I am dust, let me settle; all reason unwound.
Walked over the Williamsburg Bridge with J last night, on our way to some event at Galapagos. That was fun—hadn’t been over that bridge in a long time. Since I lived in Brooklyn, actually. There’s something so romantic about crossing NYC’s bridges on foot. Something so...liberating. It worked well with my current mental state. And oddly, it reminded me of so many nights in Paris I spent passing over bridges on the metro, feeling overwhelmed (in a good way) by the big beautiful city stretched out all around me, and the endless possibilities of my time there. Haven’t felt that way about NYC in a long time, that’s for sure.
As we approached the center of the bridge, I started to feel so...exposed. It was weird. Not exposed in the physical sense, like I was in danger of teetering into the abyss below or anything. I mean, anyone who’s ever walked over one of NYC’s bridges knows that when doing so you're actually the farthest thing possible from being exposed (with the exception of possibly the GWB, and even there “exposed” would be a stretch), as the walkways are generally in the center, surrounded by railings, fencings, beams, train tracks, roadways, etc.
But still, “exposed” is the only way I can think of to explain how I felt as we made our slow progress across the span, passing first the hundreds and hundreds of projects on Manhattan’s lower east side that, unless you’re crossing the East River, you forget are even there (so much truly undesirable housing in this city, and so many people that we like to forget inhabit it), followed by the long stretch spent over the black water of the river, between the two boroughs that have made up the entirety of the past decade I’ve spent in this city.
And what a decade it’s been. So much good, so much bad, so many new and exciting experiences. And here I am, on the precipice of one more big life-change: the first time I’ll be “alone” in ten years. The first time I’ll live by myself. Ever. And it’s exciting. And scary at the same time.
Much like being out in the middle of a dark bridge, in the middle of the night. Exciting to see the lights of the city spread out on either side, the black water lapping the shores below. And yet, scary too. Not scary in the sense that the bridge might collapse or a gust of wind might come and sweep you over the edge, because well, that just doesn’t seem plausible enough to worry about. But scary in the sense that how you proceed on that bridge is entirely, one hundred percent up to you at that moment. You can turn back and return to the streets with which you’re familiar and comfortable, or you can press on and proceed into the unknown. Are the streets that surround the Brooklyn side of the bridge safe to be wandering around at night? And what about the neighborhoods we’d have to pass through on foot in order to reach our final destination?
Or, I suppose you could collapse in the center, and just stay put until someone or something comes along and makes the decision for you: a cop, a mugger, the weather. You could even just decide to hell with it, and do the wind’s job, and climb up into the beams and the railings and throw yourself off the bridge and down into the darkness below. That would sure be easy. And final.
But in the end, we pressed on into the unknown, wound our way through the shady Brooklyn streets, and got to where we had originally set out to go.
And later that night, we took the subway back.
As we approached the center of the bridge, I started to feel so...exposed. It was weird. Not exposed in the physical sense, like I was in danger of teetering into the abyss below or anything. I mean, anyone who’s ever walked over one of NYC’s bridges knows that when doing so you're actually the farthest thing possible from being exposed (with the exception of possibly the GWB, and even there “exposed” would be a stretch), as the walkways are generally in the center, surrounded by railings, fencings, beams, train tracks, roadways, etc.
But still, “exposed” is the only way I can think of to explain how I felt as we made our slow progress across the span, passing first the hundreds and hundreds of projects on Manhattan’s lower east side that, unless you’re crossing the East River, you forget are even there (so much truly undesirable housing in this city, and so many people that we like to forget inhabit it), followed by the long stretch spent over the black water of the river, between the two boroughs that have made up the entirety of the past decade I’ve spent in this city.
And what a decade it’s been. So much good, so much bad, so many new and exciting experiences. And here I am, on the precipice of one more big life-change: the first time I’ll be “alone” in ten years. The first time I’ll live by myself. Ever. And it’s exciting. And scary at the same time.
Much like being out in the middle of a dark bridge, in the middle of the night. Exciting to see the lights of the city spread out on either side, the black water lapping the shores below. And yet, scary too. Not scary in the sense that the bridge might collapse or a gust of wind might come and sweep you over the edge, because well, that just doesn’t seem plausible enough to worry about. But scary in the sense that how you proceed on that bridge is entirely, one hundred percent up to you at that moment. You can turn back and return to the streets with which you’re familiar and comfortable, or you can press on and proceed into the unknown. Are the streets that surround the Brooklyn side of the bridge safe to be wandering around at night? And what about the neighborhoods we’d have to pass through on foot in order to reach our final destination?
Or, I suppose you could collapse in the center, and just stay put until someone or something comes along and makes the decision for you: a cop, a mugger, the weather. You could even just decide to hell with it, and do the wind’s job, and climb up into the beams and the railings and throw yourself off the bridge and down into the darkness below. That would sure be easy. And final.
But in the end, we pressed on into the unknown, wound our way through the shady Brooklyn streets, and got to where we had originally set out to go.
And later that night, we took the subway back.
posted by P/O at 2/08/2005 01:29:00 PM
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