Wanderlust over a collapsing and swaying Myanmar bridge…
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
You know that moment, and if you’ve really traveled, you know exactly what I’m talking about, when you realize that the universe is indifferent to your continued existence? When the thin veneer of Western safety standards, the illusion that someone, somewhere is looking out for you, just… evaporates?
I’m in a Soviet-era jeep that should’ve been decommissioned during the Nixon administration, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with five other souls. Locals who’ve made this crossing a hundred times and whose faces register the exact amount of concern the situation warrants: somewhere between “mildly inconvenient” and “probably fine.”
The bridge, and I use that term loosely, is a Frankenstein’s monster of rotting planks, rusted cable, and optimism. It’s swaying. Not gently. Swaying like it’s having second thoughts about this whole “being a bridge” thing. Below us, the river churns brown and indifferent, ready to receive whatever tribute we might offer.
The jeep creaks forward. Every plank groans its protest. I can see daylight through the gaps. My Western mind is screaming the very reasonable question: “Why the fuck am I doing this?”
But here’s the thing: this is why. This exact feeling. This cocktail of terror and exhilaration, this reminder that you’re alive in ways that climate-controlled offices and two-week vacation packages can never deliver. T.S. Eliot knew it: sometimes you leave your body on a distant shore. Sometimes you have to scare yourself awake.
The bridge holds. We make it. Of course we make it.
Until next time.
