This is the story of the bridge crosser, the conscious observer, discovering herself as she searches through faces for a life less mundane than hers, spicier, maybe darker, maybe just a little less black-and-white.
This is a hopeful story within a ‘story’ so real that no dictionary would ever dare classify as such.
It is a story with no beginning, no ending, no scenario. It is simply a bridge story, bridging my stories with yours, whatever is theirs with whatever is ours. There is this bridge I cross at least once a day, at least once a night – and that’s all there is to it. A bridge that takes me from ‘home’ to ‘home’ without ever taking me where I would rather be.
Tonight I proudly rename myself as the “Observant Bridge Crosser”. Even if observers are always narrators. Even if they are never – and will never even be close to being – the protagonists.
I am the girl who feeds on the spotlight simply by opening her heart and window until all gestures, all moves, all colours of characters more interesting than her just creep in to fill the void. Until all strangers suddenly become protagonists with the greatest of stories to tell. Isn’t it strange how everyone turns into a story teller once someone turns that hypothetical microphone towards them?
All I have to give is just pieces of stories I stuck together because I could never come up with the complete picture. You know, if you added up the pictures that tourists, parents, lovers, tired and lonesome past lovers -current loners- take of that artificial landmark, the London Eye, you would have a movie capturing the colours of the city at every time of the day. An eye and a camera click for every minute, for every stage that a city goes through. All the moods if you like. All the phases the city goes through to reflect, as if, the moods of all those unmemorable creatures crossing the – painfully and ironically – iconic bridge. Eyes born in different continents, capturing images of all corners of the earth, meet on the shoulders of a bridge that makes for a wonderful postcard.
I once saw a painter on the bridge. Painting life from above. From an angle that distorts reality, such that it all seems part of a child’s play set. Every brush adding a layer of simplicity. A touch of colour for an already sunnier reflection of ‘real’. I saw ‘reality’ through the eyes of tired men in suits, returning to work in the morning as if they were returning home. I saw young women in polished shoes, hair tied back, scruffy skirts, nervous girls always nervously fixing skirts, work clothes that never matched owners’ expressions, dogs that looked like their owners and kids that didn’t. Young souls looking tired on the outside, drained, dragging their feet together with a cloudy past, even on those unusually sunny days. The exact same young souls turned brighter at night – perhaps just more sentimental. Some drunk with love, others with misfortune. Tearful faces, careful not to show signs of tears.
Checking left, right, left, right, wondering whether the river flowing beneath them is a safer place to be than the life they live in.
I saw secret love in all its forms. Black man, white woman, wild dreams, motorbikes, only uniforms in common. Companions defying norms, playing with fire, with the speed of passion that makes souls crash into each other until there is nothing but ruins, roses and miracles amongst the ashes. Man touching man, lips painting flowers on foreign lips, hands sculpturing wonders on foreign bodies in the spirit of perfection. In the spirit of the passing moment that is never too close to one’s hands to fully grasp. I often wondered how many lovers have their first kisses on bridges every day. Counting numbers to forget about moments that I would rather have counted with blood pressure. Making up numbers to let go of the thought that I had – most often than not – chosen to rationalise chances rather than soaking – not just grabbing – them all with my senses. It’s all about senses on the bridge.
A tireless effort to make memories out of everyday life.
A mother dressing her child in bright pink dress on a gloomy Sunday. Taking pictures. That dress will be in an album one day. A tear for a mum that lost a child, a child that lost a mum, a smile for the two of them remembering how Sundays were different in decades recorded in nostalgic black-and-white. The bright pink dress will be the trademark of an album one day. A reference point for someone somewhere to reminiscence, to claim in moments of pain that past decades always trap in their graves the best of our days. I wonder if I’ve wasted my best days wandering in streets, wondering where the road takes all those magnetic creatures I like to follow. Wondering where the road takes all those faces that unexpectedly pump up my pulse. I wonder if I’ve wasted my best days imagining stories for those who, if given the option, would gladly replace pages and pages of complicated patterns with the white pages of comforting lies.
I wonder if I often imagine stories that never existed in the first place – even in their most primitive form. I smile. I internally whistle the song that happens to be stuck in my head. I check inside my plastic bags as if I am searching to find a heart.
I sometimes see people with plastic bags as I drag myself, aimlessly, across a bridge marked as a tourist attraction on the maps of those who seem to appreciate the view much more than I do.
I think of the food I am carrying at nights, all the chocolate I would have to swallow to stop thinking of the darkest parts of my day. I think of all the chocolate we must all swallow to forget. I think that consumption of all sorts of drugs must be high at this time of day. Another day. Just one more day. One more.
Hey, it’s just another day, Observant Bridge Crosser. Keep your chin up and make up some stories to recover the loss, to make up for the stories you could have chosen to (re)live.
Hey, it’s still a beautiful night, Observant Bridge Crosser. Keep your chin up. Maybe tomorrow you’ll find the courage to offer some chocolate to the stranger that you so badly want to stalk.
Maybe tomorrow you will make a real story for yourself. A real fable or two.
Rational Artist 