Bridge Collapse-part 2

After looking at the comments I received on my first entry about the bridge collapse and after listening tonight to some tapes about Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens, I finally have something to say about meaning.

I have never been afraid to cross bridges. Of course, it goes through my mind, "What if," every time I'm on a bridge. But then I calm and trust everything will be fine.

For many years, I was trusting. I took people at their word, and I trusted that the people who designed bridges knew what they were doing and had my best interests in mind. The same with leaders, people in authority, like teachers and doctors.

You live and learn. Slowly my trust began to crumble and erode. Now I fight cynicism almost every day. There's plenty to be cynical about, but I don't like feeling that way. It really bothers me. I hate it.

I've built many bridges in this life. I've tried to make meaningful connections the best way I could.

If one of my bridges should collapse, I have others. Hart Crane saw the bridge as Faustian, as a symbol of human intelligence, ability, and power, but bridges aren't forever.

Listening to the lives of poets on my tapes, I was reminded of how poets of that time were influenced by the philosopher William James.

How do we make meaning? What happens when we have the will to believe and nothing to believe in?

There are no large solutions. Truth is momentary.

Bridge Collapse

I have been thinking about the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis. I recently wrote about the Golden Gate Bridge and have been reading and reviewing Hart Crane's great poem, "The Bridge." Crane's poem heralded the wonders of the bridge. Even so, it was a symbol to him of humankind's Faustian urges. Both of these ideas seem relevant to the time Crane was writing, in the early days of the 20th Century. Now in the early days of the 21st Century we are made to understand that a vast number of bridges in the U.S. are structurally unsound.

If the bridge stood for wonder and Faustian urges nearly a hundred years ago, what does the bridge symbolize today?