You stand there at Fort Point, that old Civil War relic, bricks and iron and ghosts of soldiers who never fired a shot in anger. It’s eleven o’clock, maybe close to midnight.
The fog rolls in off the Pacific devouring the bridge above you, that International Orange monument to human ambition and engineering hubris. From down here, looking up through the cold mist, you can barely see it. Just the massive towers disappearing into gray nothing.
Your hands are numb. Your face is wet. And you get it. You finally fucking get it.
This isn’t about beauty, though Christ knows the bridge is beautiful. It’s about the seduction of an ending. The simple geometry of it. The bridge doesn’t judge. It just waits, patient as a bartender at last call, offering one final drink to anyone who asks.
There’s something about this spot, the cold, the fog, the industrial romance of it all, that makes the darkness feel almost poetic. Almost reasonable.
You understand why they come here. Not because you want to jump. But because standing in this place, at this hour, you feel the weight of every small defeat Bukowski wrote about. Every accumulation of mundane horror. You feel seen by the void, and sometimes that’s almost a comfort.
Small.. unnerving occurrences..
keep coming up
one after the other:
haphazard dumb accidents of freakish chance-
the tiring tasks that are part of our routineÂ
and the sundry other ever-recurring annoyances–
all these inevitable small defeats and sorrows rub and pushÂ
continually up against the moments the days the years
until one almost wishes
almost begs for a larger more meaningful destiny.
I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.
I even understand in part those who arm themselves and slaughter their friends and innocent strangers.
I am not exactly in sympathy with themÂ
and I decry their reckless behavior
but I can understand the ultimate undeniable persistent..
force of their misery.
the horrific violent failure of any one of us
to live properly
says to me thatÂ
we are all equally guilty for every human crime.
there are no innocents.
and if there is no hell,
those who coldly judge these unfortunatesÂ
will create one for us all.Charles Bukowski, The Difficulty of Breathing,
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain, 1920-94