JumpAlmost no one faces West when jumping off of the Golden Gate bridge into the water and out of this living life. What is out West? A lot of nothing, which, to me, seems fitting for such a vault into the unknown and even more appropriate when conjuring a picture of the sad old sun committing its once-daily suicide into the horizon. More interesting to note: lightpost number 69 seems to have garnered more than twice the leaps as the rest of the lightposts. What is it about composing the jump from that exact point, facing East instead of West, that has attracted so many? The view to the East is more pretty to the eye and thus flattering to the viewer, the glimmering speckles of light downtown hazy in the gauze of fog, the reassurance of an audience because, whether they're watching or not, all those buildings face the jumper. One must always be seen first in order to be seen through. And, what of the middle of the bridge? It is hard to imagine someone having made up their mind to crumple and toss their body from the ledge but having the time and foresight to walk halfway across it first. All that time, all those steps. To be between the shores, knowing that the land you've left is not right for you and knowing that the land dead ahead is not right either, stuck on a straight line. Isn't a suicide just that though; being caught in the middle of a bridge between the two shores yet incapable of seeing the validity of one or the other and instead of choosing, one must just drop straight down from inbetween the both. The middle, the inbetween, this space that isn't that side and not this side either, just a span between the two. Life itself is like this, too. On a gravemarker later placed over the departed there are the two dates, start and end, and that hyphen between them: bridge spanning two shores. Life: a dash between two dates. Death: everything before and after. One must only leap upward to feel the impossibly imposing downward pull of the world.
We could place our F on that bridge, but our fine F has protested that he will not allow himself to be narrated on thusly.
Note - 4 September 2008 - see Correction for more on this topic.
