2nd Letter to the Birmingham Bridge: nature post #2

You were the end result to my journey today. I came at you, this time, straight on from the Hill District, via Centre Avenue. I never get to come down from the hill straight into your divided-highway lanes. I feel like a Queen every once in a while when I do. When I had a car I used to drive by myself at night when I couldn’t sleep. I made sure to go down Centre to Kirkpatrick to you.

I was in the car, navigating for my Minnesotan friend, Alex, short for Alexandra. My red-headed friend is not a firebomb like some may think of red heads, she is a soft spoken one, mid-twenties, with a soft spot for anything that allows her to seep into caring. Today, it was gentrification. “I know where we are. We’re in the Hill District,” she said. Mm, was my only response. Alex sighed. She said something about the ghetto, as a joke, and then changed the subject. I stopped listening as we approached the fast-turning down-slope of the hill on Kirkpatrick. It was still light out, coming down into the early winter afternoon, approaching 3pm.

What happens in Pittsburgh this time of year is that gloominess turns to early evening. Sometimes it only seems to be daylight in this East Coast, almost Midwestern town for the first few hours of dawn.

The clouds weren’t rushing at all. They slow-walked the afternoon over the soft, light green of the bridge: I felt saved. I felt like I was coming down from a place that seemed much darker without the illumination of the bridge. I felt almost as if I was sailing on the Monongahela. The river was huge as I could have an objective look this time, without running, without the chill on my face, closed off from the rest of the affects of the city. The car muzzled the rest of the noise; only my door chattered with the wind. Is this what it’s like when you die and are lifted through the light in the clouds?

I’m not sure why I felt like this: like this was a Christopher Columbus discovery. Much like that one, this bridge was here before me. This town was here before me. Uptown existed and re-existed, as with the bridge. This bridge was built and then reconstructed in the mid 2000’s to include a bike lane and a sign for the bikers to yield to the traffic coming up from Forbes Avenue onto the bridge, sneaking in the shadows from underneath.

This was a moment of trying to put my finger on what I loved about the bridge at that moment, flying across the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street, continuing onto the thick asphalt, car bumping onto the change of physical matter, wheels peddling its 30mph onto the legs of you.

Does it feel the same to you, when any living or non-living thing pounces onto the home of your physical being? My friend, do you feel a thing?  

First Letter to the Bridge: nature post #1

You are not too much more mature than I, Mister Birmingham Bridge. Your thirty-six years connecting neighborhoods to my 22 is only intimidating due to your size. A green steel bridge among the many yellow bridges of Pittsburgh, even in the dark, you are different. Walking about you came about in an organic way. It started with my move to Uptown. I would go and stand at the Parkway ramp on my street and feel the cars whiz by on the concrete, only sometimes stepping over the brown-gray concrete border onto the thin white line separating myself from the traffic. I could see you from there. The AT&T blue and white sign stared at me endlessly from the other side of the bridge, clipping the hills behind it. I had to twist around like a Twizzler to see all that I wanted to see from this point in the city. Yes, the lights were there, but the buildings were not straight on from my view. I’d turn from Downtown towards you and think, how do I get from here, to you?

The first time I travelled your way I went up Seneca, past Forbes, to Fifth. Then Right. I walked straight: past the bus stops to Moultrie, then to Kirkpatrick, the street opposite you. The rainbow-sparkled Welcome to Uptown sign welcomed me to your corner. (I wonder if anyone ever thinks about how deceiving the cheerful design of that sign is to our now almost ghost town of an area.) I stare at the sign for a long time. It didn’t change, neither did I.

I spent some time taking pictures of the skylights on the hills on the way back, but, on the way there I do nothing but stare and switch my head from side to side, neglecting my clumsiness, undistracted by walking in the harsh wind close to the rail of water below. I never noticed your six lanes, always free of heavy traffic, unlike the Parkway, I only noticed some kind of silence, here, in the middle of the city. I stood at the mid-point of you where you meet the Monongahela where I met the chilliest section of your body. Below, to my left, I see your legs hold the top of you where I stand. I could lay down on those almost hidden parts of you, I could fuck in the wind down there. I’d balance the cold, with the screams, and try not to die. I’m sure you have your own horror stories to tell me.

On my way back home that first time with you I saw a ramp coming from the beginning of you. I decided to check it out. Man, I couldn’t believe it. You let me off at Brady and Forbes, just a block and a half from my house. I didn’t need to walk up to the Uptown sign and over to you. I could start under you, near where the Brady Street Bridge used to be, and end up on top of you, on the walkway instead of the bus lane. Still, easily close to a fall into the rivers you separate me from, but a farther distance from the cars. Your heaviness does not scare me, does mine, you?

Until next time, say hello to the stars for me. You are always closer than I.