicine. It
helped for a while, but after I got fired I couldn't keep up the payments on my insurance. I stopped
taking the medicine. I stopped working. I stopped paying bills. I stopped everything.
It was then that I really felt it. It was like a pull at my gut. Restless, urgent. I felt the world suffocating
me. I didn't belong here. There had to be another place - somewhere I could go, somewhere that was
not...here. That's when I began searching for the way out.
I met Sarah at the library while I was trying to escape into books. I had acquired a volunteer position
as a library page and spent my time shelving books. Lost in the stacks. Lost in the books. Lost in the
pages. It got to the point where I would have five books checked out at a time. I tried to limit myself to
five. Five was manageable. I could read them in rotation and not lose track of how many books I had
checked out. It was Sarah who checked them out. She worked as a clerk at the library. She wasn't
fabulously beautiful and I didn't fall madly in love with her. I didn't even have a crush on her. I don't
think I was capable of those feelings anymore. She was just Sarah, at the check out desk. She had
straight dark brown hair that stopped at her jaw, a narrow but very friendly face, with faint freckles.
Her eyebrows were dark and somehow made her look very intelligent. I never noticed her eye color.
She wasn't especially shy, or especially outgoing; not especially beautiful or markedly ugly. She was
just Sarah. Friendly, comfortably confident, Sarah; and I thought she was pretty.
Sarah always made small talk about the books I checked out, but it was a genuine sort of small talk,
and I appreciated it. She became a sort of friend to me without knowing it. Even though all we ever
talked about was book selections, the conversation was always honest and warm, and we always
greeted each other in passing. Maybe something else could have blossomed there, but my heart was
tired and I had no interest in trying to gain something that could be so easily lost. I kept to my reading.
As soon as I finished each book I could feel it again - the roof of the world pushing down on me. I
needed more books. It kept me satisfied most of the time, but it wasn't a permanent solution. It
couldn't be. Unless there was a book that could truly take me to another place - the other side -
just like the movies I saw as a kid. That was the book I needed. The book that was a door. The bridge
to the other side.
I started to wonder how such a book would be classified under the Dewey decimal system. Fiction? No,
I needed the real thing. I had spent too much time on fiction. Fiction was easy. Sarah was my enabler
when it came to fiction. She knew of so many good fiction books. I would still read some fiction to tide
me over, but I needed a real solution - a real escape. What about Non-Fiction? 000 - Generalities? No,
there were too many of those in my life all ready. 100 - Philosophy and Psychology? Not that either.
Like I really need more people telling me this is all in my head. 200 - Religion...my first reaction? Been
there, done that. Given a little more thought, this one would be close, but religion just seems to be
made up of all the things people want to be true (whether consciously or not) but lacks the specific
verifiable detail that i am looking for. I don't want to die and hope to got heaven. I want the
coordinates (literal - not "parabolic") so I can go there now. Faith in a road map is different than faith in
some unknown supposedly benevolent power's cryptic and unverifiable (yet somehow wonderful) plan
for one's life. So, no. The 200's are out. I'm not looking for enlightenment or salvation. Just a way out.
Next...300 - Social Sciences. Sounding the great consensus of mankind in an attempt to find answers to
the worlds problems. Nope. Next. 400 - Language, no; 500 - Natural Sciences & Mathematics, our best
guesses about how our infinitely complex world works...not likely, especially since what I am looking
for, according to the best guesses of science and math, can't possibly exist. If the real world worked
according to neatly formulated rules, labels, and categories, I would really have no hope - but I have
seen enough to be sure it doesn't. Moving on, 600 - Technology / Applied Sciences...what, so I can
build a time machine out of a Delorian? Or find a stargate buried in ancient Egypt? Unlikely and
definitely outside my budget. 700 - Literature and rhetoric, maybe but that would be like searching for
a possible needle in an infinite haystack; 900 - Geography & History? Now here's something that might
be useful. If you need to go somewhere, but you don't know where it is, look at a map, right?
Geography tells us where things are, and helps us get places. Even if i didn't find the actual bridge,
maybe I could get some ideas about where it could be? And history? Well, if anyone has found this
bridge before, there's bound to be something in history.
Now, let's consider an obvious question for a moment. Am I insane? Looking for a bridge to another
world in the 900's section of a public library? At first, I admit, I felt ridiculous. The geography books I
took from the shelf seemed to scoff at me themselves. "Here is the world," they said, "this is it. This is
all there is. The Atlantic Ocean is just great empty valley, with some canyons and some mountains, the
Sahara is just full of sand, the Himalayas are just gigantic icy rocks." The history books were much the
same. "Here is this person, he went over here, and did this and that, and died like other people." I was
discouraged.
I kept reading though. I kept searching. Hoping that the next book I opened would be the bridge or
show me where it was. Eventually I got lazy. I resorted to reading fables, legends, and myths to try and
keep my spirit up. Those books were full of tales of other worlds, though I suspected that the other
worlds were really just the as-yet undiscovered corners of this one. Either way, I couldn't resist the
allure of those stories. Some parts had to be true. They had to have been based on something. It
bothered me, but at the same time gave me hope. I puzzled over mundane details of stories, looked up
alternate tellings, consulted commentaries, read translators notes, always looking for a thread
- something in common - something everyone had missed.
I'm even not sure why I mentioned it to Sarah. Maybe I was just looking for conversation? I don't
know. I'm not sure I really wanted to know what she thought. She'd probably think I was crazy. Or just
a nerd of previously unheard of proportions. Great way to ruin a comfortable friendship. Luckily I didn't
think about it too hard before it came up after she commented on one of my selections. All she actually
said was, "Reading up on your Mythology?" to which I replied, "Sort of, yeah..." and then there was a
beep as she scanned the barcode on the first book.
"So are you in it for the stories or the history?" she smiled knowingly thinking she knew what my
answer would be. A second beep for the next book.
"Actually both...I'm kind of...researching." A third beep.
"Really? What are you studying?" A look of genuine suprise and interest, as the fourth book beeped
under the scanner.
"Uh...it's, uh...sort of a..." I heard the fifth beep. Normaly that signaled the end of the conversation.
She pushed the stack of books towards me but still waited for my answer.
"...it's kind of a...uh...well..." There was no line. I had a couple minutes. Why not ask her?
"Well, have you ever thought that maybe there was something true about these stories? That maybe
they were based on things that really happened?"
"You mean, like, things that just got embelished over time? Like King Arthur?"
"Well sort of, but...no"
"What do you mean?"
"Well I mean, all of the stories - not just King Arthur..."
"Yeah, okay"
"...and not so much embelished as just...renamed?"
Her expression was unreadable. I was being cryptic. I knew it. Cryptic equals wierd. As much as we
want to think saying cryptic things makes us seem mysterious and intelligent, the truth is, it just
sounds creepy - and wierd. I spotted patrons approaching the counter out of the corner of my eye. I
paused a second longer than my best judgement told me I should. She pursed her lips and looked me
in the eye.
"That's an interesting idea." She was thinking about it. I could tell. She was thinking about more than
just that though, and those thoughts were hidden from me. I had already picked up my books.
"Thank you," I said indicating the books as I turned to leave. She smiled and waved goodbye, but I
could swear I could see her still thinking about it as she turned to the next guest in line.