manhattan bridge

today i walked to manhattan. that's right. on my feet. this is not what i had planned for the day but nothing ever goes as planned. i ended up covering about eight miles. i've mentioned before that my brain is sometimes less than reasonable and today when i need to get from brooklyn to manhattan for an appointment and must cross a very large river to do that my sweet brain assesses the two options:

1. be trapped in an airless tunnel underground with no escape and an abundance of murderous monsters (there is very little actual evidence of murderous monsters on the subway system, although last week's two fatal stabbings may be giving my brain more leverage than i'd like.), rats and toxic filth.

2. crawl across a metal slab millions of feet in the air while the wind slices across everything and spins the world around mercilessly.

and my brain says,"hey, wouldn't it be swell if we pranced across the manhattan bridge?" now, my brain is sly and i do not think about all the times in the past when it has, like lucy promising charlie brown she'll hold that football, lured me into places i've been unable to extricate myself from, leaving me feeling like poor old charlie brown flat on my back, miserable. i do not think about the treacherousness of my brain and i march right past the dekalb avenue subway station, right past junior's, on up flatbush avenue and to the sidewalk leading onto the manhattan bridge.

i stroll onto the walkway, surprised to see nobody behind me and nobody ahead of me. this is the sort of hint i don't notice until way too late. i walk high up above the edge of brooklyn, stories and stories up, staring straight ahead, keeping my mind focused on the first suspension tower. so far, so good. you know how you feel when you're managing to do something you thought you couldn't? that's right. my heart isn't pounding. my stomach isn't swirling. my head isn't spinning. the walkway is still clearly made of cement, immovable, sturdy, safe. and then everything changes.

a brooklyn bound train screams by me to the right, all howling and screeching and ugliness. and the cement begins to soften. the bridge begins to move. because this is a suspension bridge built to sway a bit. but not built to swirl like a hysterical tornado. no, that's my brain's doing. i feel myself sliding off the cement, jostled like popcorn in a popper. the bridge and my brain begin to chuckle together. jerks. my entire body draws into itself. i am tiny. alice after a cookie. the sky over the bridge is lead and the water below, roiling, hurtling under my feet, is leaden sewage. the wind whipping across the 1500 foot wide nothingness at 150 feet up is relentless.

this is a movie. this sort of thing always happens in movies. i want to look around for spiderman but any movement that is not forward threatens to spill me into the churning water below. i want to ask my brain if it thinks this is funny and i realize this is what all the crazy people are doing. the ones muttering on the train. the ones jabbering in the park and shrieking on the sidewalk. they are arguing with their stupid, horrible, treacherous brains. i tell my brain to shut up and there i am in silence a hundred and fifty feet up, above nothing. with nobody to talk to. midway across the span i see a man with a tripod and camera. he is the only person i have seen so far. he looks out over the water and i am envious. this is what i want to do, saunter casually over to the railing and look out into all that world. he watches with mild curiosity as i cringe my way down the walkway and past him not even glancing at his breathtaking view.

i tell myself that when i get to the other side i will feel so good, i will know i have conquered something big, something literally big. i am here, all by myself, stomping across this bridge on what i did not realize is a very ugly day, spitting rain, hissing wind, cold, flat. on a walkway i did not at all realize was on the outside edge of the bridge. the pavement has set up again, has firmed. i walk with the wind whipping into my left side, furling my new avocado raincoat all around me.

i pass the second suspension tower and just beyond it is a gnarled old man walking toward me wrapped in piles and piles of coats, carrying several bags and ranting. he is fighting with his brain. i can see it on his face. it is how i think my face looks, twisted into a snarl from two different directions. i smile at him and for those two or three seconds he looks back there is no wind and no river and no bridge but then he goes right on hashing things out with his brain. i am moving toward the earth again, can see what safety looks like, when another train goes by melting the pavement and my resolve and everything i intended to use while facing what i always thought was my second biggest fear.

and then i am there over manhattan. a hundred feet up above the little piecrust edge of the most famous island in the world. the bridge curves down toward land and i see the fire first. because what else would end a walk like this? my brain is poised, ready to spring. but i am not afraid of fire so i march forward. the fire is on the bridge, near the curve before it hits the street, maybe forty or so feet above ground. it is in a small can, larger than a coffee can, blackened. the wind is scattering the flames around and two old women are tending it. one is sitting in a folding chair well back from the flames next to a tray of small bowls. the bowls are full of coconut flakes, maybe rice. whitewhitewhite. laid out in a perfect row on the tray sitting flat on the bridge. the other woman squats in front of the fire and feeds it shreds of purple paper she tears off a large sheet. purple the color of mimeographs from my childhood. purple i can smell there at the end of the bridge. the smell of sitting quietly in a desk and knowing the right answers.

the flames leap up with each new offering and threaten to escape the little can but the woman stays where she is. this is some form of praying, communing with something the women cannot see. i do not know why they have chosen this place to set their fire, but i know that from my very first sight of it, when i was way back there still dangling over the east river, i knew i was in the right place.