The Greater Bridge

Once upon a time, in a mythical city high in the mountains and beyond the great river, lived a small man who had a pen. He had many other possessions, in as much as anybody has anything really, but what matters now is that he had pen. You’ll see why very soon.

In-between the waking moments of his life, this man lived great adventures: stories of passion, romance, and rescue. Stories of cowardice and heroism, ignorance and learning, identity and wandering. Stories of gods and heroes, devils and monsters, and of everything forgotten, and of all that we remember. Stories, in fact, of every moment of his life.

Remember the pen?

Well, what with all the waking moments, and then all the moments in-between, he would get so full up of life and living that he could hardly move from the weight of it. And then he would take that pen, or else another pen, or sometimes nothing at all, and he would struggle to carve his stories onto a page, or a sidewalk, or perhaps the empty air.

And he did not live in that mythical city, nor did he live in the mountains beyond the great river. Instead, he lived in the moments in-between moments, and in all of those stories. He lived alone, and he grew lonely in his loneliness. He wished for us to visit him.

And so he began to build a bridge. He knew that no bridge of bricks or steel could reach his in-between, and this story might end right here with his struggle to build a bridge that can’t exist at all, except in the hearts and minds of dreamers and of everyone who has ever been awake, and in all the places that are in-between.

Our story might end right here, with a bridge that cannot be built. It might, but it does not. Because he had a pen. You do remember the pen, don’t you?

Well, he remembered it also. And so he took paper, and ink, and words and notebooks and napkins, ideas and stories and dreams, matchbooks and cigarettes and coffee. And he began to build a bridge.

Little by little, word by word, he built a bridge for us to visit him. And it stretched from his in-between all the way to a mythical mountain city, all the way to a coffee shop and a street corner and a radio station, and all the way to us.

And people began to visit him. Some came by accident and others by choice. And his first visitors came with pens of their own, because they were bridge builders like himself. And then came dreamers, and philosophers, and wanderers who build bridges only by wandering, and even some few who build no bridges at all.

Each in their turn could visit for a time, and he was not alone in loneliness. Now, he had guests.

Our story might end here, and we would know that somewhere there exists in each of us a builder of bridges, and that we have words, and dreams, and we are none of us alone in loneliness. And that, I think, would be a good story. But our story does not end here, because a curious thing happens next.

You see, one day this man had a visitor, a bridge-builder like himself, except that she had no pen at all. Now, this is not to say that she did not have a pen, nor that she did not use one well. Rather, she did not need a pen, nor even words, for she built bridges with a voice that sang from beyond in-betweens, and she used pens and words like we might use a bookmark.

He looked upon her, and marveled at what he saw. Without word or pen, she sang trees and mountains and skies, loves and passions and dreams. She was not alone in loneliness, and he did not understand. He searched far and wide, but there was no place to which he had built a bridge that could have a word for this creature who stood now as his guest.

At last, he looked across the bridge that she had built for him. It was not a bridge to other in-betweens, for she did not live in-between the waking moments as he did. In-between the in-betweens, her bridge said to him, is another kind of place, beyond the words and pens and dreams. It is vast and continuous and beautiful, and it is always true.

And as he looked across, an awakening washed over him. It came slowly, like cool water and sunshine, and like an ocean, and like the secret that mountains keep. And he knew that for him, the building of bridges had been but practice. For what would come next, he would learn it all over. He would start again, as a small and lonely man with a pen. Except that this time would be different. This time, he would lend his words and notebooks and napkins and pens to something more than just his bridge.

This time, he would lend it all to build the Greater Bridge. And when it is finished, it will point us to a way across, beyond the moments in-between moments, to something vast and continuous and beautiful, and always true.

And so this story ends where he begins this work.

And it ends with these words.

It ends with, "Once upon a time…"