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Before the Valentine's Day celebrations we went up to Antipolo, sending harmonics of good will and trust to the car so it can forget its engine problems and just pootle like a bad ass through the mountainous drive. When we finally settled in at one of the higher restaurants the sun was happily giving everyone Vitamin D, lending more yellow to already yellow things.
Like any view deserving of the name, it made us imagine alien invasions and last minute, glorious resignations before the mothership atomizes all of everything to oblivion.
Before we left we noticed a tremendously long hanging bridge anchored to a view deck on a building atop the next hill, approximately twenty feet higher than its other end. It steadily tilts along the way, and you have to steadily climb up along it to get to the presumably more breathtaking view from the other side. That bridge is a demanding bastard: not only do you have to cross it, you have to climb it. The restaurant personnel uses this bridge for easier (how in heavens' name is it easier?) access to the other building, and each of their steps sends the entire bridge undulating in pure happiness at being a bridge that hangs on a continuous angle.
Now, telling you about this bridge makes me lump all my rationalizations and defence mechanisms all together and start with an admission so glaring it jumps up and down like a gleeful embarrassment: I did not cross the bridge. We were one-fifth along the way when I honestly did not find any will, courage, reason, or Scooby snack to go on. I was too busy trying to figure out what to feel to feel scared. So that counts as a meta kind of being scared, which will challenge me until I, predictably, go to that bridge again and prove to myself that I am not to be meta scared by a mere bridge, geometry be damned. I will be scared, yes, but I will be scared by my own idiocy and impressionability, and not by a hanging bridge!
It's not like going on a roller coaster, I said, a few days later. (Yes.) A roller coaster leaves you with no choice in any matter except in which way to face when you inevitably scream like a train whistle. And because it's on rails it goes really fast, and then it's over relatively quicker than, say, the mounting and sustained horror you feel when in a ferris wheel. When I was on one with my family in Enchanted Kingdom half a decade ago I also screamed like a train whistle, though after the first few minutes of hanging in the gondola the scream becomes insufficient, rendered impotent by the sheer length of time you have to spend hanging, praying gravity doesn't go nuts when all you have around you is the fragile meat of your family and tons and tons of potentially mangled steel. You cannot scream for that duration - your throat will get simultaneously bored and hoarse while the rest of you wants to crawl out of your ears. Being on that bridge is somewhat like that, plus the fact that you have to move on your own power along that length. It's a perfect moment to go all existential and ask "what the hell am I doing this for?!" A roller coaster doesn't allow you that moment: it graciously allows you the trauma of asking that question when you conveniently have your feet back on the ground while the rest of you are still flying off wishing it had been a better person. An alien invasion also doesn't allow you that moment: when you are witnessing it you are merely a leftover to be destroyed a few seconds later. On that bridge and on a ferris wheel, however, you experience an unfair theory of relativity: it lasts far longer than it has any right to, but the difference is that on the bridge it will last far longer than that precisely because you are doing the moving along. The bridge being swayed by the wind is just the universe kindly giving you more problems, like a loving mother.
So I will post a picture of that bridge when I have crossed it. And burned it from the other side, preferably.
Like any view deserving of the name, it made us imagine alien invasions and last minute, glorious resignations before the mothership atomizes all of everything to oblivion.
Before we left we noticed a tremendously long hanging bridge anchored to a view deck on a building atop the next hill, approximately twenty feet higher than its other end. It steadily tilts along the way, and you have to steadily climb up along it to get to the presumably more breathtaking view from the other side. That bridge is a demanding bastard: not only do you have to cross it, you have to climb it. The restaurant personnel uses this bridge for easier (how in heavens' name is it easier?) access to the other building, and each of their steps sends the entire bridge undulating in pure happiness at being a bridge that hangs on a continuous angle.
Now, telling you about this bridge makes me lump all my rationalizations and defence mechanisms all together and start with an admission so glaring it jumps up and down like a gleeful embarrassment: I did not cross the bridge. We were one-fifth along the way when I honestly did not find any will, courage, reason, or Scooby snack to go on. I was too busy trying to figure out what to feel to feel scared. So that counts as a meta kind of being scared, which will challenge me until I, predictably, go to that bridge again and prove to myself that I am not to be meta scared by a mere bridge, geometry be damned. I will be scared, yes, but I will be scared by my own idiocy and impressionability, and not by a hanging bridge!
It's not like going on a roller coaster, I said, a few days later. (Yes.) A roller coaster leaves you with no choice in any matter except in which way to face when you inevitably scream like a train whistle. And because it's on rails it goes really fast, and then it's over relatively quicker than, say, the mounting and sustained horror you feel when in a ferris wheel. When I was on one with my family in Enchanted Kingdom half a decade ago I also screamed like a train whistle, though after the first few minutes of hanging in the gondola the scream becomes insufficient, rendered impotent by the sheer length of time you have to spend hanging, praying gravity doesn't go nuts when all you have around you is the fragile meat of your family and tons and tons of potentially mangled steel. You cannot scream for that duration - your throat will get simultaneously bored and hoarse while the rest of you wants to crawl out of your ears. Being on that bridge is somewhat like that, plus the fact that you have to move on your own power along that length. It's a perfect moment to go all existential and ask "what the hell am I doing this for?!" A roller coaster doesn't allow you that moment: it graciously allows you the trauma of asking that question when you conveniently have your feet back on the ground while the rest of you are still flying off wishing it had been a better person. An alien invasion also doesn't allow you that moment: when you are witnessing it you are merely a leftover to be destroyed a few seconds later. On that bridge and on a ferris wheel, however, you experience an unfair theory of relativity: it lasts far longer than it has any right to, but the difference is that on the bridge it will last far longer than that precisely because you are doing the moving along. The bridge being swayed by the wind is just the universe kindly giving you more problems, like a loving mother.
So I will post a picture of that bridge when I have crossed it. And burned it from the other side, preferably.
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