Bridges

Some time ago, I read an article about bridges (HERE). Well, not exactly. It was about suicide, and the fascination bridges caused in suicidals. There is one in particular that attracts many:  The Golden Gate, in San Francisco, CA., and a friend mentioned that there´s a movie about that, which I haven´t seen, but planned to. Someday.
Bridges are connections that allow us to reach what was once unreachable. It seems that, for suicidals,  they are seen as exit doors to this life. A passage to a different other, perhaps.
Very few of those who jumped from The Golden Gate lived to tell how it was to nearly die. They had multiple fractures, but before hitting the water, they experienced an euphoric relief while falling, a sense of self-annihilation that then led to the realization suicide was not the solution. It seems the suicide attempt worked as a sort of a rebirth. To a very few.

To Kafka, the bridge is not made of concrete, stones, iron cables; it´s made of flash and bones, a human being fighting not to colapse. The fear of collapsing to the burdens of life, to the cruelty of others, what a powerful metaphor.

Kafka lived a sad, short life. Happiness was always out of his reach, it seems. Tuberculosis killed him at the age of 37. The bridge he needed simply didn´t exist at that time.











It´s hard to go through life without experiencing periods of deep sadness.  Looking for a way out is not an easy task, because, many times, and I know it very well, there´s seems to be none. But there is. And there will be a bridge. No to help you plunge into desperation, but to ease your way out of it. As long as there´s life, there´s hope.

Oddity

I was in between births; my mother´s first, my father´s second child.

My brother, the first. Older, much older than me at that time, eager to plunge into the fleshy years of his adolecence, while I was just unaware of everything. I adored him, and I know he loved me back, but we were light years apart.

Then came my sisters; twins, always together, never alone.

I was the odd. 

Circumstances. Unplanned, mundane sequences of facts. Parts of everybody else´s life. But that was my life.

I was the odd. And I will always be.

  

a million years

I was reading an interview with Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand lead singer, and he mentioned he still feels as he was in his late twenties, or early thirties (not sure), the same age as he started the band. Having a rock band makes you fell like that, forever young. Take a look at Keith Richards. Despite all his creases, he plays and sound as young as he was when he and Mick started the Rolling Stones. The same with Bowie. His new album was probably one of the best of 2013, and he is in his late sixties.
My examples are kind of way up there, right? Not really. It seems to also work for those who happened to have a small band as well. It´s not the success, it´s the attitude.  I´ve  heard the same from a person who once had one. And it´s true, he has that rock n´roll attitude, and that makes all the difference.
I never had a band. I sing, but in private. My first time facing an audience was a stressful experience. Being the center of the attention was never really something I felt comfortable with. I´d rather be on the backstage, but I had no choice, I had to be in the front this time. I did sing, but I´m not sure how.I had the weird feeling of not being able to move my lips, how can someone sing without moving the lips? Anyway, I did, and, when I was done I´ve got some compliments, which means I didn´t blew it completely. What I can say is that I don´t think I´m ready for another try. There is no way I will start a band, so I will not feel young. Or younger.
But, to be honest, I never felt young even when I was. Many of the things my friends enjoyed during our youth weren´t exactly appealing to me. Considering the triad sex, drugs and rock n´roll; except for the least, and I have to confess I had some horrible preferences that I can no longer stand in terms of music; drugs were out of question - I always thought I would better have some control of my mind than no control at all-  ; and sex, well, who can actually brag to have had a satisfying sex life during his/hers teenage years?  I was the introverted type of girl, the one who was always paying attention to the stories told by others much older than me. I liked to read, especially things that I found in my father´s library, and that was when I fisrt read Oscar Wilde for the first time, the portrait of Dorian Gray.  

So maybe by reading that book at that age had affected me  more than I could have imagined at the time. The thing is, in a way, I felt as I was somehow similar to Wilde´s most famous character. I felt I had a million years. I don´t show it, but I do.
When I was autographing my book, I´ve heard from a person that she was expecting to see someone older, someone with more life experience. I just smiled and thought of Dorian, who always looked fresh and younger, but had an old, vicious, imperfect version of himself  hidden  somewhere, and thought: you have no idea.    

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