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The first time they walked the bridge linking Memphis to Arkansas was December 26, 2016. She didn’t have her phone, so she asked him to take the picture she wanted. It later became his album cover.
The second time they crossed the bridge spanning the big river was November 24, 2019. She didn’t have her phone, so she asked him to take the picture she wanted.
Does the geometry of the scene remind anyone else of the arcade game Tempest? She wonders. When she looks at it she hears electronic white noise and feels like she might suddenly swirl around the playing field and warp to the next level.
On the bridge they walk and they talk. One thought bubbles up after another in a constant stream that flows as fast as the muddy water beneath their feet.
“Remember that performance years ago at the Church on the River?”
“Yeah, that was weird.”
She thinks of a friend, an atheist who sometimes teaches a Sunday school class at church, and she giggles.
A man rides by on a motorized unicycle. She’s instantly flooded with envy. One churchy thought primes the next, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s unicycle.”
They stop at the in-between point and stand half in Tennessee and half in Arkansas. There a sign warns that the powers-that-be have no qualms about cutting off love locks, so couples might as well go lock their love elsewhere. Near the sign, others have continued to lock their love defiantly in harder-to-reach places.
They walk on.
At the end of the bridge, there’s another picture she wants. He takes it. Team work makes the dream work.
That’s the view from the fence going west. She ask for his phone so she can take the view going east.
They sit in Arkansas on a park bench and marvel at this bridge, where industry, commerce, construction, technology, logistics, architecture and nature collide.
Brimming with wild ideas and errant thoughts, she babbles on and on. He patiently listens, sort of. There’s music happening inside his mind, but he bobs his head and makes noises in all the right places.
On the way back across the bridge, they run into a friend, a teacher, who talks about recently recording a “Tuck You In” story for her students. Suspended high above the Mississippi River they discuss all sorts of things. They make plans and share ideas, then they go separate ways and the river flows on.
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Recommended viewing:
History of Big River Crossing — there are vintage photos of the construction and bridge plans, drawings and such.
Recommended listening:
Little Sunshine — her theme song, written by Joe Michael, Making Waves
The earth flower and sky flower unite.
the
sky
was
can dy lu
minous
edible
spry
pinks shy
lemons
greens coo l choc
olate
s.
un der,
a lo
co
mo
tive s pout
ing
vi
o
lets
–e.e. cummings, Songs, I
“People don’t know how to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one.”
–Hope Jahren
Have you ever wondered what secrets the trees are telling each other deep beneath the ground with their intertwined roots? If not, please read this book and enlarge your perspective. Hope Jahren is a scientist who has made a respectable career out of playing in the dirt. She’s my hero for that. Her memoir, Lab Girl, is infused with her love of science, sunshine, soil and seeds. It features funny and highly entertaining tales of her travels and misadventures in academia and the band of misfits she loves along the way.
Spark
Kyuga
Frazzle Tazzle
Fury, Defender of Tomatoes
Fay with a Grasshopper
“And can all the flowers talk?”
~Alice, Through the Looking Glass
“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”
–John Muir
