Burning Bridges - Not Everyone Falls Down

A well built bridge is like an epic poem of both love and death, doubt and truth, weaved with incomprehensible wordy stanzas. You might pretend to get the poem, but really no one fully gets it except for the author, and that’s the best part.

The writer of the London Bridge Song scribbling about a ‘gay lady’ dancing as a bridge falls and is then rebuilt with gold, rocks, and other stuff.

Imagine all the reverberating adventures that have echoed whilst racing across a single bridge. Imagine all the people and where they are going and what they just came from and who they are thinking about. A bridge is where both proposals and suicides happen. Peculiar, no?

To build a great bridge means that not so great bridges collapsed before it. When a bridge is burning down and the flames are unstoppable, dance in the fire because you can’t fucking do anything until the smoke clears, anyhow. If it’s going to burn, then throw some fireworks in flames and watch that shit light up!

The Googs says:

The original London Bridge was constructed in 1100 AD by a man, Peter de Colechurch, who devoted his entire life to a dream of a grand crossing that would bring wealth to the capital of England; and indeed it did. This bridge was built from wood and clay. It erected for 600 years and when it was demolished, bones were found beneath it. In the 1800’s it was rebuilt. Urine and feces💩 were dropped on the lucky🍀 chaps that passed under it.

‘London Bridge is for wise men to go over and fools to go under.’

Without any order or rank, ants cling arm-in-arm to their comrades to form ‘living’ bridges so they can efficiently gather as much food as they can to survive. They adapt to the velocity of nature and reshape their bridges in real-time for rapid reconstruction to maintain balance. They practice collective intelligence for optimal survival. Where there is one ant, there are many. If you see an ant without a colony, he’s probably searching for them. 😢

Bridges were and are built for people to reach places and things that are desired. A bridge is a path to the unknown and a route to a familiar destination. Bridges were the first paths built over water for humans to search for new lands to survive. We’ve forgotten how lucky we are to cross a bridge. Make a wish next time you’re on one, it could fall. Whether it’s a felling tree log laid across a quant river bank or steel beams, arches, and intricate engineered trusses cascading across the windy sea, no bridge was built to last forever.

“View of London Bridge” by Claude de Jongh, 1632

From ruthless viking invaders to the Great Fire of London to Queen Anne Boylne’s head on a spike to vans with bombs, the London Bridge’s infrastructure has been repaired, demolished, and rebuilt countless times since 1100AD and one day it will be demolished and rebuilt again… That is if Kim Jong Ew doesn’t nuke planet earth in the meantime.

If a bridge has a single flaw in the infrastructure, within time from constant crossing weight and raw elements and earth reminding us it changes, that flaw will grow and eventually affect the balance of the entire bridge. Stronger beams can be added, but eventually a logical question is asked. Does this bridge need to be rebuilt? How important is this bridge? Does this bridge still take the traveler to the destinations it seeks?

Depending on the many determined factors, logical decisions are made and those might consist of trying to repair it again or to tear it down and rebuild it or that it’s dangerous and shouldn’t be there all together. It’s okay if a bridge no longer serves the same purpose, that means man-power and materials can be used else were to build something that is hopefully beautiful and creates new opportunities to what is desired.

The Great Fire of London, 1666 – Artist Unknown

Sometimes the unexpected happens. In 1666, the Great Fire of London damaged the bridge and it weakened. Other times, the unfortunate happens, a bridge just falls down and panic erupts. There my never be an explanation of why the bridge fell, but most likely there were cracks in the foundation to begin with. Remnants of the London Bridge can be found all over the world in unexpected places, including Lake Havasu in Arizona. Parts of the old bridge were used to build new things.

The best part of a bridge is the view. When you stand in the middle of a bridge, often you’re standing in the middle of a body of water. You’re defying gravity thanks to the humans that built it!

You’re practically Jesus.

Think about it, the power of bridges.

Often though, after driving back-and-forth on a bridge so many times, you forget how beautiful that view is. You never know when it might not be there again, you never know when a fire will erupt and make it irreparable, so take it in. If it should fall, although it might have had terrible traffic and scarily screeched and swayed with the wind, remember the good as everything comes to an end.

Remnants of the London Bridge laid to rest.

THE LAST GEN

TLG grew up off of fables and Disney tales that embellished stories of beauty, love, wishes, and battles so that the moral of the story stuck. Those are the greatest stories remembered. In today’s day and age of fake news, fake friends, and the greatest tall-tale storytelling President of all time, we should be careful not to assume everything is true and check the facts and go to the source before spreading inaccurate information, this only causes chaos and is the in-sighting indecent to making a fool out of everyone. If you burn a bridge, think about that bridge and it’s significance. You may learn that you were not the one who lit the fire although you’ve been exiled as if you did. Gasoline may have already been poured out by someone who didn’t care for the valuable resource that keeps a specific type of engine running and therefore it was a factor of several sparks that set shit ablaze. Some bridges were meant to be torn down a long time ago and you can’t blame yourself for trying to keep it standing, after all, there’s history to it. Take what you learned from why that bridge broke apart, use some of those pieces and build a new cascading functional connector between oceans. Everyone fucks up and no one factor causes a complete collapse, as something so large takes longer to burn; it’s a progression. It’s important to note that once a bridge burns all the way to the ground, you can never get it back, so the sooner you let it go, the sooner you can find a new view from a fantastic height! Good or bad, all things come to an end. Fires burn out. Rainbows last a few minutes. Time takes time and time is distance. One life, keep building. The strongest foundation to lay down first is love.

Always try to be a better human.

London Bridge
Is Broken down,
Dance over my Lady Lee.
London Bridge
Is Broken down
With a gay Lady.

How shall we build
It up again,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Build it up with
Gravel, and Stone,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Gravel, and Stone,
Will wash away,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Build it up with
Iron, and Steel,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Iron, and Steel,
Will bend, and Bow,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Build it up with
Silver, and Gold,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Silver, and Gold
Will be stolen away,
Dance over my Lady Lee.

Then we’l set
A man to Watch,
Dance over my Lady Lee.
Then we’l set
A man to Watch,
With a gay Lady.

When a bridge burns, one should dance and sing, no point to cry and scream. We are young, tomorrow is a new day, and what’s done is done. As the Brits say,