The Edge of Everyone

I can see a bridge now. The bridge. Think of how many bridges we have taken and lost and taken again. "We" as in us, whatever this throbbing mess called humanity is. "Corsica has taken the bridge! Rome has taken the bridge! France has taken the bridge! Athens has taken the bridge! Israel has taken the bridge! Corinth has taken the bridge!" Its like a talk-show game, a prime time ditty to amuse the mind. Instead though, it leaves me beggared, a parched man in the middle of a storm of tipping glasses. In a way, the bridge emulates who we are and what we do. Racing constantly along it, frozen by the dark waters that from time to time nudge us as if saying "hey, look across the bridge. We're an ocean not a tide." An ocean, not a tide. I try to remember where that's from, why I know that line.

Right. I'm drowning. The waters of the ocean have raced into this place carved by the not-word Love. And all I can see is the bridge, impossibly close and impossibly me. Its edges are familiar, the long traced scar of sadness and wanting-to-be-there. All not-words. All spaces, left by me for the future discovery by myself. I'm really trying to stay coherent but the waters, the freezing waters, are making it impossible, like it's impossible to keep a regular breath after drinking a cold, tall glass of water. It's the same feeling: grasping for sweetness, choking on sweetness, breathing on sweetness, vomiting on sweetness. It starts to make sense, as the water crowds around me, leaving black spots at the edges of my vision. I can see, inside them, all those people cheering for the bridge, for the taking of the bridge. While the tide becomes an ocean.

I used to think the cheering was to silence. To quiet the turning of the tide into an ocean, even as the waters take their toll and plant those not-visions of black spots at the edge of everyone. The cheering hardens the edge of everyone, gives them the feeling, the sight, the notion that the edges fit, that the puzzle is not broken. That we're something to be cherished. But this is all false. The cheering isthe edge of everyone. The cheering is the place that makes you take the bridge, that makes you give a damn about fucking bridges in the first place. I mean, what good are bridges, except for the crossing? And what cares about crossing other than an edge? The edge of everyone wants to be the edge of everything, the edge of allthatis. And so, we cross the bridge, and cheer and laugh and think "oh this is wonderful everyone has an edge just like me that must mean we can all fit together right?"

No. Wrong. At least not for me but am I alone? The edge of everyone grates on, grinds on, grins on. It's much worse than the roaring of the ocean. The edge of everyone doesn't fit, it's not a puzzle you can solve. But we linger on, linger at the edge, trying to make sense of the noise, trying to find the song of communion in the cacophony that is the screaming of the edge in the face of everyone. Because we're afraid. We're afraid that there is no song, no sense to this endless screech of horror at the meeting of everyone, at the fulcrum of everything, at the joining of allthatis, that there is only pain and sound and horror in this place where we are supposed to join. To join. To cross the bridge. To silence the sound, to hear the sound, to hear the song. Grasping at the notes of the familiar, of the same, of "look he's just like me" when in fact the notes are out of tune and the octave is not the same and you're singing words forgotten by both of you since before you were born, by your parents and whatever silent, twisted, conductor first wrote the lines.

I'd much rather drown than live at the edge of everyone. Goodbye, the edge of everyone. I'm going towards the water. Proto-water.