Bridges, handy or not handy? A story from somewhere in my past.
There seem to have been bridges in all the places I lived.
Maybe that is true for all or nearly all the settlements here in the lands that hold me, often known as the united kingdom.
Would a more appropriate name be possible?
Something like, the new lands, based upon the fact that only a few thousand years ago these lands were more or less uninhabitable. If you did choose to land here back in the worst of the last ice age here, and lived on the narrow strip along the extreme south coast, it would have been a very cold, wet, tough choice with the rest of the lands north of you deep under glaciers.
So, broadly speaking, these lands where I have mostly hung out are defo the new lands.
Much more than they are united or belong to a king, maybe thats just me, and maybe thats all it needs to be.
My guess is that it made sense to built the new settlements, once the temperature increased and the glaciers decreased, not too far from a river, based on the universal need that we humans have for hydration and for the fun involved in splashing about in it… init?
Questions show up so often and so fast for me that it’s now no surprise to me that I never get to where I set off for a few minutes ago, this aim at telling a story is fulfilling that tricky reality.
Apologies if this tendency of mine to chop and change, get lost and then show up somewhere I wasn’t planning to arrive at, bugs the hell out of you. You are in the good (ish) company of my friends and family in your pain there, well, mebs not all of them, but many of them.
I hope that might offer you a sense of belonging within this family and community that builds around me without too much trying.
Either way, let’s jump back onto the story and pin it down before something else turns up.
Soooo, bridges, a gift if you need to cross a river, a curse if they scare you and bring thoughts of jumping off them now and again.
This story comes from sitting in a car in heavy traffic with my Dad in the driving seat, and me, in the passenger seat.
I was around 14 years old, he was around 50 years old, and I’m struggling to stay focussed now, and pushing on…
regardless…
We were going somewhere, lets say, a football match and I said;
“Looks like we are going to be late there with all this traffic Dad.”
He replied;
‘Don’t worry Mark, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
When I then complained about the traffic, he said;
“We are the traffic Mark.”
I had a head and body full of the images and feelings around setting a bridge on fire and many me’s and many my Dad’s being the source of a hold up, a delay, an inconvenience to others.
It was a lot, as it so often is, it seems.
(Thats where the moredum boredom comes from, always seems us rich world ppl just have too much, are too much. I’ll expand and consolidate that another time, this story telling thing is enough already)
Not that I am blaming my Dad for the ways my everything did what it did.
I liked the word queer when I was a ten year old child, the feeling of the word queer, and the curiosity it drew up within when I heard it said as “that’s queer” which merged toward… is not usual… and then, within me, into,
“I need to spend more time checking this unusual… situation, fungus, frog, moss, chicken, persons behaviour, music, film, story, pair of shoes, hair cut… out.”
As the word queer now means something else to so many of us, and doesn’t really describe me in the way it’s mostly understood these days, so I now use the word… weird.
I comfy with the feeling of being considered weird.
Partly because of the physicality of the word in my mouth, partly because the letter i and e are so hard to get in the right order in english and mainly because it tends to describe something as not normal, not what is expected, something might equally frighten and engage.
I imagine it as a compliment, and, understand not everyone sits alongside me on that.
Anyway, I hope this story might offer you something useful, some kind of understanding, a chance to reflect upon the words that fit you and those that don’t.
Or just an image of you setting fire to a bridge or sitting in traffic realising that you are the traffic.
If this attempt at telling my story here infuriates you to the extent of threatening your health, I can recommend a few practices that work for me when I get infuriated to that extent, just ping something my way via the many channels we have mutual access too, and, if I don’t get distracted and forget, I’ll pass them on.
Meanwhile, love peace and solidarity, Mark This.
AKA Mark Capo. Mark Youse. Choppa. Little Mark the hairdresser.