THE LETTER ON THE BRIDGE
I left my house and walked. Just walked. Nowhere in particular; just an excuse to leave the din of mediocre silence within a house that was a collection of indifferent and autonomic processes- Accomplished to every one's expectations, but not a single one done with more passion than was needed for anything more complex than a load of laundry or a sink full of dishes. Passion was something I had traded long ago. For what, I am not exactly sure, but without it, I often wondered why it was I was attributing success for it at all anymore. With the roles reversed, would I feel as though I should show more appreciation for what they did than what I felt in myself right now now?
Probably.
I walked up the hill and turned right on the bridge road that wound its way across the river and on back into town.The view from one side of this bridge spreads out over the water in steady and even lines on both sides of the river, as though it could be painted with single strokes from a painters brush. No effort at all. Pretty, yes, but easy. Too easy sometimes. Too simple to see it as anything more than what it is already was and with little or no expectation to have it change. It is almost always calm and serene and I use what I see from it as a way of reminding me that what I feel good about myself has put me where I am today. This is the side I attribute to accomplishments. My small internal reward and validation of positive choices. Sometimes those accomplishments, however, are not mine alone. I can look at them, and be a part of them, but no more than anything else painted into the landscape. As though it would come as no surprise to have someone view it from the other bank and paint me into it with no more consideration of my presence than is given to a rock or a tree in the same place. It is a verification that I am an integral component to the universe as a whole, and not separate from it.
But bridges have two sides as well as two ends, and when I am unsure of myself, or need to find answers, I cross the road to the other side that is much shorter in its view but more active and changing from day to day. This is the side of the bridge that I hope and dream. Where decisions are made and where simple reflection gives way to thoughts and actions deeper than the water beneath my feet.
The sheet of stark white ice ends only a few short feet from the edge of the falls. Cold water, dark and smooth, bulges and swells at the surface as it escapes from underneath before sliding away like molasses and curling over the rim in a seamless and unbroken line.
The water thunders at the bottom of the falls just a few feet away, and the spray of water droplets stick and freeze to any surface they touch. Everything beneath the rocks is coated in icy crystals turning simple plants and small shrubs into jewels as fragile as they are priceless. Great plumes of mist roil and pour into the air, constant,but always changing. Always different, but ever present. Like streams of thoughts that some point to as being inconsistent and, therefore, worthless, because they are never in the same place. Others, however, see not the position of those thoughts as being what is important and are instead, relying on the fact that what causes them, is always present. Thoughts, like the mist from a waterfall, are only possible if a source continues to feed them.
The pool of water beneath the falls is a mass of sharp and twisting waves. Like flakes of obsidian or a flock of angry crows, their wing tips battering each other for space. The river juts off to the left and then settles into a small curve that finally hooks itself like the arm of a lover before drifting out into the small valley beyond. All the feathers of those angry black birds smoothed into a contended slumber of inky feathers.
So much like my thoughts and dreams, this side of the bridge has become. More active and changing, but always with a sense of adventure and...passion; That what occurs on this side of the bridge is not so much a chaotic event with no end, but a fight for that which is just as real as the other side, and paid for with activity and motion and energy. The end result is that both become placid and calm, but that this side can be seen and quantified, whereas the opposite side simply expects to be taken for what it is. Neither good or bad, right or wrong. Who is to say which side of the river is its truer nature if there is no way to gauge what it is capable of? Do I admire its current state because of what it is, or do I question it because of its indifference? It is what it is, but it also, is what it is not.
At least this side of the river, with its constantly changing and reinventing of itself and its surroundings brings a sense of desire. That the landscape the water pours through is just as much a part of itself for what it changes as much as what it does to its environment. To this side of the river, it isn't enough to simply rest along the banks in simple indifference and be seen as a sure thing. This side of the river thrashes and fights and assures me that what it results in was earned much more than simply expected or assumed.
I rested my arms on the edge of the round steel railing and just breathed in. As though the frozen air, had within it something I could take into my lungs here that could not be done breathing it in within the confines of the house.That was a different kind of cold. One that solidified a soul rather than invigorated one.
As I looked out over the water a small glint of red flashed in the corner of my eye. Too bright to be a trick of the light, and too small to be something I had neglected to see as part of the view, it was there for an instant and then gone. Two more, a pink and another red, lower this time, flashed again. As though the thoughts within the mist had suddenly fired a flare or emitted a shower of spark. I realized I was standing on top of a small pile of glitter. It had been spread out over the ice on the walk, and as the breeze blew, it lifted small bits up into the air. I looked down at my feet and found a letter in a plain white envelope tied to the railing with a piece of string. A single rose lay beneath it, held firm to the ground by the ice that covered the two shiny green oval leaves.
I knew it wasn't for me. No one knew that this spot held any more importance to me than would any other stretch of road to anyone else. No name was signed on the front. Just a card. Crisp and clean with no outward bend or mark. "How sad" I thought, that whoever laid this card had so feared that another would find it that they could not put the name of the person they loved at the top, nor could sign anything name at the bottom.
But a card nonetheless.
I held the card in my gloved hands. It wasn't mine. It didn't belong to me. But I had spent so long in an environment where even remote excitement had become an impossibility. I knelt back down to replace the card where I had found it and instantly felt the pang of a loss that was not mine to possess. As though a penance had been paid by me already and could read and feel by proxy. I stood back up decided that fantasy and fairy tale were as much mine to dream as it was for someone else to experience and not have.
