Bridging Worlds

I’ve always loved bridges. Especially those that go over water. They connect entirely different worlds that are only a few steps apart. 836 meters is the distance between my world and the one I see out my window. It is just a ten-minute walk, but in ten minutes you can cross the border between the two worlds: The foreign land of luxury skyscrapers and designer dressed business executives, and my world, one full of young students full of hopes and dreams working toward liberal arts degrees that will never make them enough money to live on the other side of the bridge (or on this side if we’re being perfectly honest).

I’ve done that ten-minute walk more times than I can count. I like to close my eyes as I walk on the bridge’s narrow sidewalk. It makes the familiar path more thrilling. Supercars with roaring engines rush past me, and even though I’m protected by a concrete division that separates vehicles from pedestrians, I feel like they’ve just missed me and the air they displace pushes me off my delicate balancing act. I’ve never made it past 15 steps without opening my eyes, the self-induced vertigo and fear of falling eventually overpower me.

Halfway across the bridge on my daily commute back from that alien world I would be able to see straight into the tenth floor of my building and spot my plants on the window seal. I’d see that I left all of my windows open that morning and therefore my apartment would probably be freezing, which was perfect for some hot tea and a bath. But that was back in winter. Now its spring, and for the first time ever I have spent more time looking out onto the bridge than looking up from it.

My morning routine includes breakfast by the window with an oversized cup of tea to wake me up (because somehow doing nothing makes me more exhausted than doing anything at all) and listening to the morning headlines. They seem to not change much really. It’s always the usual: “Cases rising all over the world as healthcare professionals urge civilians to STAY HOME”, and “president Trump says (insert random preposterous stupidity)”.

I sit looking out at the bridge with tea in hand entranced by the odd silence of the street. The concrete giant has laid there unmoving since the 30s, and its old-school style show its age, creating an interesting contrast with the modern city behind it; a city full of crystal towers and oddly shaped skyscrapers, some of which could fit right into a futuristic Sci-Fi where fling cars zip inches away from transparent balconies. The bridge is decorated on both ends with rather large stained-glass, torch-like posts that light up from inside, casting churchlike colors that blend with the burning sunset sky. The stretch in between the torch gates is outlined with smaller lamp posts separated from each other by exactly twenty steps (twenty of my steps at least). They burn with soft yellow light, letting bridge crossers know that they are on the right track. Not that it ever gets dark enough to be lost without them. They are really just there for aesthetic rather than necessity; the downtown glow is enough for anyone on the bridge to see the path, even if its lights were to go off.

It’s been a while since I’ve been downtown. There is something about it. Getting lost in its strange alleys, straining my neck as I look up at where the ceilings meet the sky. Wondering what life would look like from up there, and what you’d have to do to even afford a penthouse view. It really is a foreign world across the bridge. Cars with such strange shapes that they look like they really could take off from the ground and land in some 60th floor condo driveway. There is a different dress code out there as well, one I can never quite match with my closet full of ripped jeans and t-shits. I am chronically under-dressed across the bridge. The sound of clicking stilettos adds to the city’s soundtrack of underground trains and tirelessly working machinery rises higher than the tallest buildings. Luckily for me the sound is muffled by the water that separates me from that world and the luscious evergreens that grow greedily between my window and the bridge.

From here the city looks quiet and dormant, and the glass towers covered in hues of green and blue match the shades of the splendid mountains growing free just behind it. A range of pikes still dusted with snow. Yet another world out there in the backdrop of my own. And I wonder what life would be like up there. If I should cross over the bridge, past the giant-inhabited city and into the quiet mountains that merely look like a painted wall from here. I wonder how much more foreign the world below would seem.

I sit on the periphery watching the different worlds from my window like a curious observer. I see pedestrians walk up the slight incline wearing the city’s uniform: Arc’teryx raincoat and Blundstone waterproof boots. They look like they belong. I count their steps and wonder if they also know the path so well that they can close their eyes, or if their walk across the bridge is a new habit to avoid contagion on public transit. I wonder if their attitude also changes when they arrive on the other side of the bridge. If they find themselves feeling smaller besides the giant buildings of a city that just seems to keep growing. If they feel like outsiders or if they call this place home.

I have lived on the periphery of that strange city for over a year, and my tiny apartment protected by water and rainforest trees still doesn’t quite feel like my own, but it feels safe and warm. I feel grateful for the chance to explore these strange lands surrounded by the beauty of mountain ranges and kissed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, even if just traveling in my mind through the lens of my window’s glass. And I wonder if this place I’m staying in amidst the beauty and strangeness, will truly become the place that someday I call “home”.