Waiting for Bridges
Usually I can see the bridge even before I reach the water… but today is different. Today I’m here before even the sun arrives. It is the season for heavy fog, and although not so prevalent in the city, today it is thick. The clouds have fallen from the sky to visit earth. It clings to the river, coating everything with a secretive mist.
Today I beat the bridge, in a disorienting race to the shore. My monumental friend is not waiting to greet me, but seems to have left, perhaps out of boredom. I’m at the water and the bridge is gone. My connection to the urban island, invisible in the clouds. The city, always so close is suddenly nowhere. The fog devours it- sight, sound- everything swallowed up by nature.
Transparent air has become a uniform opaque grey, the curtain is both suffocating and a release. Zero visibility brings back nostalgic memories of upstate travels. Two people in a car, moving at snails pace through fog so thick it could have been molded with my own hands. There was very little light, since the fog was even more of a reflector than it was an obstruction. We traveled slowly, as to avoid the frogs, hundreds of them on the road. I wonder if there are frogs all around me, native inhabitants of the fog. If they are crossing the bridges en masse.
The sun begins to rise, and the clouds turn to white. This can’t be reality; did Manhattan suddenly break from the earth, floating to the heavens?
And when gravity pulls it all back down, will we stay here in the clouds? Leaving an abandoned civilization? Or will the event release us unscathed? Returning to us our bridges and buildings? The fog simply sinking back into water? Many completely ignorant to the heavenly entity that has visited our City this morning.
Oh, and here is the visual piece:
“Manhattan Bridge at Night”