Curiosity took hold of me,though, and I opened the envelope. The card folded into three sections, and beneath the third fold, a letter slipped out. I very nearly dropped it into the water, but pushed the entire contents to my jacket and fished the letter out from between my gloves and my body.
Another wave of guilt passed over me as I contemplated putting the letter back inside, unread, and walking away. Who was I to live vicariously through the love of someone else? I answered myself almost as quickly as I asked it. "I am myself, and I do need love, vicariously or no". I wanted, no needed, what was inside. I needed to know that what I felt was not unrealistic or selfish and existed somewhere else for other people, even if not for me at the moment. Maybe one day I would, but for this moment, right here and now I needed it, and I was going to feel it.
It started out with the usual affirmations that are so easy to say. Little affectations that require absolutely no thought at all and can be performed with the automaticity of operating a light switch or a car door. But as I read, it slowly gave way to a deeper, more difficult, plodding, kind of writing. As though the intention was to run, but that he just hadn't got his legs to catch up to what his head and his heart, was thinking. Suddenly, it took off in a whirlwind of emotion and I felt myself, actually felt, what it was that was being said. Not in a way that could be seen as occurring to another person, but to myself. As though what he had written was meant for me. I could feel every word as though it were very real fingers that touched my neck, or caressed my breast, or pressed against my lips in a way that stole my breath from me.
He did know me. He knew us. Most of all he knew himself more than any other person I had ever read from. A total stranger, with me reading his love letters to a woman I would never know, and it was as though he was standing inside of my own head.
I stood there, holding a love letter intended for someone else, and yearned to have a heart this pure within me. I held it in my clutched fist and felt the crisp paper as I burned inside with a want I could not have. The wind blew and small bits of confetti and glitter drifted down onto the frozen river.
My momentary loneliness gave way to a deeper sadness and regret for all that I was once more than willing to sacrifice. It crept over me in a slow oozing, like tar, and then quickly cooled to a hard and brittle shell. What was left of me locked inside of myself. And then the grief transformed itself into anger. A blind uncontrollable anger that not only had I been duped into this feeling by someone else regardless of all that I had given, but that I had been convinced that it was myself who wished it for myself. I didn't. My silence was not an acceptance at all. My silence was the only thing left that had not been taken from me by fear of losing something else. When you can't fight, you run. When you can't run, you hide. And when you can not hide anymore, you stay as absolutely still and silent as possible; hoping you are seen as innocuous as a wall or a rock. Prey may be eaten alive at any moment, but no sense in making the inevitable approach more quickly with unnecessary movement or sound. I crumpled more than sat and stared at the letter in my hands feeling it slowly warm my heart until it melted my frozen feet in the snow and set my heart to flame.
Down on the ice, a dozen roses and tulips were strewn about and held within the ice. Locked in place and trapped where they fell. I wept openly and tears spread down my face. No longer tears of grief but of a rage I would no longer contain.
What a loss. That something this kind and gentle had to be left where only one person could see it. Not by those who walked by lifting their head up, but only by someone hanging their head.And it wasn't her. It was me. I was left where only one person could see me, too. And he didn't even have the emotion left to devour what he had already hunted and wounded but would not kill. I envied her. In a way I can not explain, I envied what she has. I say 'has' because there is something far more compelling to a person who can not do what he wishes, and finds a way to do it anyway, than could ever be said by having something and doing little to show it. I am holding what is hers and she has so much more than me, and I envy her. God in heaven I envy her and that kind of love.
I so desperately wanted to keep this card and feel it over and over, but I slipped it back into the envelope and placed it back under the string that held it. For the next few days I went back every night and reread it. I thought of taking it several times, but simply couldn't bring myself to do it. Two days later, the letter was gone, but the rose remained. I knew in an instant that someone else had read what I had, someone that was not her,and that it was, again, not who it was intended for. If it had, the rose would have been gone as well. Just like my own life where the pieces that were wanted were taken only in part, and the remainder, left to be disposed of by time foot traffic.
I burned with jealousy that someone else had taken what I could not, and that the woman it was intended for would never see it. I felt angry that someone else had what I wanted and even more furious that another perfect stranger held it now.
And then it hit me like a hammer. Another person read this. A person just like me. A person who may have walked across the same bridge with the same feelings and found what I had. Maybe she had a greater need of it than I did, or maybe her life was even less than what mine was. Maybe to her, there are not two sides to a bridge at all. Maybe only one or maybe there is no bridge at all. My mind quickly flashed to an image of a woman trapped on an island not of her own making and was only able to cross when the water froze to a single sheet of ice. Sometimes, there are no paths or bridges at all.
I wondered what was so important about this bridge and how many secrets have been told to it. Whose secrets does it hold, and are there deeper ones below the surface of the water? Too solid and permanent to be seen even by those like myself who happen across an occasional one but could not possible understand what they could not see? I had a feeling that this bridge held far more than mere flowers.
Spring came early this year. I went back to the bridge today to look at her flowers one more time. I chose a good day to do it. I waited and watched as the ice broke free and I watched the flowers, her flowers, break free and tumble over the falls. I stared down through the inky water. Deep beneath the surface of the water, like a star exploding, a brilliant ice white flashed once and then was gone.
And once again, I envied her.
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