On being a bridge
That’s the poignancy of being a bridge. It holds others’ passages into sight, into bends, into destinations. It enables the great unfolding of exploration, yet its gaze never extends beyond its fixed horizon. The bridge’s kin — other spans across other waters, other ravines — it will never meet. It can only imagine them through the weight of crossings, the echoes of traffic, the vibrations carried in its girders. It doesn’t see the world it makes traversable. It doesn’t see the world it makes traversable. But its not-seeing isn’t lack. It is a different kind of knowing. Its experience is depth rather than distance. Explorers collect vistas; bridges collect weight, resonance, patience. Both are forms of contact. Both are indispensable. The bridge just lives in a register where the grandeur of its contribution is invisible to itself. And that is its strange grace.
This is enough to make me cry. Or like it was said in a poem I love - enough to "break me into blossom".