burning red bridge
Red Bridge or Rainbow Bridge, the name of the bridge certainly began with an “r”. That much was undisputed. There was usually a lull in a sentence, a thoughtful pause, when the speaker would think about which moniker to attach to this landmark. And though the bridge was neither red nor spangled in every color spawned from the prism, the listener would inevitably know exactly which bridge the speaker was referring to. Red Bridge was synonomous with Rainbow Bridge.
We almost burned this bridge down. Not deliberately. We weren't indecisive about wether we should torch the fucker. No, nothing at all like that. If it had burned it would've been one of those agonizingly slow, accidental fires, that glow warm friendly yellow while they consume the things you love, letting out an occasional crackle reminiscent of the splitting rumble you've got emanating out your chest, right around where you can feel your heart in mid-rupture.
He was a beauty, something out of a still life painstakingly painted by a dutch master. Like, exactly like a still life. Still-life's have dead birds thrown around all over the place.
I couldn't tell if I'd stepped barefoot on a dead woodpecker or killed one of god's lovelies with my dirty troll's paw. I did know the twinge of feeling that arose as I continued on my way to load my massive amount of laundry into one or two dinky washing machines on site was regret.
On the way back to the apartment, I stopped for a closer look. His white-and-brown mottled neck was stretched languidly back, as if he'd been whispering a sweet haiku to his pine before death had seized him so cruelly and hurled him to the filthy ground, where the scum of the earth collected beneath the heavens he was accustomed to, waiting with mirthless impunity. His eyes were open and not yet being feasted upon by those infernal mites that will feast on anything, certainly your soul, if you give them one fucking inch. So it was very recently dead, I thought, cuz man, those mites appear lickety split. This did not ease my rising guilt about my foot being the possible cause of death.
He had an vermillion crest all a-tuft on his dead little head, and deep green and violet feathers occassionally accentuated feathery points along his cheeks and the tips of his stiffening wings. His less-colorful fathers were still impressive, brown ringed in, like, white. His talons curled, as if clutching at a twig perch in the eternal hereafter, delicate and kinda scaly. I thought about the risk of west nile, as I always do whenever I see dead birds, and decided this hunky-ass bird specimen couldn't be displayed much longer. I fished around my apartment for a moment and scrounged up a shoebox. The beauty was shut inside cardboard depths and thrown into the more pungent depths of the dumpster.
***
Upon admitting to what I'd done to some good friends, they demanded to proof, and the woodpecker Adonis was dragged out of the trash to be displayed before an ever-growing crowd whose disbelief in bird beauty staggers me to this day. I mean, I don't even like birds, I think they're pretty dumb and I'm jealous of their abilities and hollow bones and they're so fucking annoying I can't help but mimic them in an infantile manner. But I can appreciate their prettiness. It was decided by some asshole in the crowd that the bird deserved a better funeral than being enclosed in a small box and slammed amidst the mundane debris that inhabits apartment rubbish. A “viking funeral” was decided upon, and in order to give Ol' Crowy (not a crow, yeah, I'm aware) “one last flight”, we were going to throw his shoebox, fully engulfed in flames, off a bridge into some water, so he could have no complaints about his sendoff into the afterlife.
Since my apartment was now the embalming slab, I naturally became the funeral director. While my friends thought of some kind things to say about Pretty Bird, wondering perhaps if they could think thoughts just sad enough to force a few tears (nope, too excited for fire), I got to deal with the pyrotechnical details. First, the cardboard coffin had to be weighted down so Pretty could sink to the peaceful abyss of the American. So I got some rocks.
“Don't crush him!”
“Why do we even need rocks? Why can't he just float? It'll be more viking that way, we can watch as he sails away.”
“Couldn't you find any nicer rocks?”
We found solutions to all the objections I encountered; the rocks got painted sloppy-quick to make them look “nicer” and glued to the box around the cadaver so he wouldn't be crushed, and after going round and round, it was decided no, the box should sink so as to put out the felonious fire that'd be burning out of control, and I was able to get on with it.
Someone put an incomplete deck of playing cards in the coffin before I sealed it. This, I think, was more to get rid of the cards so we could stop playing poker the wrong way than to add glitz and swag to the dead bird's afterlife repertoire. Two birds, one stone. Wait. Three birds... three shittily- painted stones. Ha.
Seal that bitch with duct tape and we were off as the dusk grew somber enough to provide adequate cover for mischief. After driving to different bridges, we eventually convened at Red Bridge/ Rainbow Bridge, an impressive specimen situated high above the river, right by The Bluffs. I spit on a duck there once. That's not why we picked it, though, we picked it because of it's aforementioned impressiveness.
We pattered out to halfway to middle. I had brought some nail polish remover and a lighter to build the pyre. After carefully dousing the corner of the coffin, I still managed to spill some on the planks underfoot. Noah took the box, preparing to light it and send the bird flying over the edge of railing into the night and the river and whatever waits for birds when they get stepped on.
“You should move down a bit, I spilled some polish remover right here.”
“Whatever.”
Noah stood resolutely were I told him not to stand and torched the coffin, promptly dropping it onto the puddle on the bridge. Everyone gasped. Noah scooped up the box and flung it upwards. It miraculously cleared the railing, but most people were concerned about stamping out the flames left behind. Those who did watch the bird's last flight had to admit it was lackluster despite the flames; the box flew apart long before it hid the water, and the viking funeral turned out extremely undignified. No one dawdled or said anything sweet or shed a tear. We fucked off right quick, afraid we hadn't quelled quite all of the flames, worried we would be found Sacramento's shittiest arsonists.
No. Red Rainbow Bridge is still standing to this day. You can't see any sign of the fire I'm talking about, no scorch marks or telltale burn patterns some crime-scene investigation might point out. You walk across this footbridge, looking at the sky or the hills, the river, a duck, the nearby freway, whatever the fuck, you'd never imagine someone could accidentally burn it down. But anyone can accidentally burn anything down whenever, because when things catch fire, the things engulfed in flame are simply returning to a natural state of chaos and magic.
No evidence that any of this wild romansbildung actually took pace, eh? You calling me a liar? I been called worse names. Like “fat”. “Fat” is way more hurtful than “liar”, although both are true. I don't know what would happen if I ever got “fat liar” strung together and slung at me, and I hope to never know how that barb feels on my skins. But I don't care if you don't believe me, I have witnesses that saw that sputtering pyre extinguished by the shallow shoals of the American, and once they read this I'm sure they'll all want their testimonials inside the bookjacket. We'll see, guys.
I don't go to that bridge anymore. I moved away. No one here would give two shits if I had burnt that bridge to a crisp and dammed the river with charred debris. I don't care either. That is one spidery fucking bridge; so spidery, I wonder sometimes when I haven't slept in a while if it was in fact made for the spiders, and we humans are just walking over their precious wooden web calling it a “symbiotic relationship”. But that's a quandry for another time, so fuck off outta here.
We almost burned this bridge down. Not deliberately. We weren't indecisive about wether we should torch the fucker. No, nothing at all like that. If it had burned it would've been one of those agonizingly slow, accidental fires, that glow warm friendly yellow while they consume the things you love, letting out an occasional crackle reminiscent of the splitting rumble you've got emanating out your chest, right around where you can feel your heart in mid-rupture.
He was a beauty, something out of a still life painstakingly painted by a dutch master. Like, exactly like a still life. Still-life's have dead birds thrown around all over the place.
I couldn't tell if I'd stepped barefoot on a dead woodpecker or killed one of god's lovelies with my dirty troll's paw. I did know the twinge of feeling that arose as I continued on my way to load my massive amount of laundry into one or two dinky washing machines on site was regret.
On the way back to the apartment, I stopped for a closer look. His white-and-brown mottled neck was stretched languidly back, as if he'd been whispering a sweet haiku to his pine before death had seized him so cruelly and hurled him to the filthy ground, where the scum of the earth collected beneath the heavens he was accustomed to, waiting with mirthless impunity. His eyes were open and not yet being feasted upon by those infernal mites that will feast on anything, certainly your soul, if you give them one fucking inch. So it was very recently dead, I thought, cuz man, those mites appear lickety split. This did not ease my rising guilt about my foot being the possible cause of death.
He had an vermillion crest all a-tuft on his dead little head, and deep green and violet feathers occassionally accentuated feathery points along his cheeks and the tips of his stiffening wings. His less-colorful fathers were still impressive, brown ringed in, like, white. His talons curled, as if clutching at a twig perch in the eternal hereafter, delicate and kinda scaly. I thought about the risk of west nile, as I always do whenever I see dead birds, and decided this hunky-ass bird specimen couldn't be displayed much longer. I fished around my apartment for a moment and scrounged up a shoebox. The beauty was shut inside cardboard depths and thrown into the more pungent depths of the dumpster.
***
Upon admitting to what I'd done to some good friends, they demanded to proof, and the woodpecker Adonis was dragged out of the trash to be displayed before an ever-growing crowd whose disbelief in bird beauty staggers me to this day. I mean, I don't even like birds, I think they're pretty dumb and I'm jealous of their abilities and hollow bones and they're so fucking annoying I can't help but mimic them in an infantile manner. But I can appreciate their prettiness. It was decided by some asshole in the crowd that the bird deserved a better funeral than being enclosed in a small box and slammed amidst the mundane debris that inhabits apartment rubbish. A “viking funeral” was decided upon, and in order to give Ol' Crowy (not a crow, yeah, I'm aware) “one last flight”, we were going to throw his shoebox, fully engulfed in flames, off a bridge into some water, so he could have no complaints about his sendoff into the afterlife.
Since my apartment was now the embalming slab, I naturally became the funeral director. While my friends thought of some kind things to say about Pretty Bird, wondering perhaps if they could think thoughts just sad enough to force a few tears (nope, too excited for fire), I got to deal with the pyrotechnical details. First, the cardboard coffin had to be weighted down so Pretty could sink to the peaceful abyss of the American. So I got some rocks.
“Don't crush him!”
“Why do we even need rocks? Why can't he just float? It'll be more viking that way, we can watch as he sails away.”
“Couldn't you find any nicer rocks?”
We found solutions to all the objections I encountered; the rocks got painted sloppy-quick to make them look “nicer” and glued to the box around the cadaver so he wouldn't be crushed, and after going round and round, it was decided no, the box should sink so as to put out the felonious fire that'd be burning out of control, and I was able to get on with it.
Someone put an incomplete deck of playing cards in the coffin before I sealed it. This, I think, was more to get rid of the cards so we could stop playing poker the wrong way than to add glitz and swag to the dead bird's afterlife repertoire. Two birds, one stone. Wait. Three birds... three shittily- painted stones. Ha.
Seal that bitch with duct tape and we were off as the dusk grew somber enough to provide adequate cover for mischief. After driving to different bridges, we eventually convened at Red Bridge/ Rainbow Bridge, an impressive specimen situated high above the river, right by The Bluffs. I spit on a duck there once. That's not why we picked it, though, we picked it because of it's aforementioned impressiveness.
We pattered out to halfway to middle. I had brought some nail polish remover and a lighter to build the pyre. After carefully dousing the corner of the coffin, I still managed to spill some on the planks underfoot. Noah took the box, preparing to light it and send the bird flying over the edge of railing into the night and the river and whatever waits for birds when they get stepped on.
“You should move down a bit, I spilled some polish remover right here.”
“Whatever.”
Noah stood resolutely were I told him not to stand and torched the coffin, promptly dropping it onto the puddle on the bridge. Everyone gasped. Noah scooped up the box and flung it upwards. It miraculously cleared the railing, but most people were concerned about stamping out the flames left behind. Those who did watch the bird's last flight had to admit it was lackluster despite the flames; the box flew apart long before it hid the water, and the viking funeral turned out extremely undignified. No one dawdled or said anything sweet or shed a tear. We fucked off right quick, afraid we hadn't quelled quite all of the flames, worried we would be found Sacramento's shittiest arsonists.
No. Red Rainbow Bridge is still standing to this day. You can't see any sign of the fire I'm talking about, no scorch marks or telltale burn patterns some crime-scene investigation might point out. You walk across this footbridge, looking at the sky or the hills, the river, a duck, the nearby freway, whatever the fuck, you'd never imagine someone could accidentally burn it down. But anyone can accidentally burn anything down whenever, because when things catch fire, the things engulfed in flame are simply returning to a natural state of chaos and magic.
No evidence that any of this wild romansbildung actually took pace, eh? You calling me a liar? I been called worse names. Like “fat”. “Fat” is way more hurtful than “liar”, although both are true. I don't know what would happen if I ever got “fat liar” strung together and slung at me, and I hope to never know how that barb feels on my skins. But I don't care if you don't believe me, I have witnesses that saw that sputtering pyre extinguished by the shallow shoals of the American, and once they read this I'm sure they'll all want their testimonials inside the bookjacket. We'll see, guys.
I don't go to that bridge anymore. I moved away. No one here would give two shits if I had burnt that bridge to a crisp and dammed the river with charred debris. I don't care either. That is one spidery fucking bridge; so spidery, I wonder sometimes when I haven't slept in a while if it was in fact made for the spiders, and we humans are just walking over their precious wooden web calling it a “symbiotic relationship”. But that's a quandry for another time, so fuck off outta here.