Yesterday, just after hearing the haunting and apocalyptic "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles on the radio, while approaching the crest of the roadway on the Tappan Zee Bridge (spelled wrong on an official New York State Thruway sign near Port Chester), with radiant Manhattan about 10 miles downriver to the left, I saw this sign, or its approximation, in the late-afternoon lambent light:
LIFE IS WORTH LIVING
along the right railing, with a "life line" phone number to call.
I suspect the signs (I saw one Saturday, coming from the other direction) are an attempt to ward off suicides, or at least potential pedestrian suicidalists (presumably with cellphones, to call the help line). One would think drivers bent on the act would not need to wait until reaching the highest point of the bridge (a lovely bridge, if I may so). Well, come to think of it, why would anyone need to reach the highest point of the bridge before leaping? Certainly, it would not be necessary in terms of the efficacy of the leap. A leap even at the first locus over water seems plenty high enough to do the deed. (But, as you all know, "I Leap for Kierkegaard.")
I also wondered: why limit signs like this to dramatic venues and vistas such as the Tappan Zee Bridge or the famously suicide-prone Golden Gate Bridge, et cetera? Are there not landward temptations to self-extinction? Indeed there are. Perhaps LIFE IS WORTH LIVING signs should be posted just as pointedly at the entranceways to workplaces, government offices, retail stores, churches, homes, rocky cliffs, flat plains, and at the doors of your local Wal-Mart, Target, The Home Depot, or other big-box store. And who but my eponymous graffiti artist who goes by the tag of LIFE should paint these vivifying signs?
Before you get all fretful about my mental state, let me add these are not lugubrious musings. Far from it.
Life is worth living.
I see the signs everywhere.
(A parenthetical word on bridges. Pons is the Latin word for bridge. Pontifex, a word for pope, literally in Latin means "one who makes a bridge." So does this mean I have been pontificating? Or am I simply bridging the gap between the quotidian and the numinous [check out that etymology!]?)
6 comments:
Don't forget Ikea - it's hard to remember life is worth living in one of those.
Puss
Wow, we should make stickers and put them everywhere!
Living is worth life.
How's that?
Pontificate as much as you need, just spare us the details.
Love the Tappan Zee...especially the causeway part that just skims the Hudson toward Nyack. And I find it interesting that the Hudson is salt water most of the way to Albany.
Life is good if you can fight the fight yet another day
nice thoughts - life is worth living and living is worth life...
and what's with people jumping off of bridges - it's is one step from budgie jumping? is that just a practice suicide?
Brilliant parenthetical, Pawlie.
Just reading about the Tappan Zee Bridge makes me miss my beloved city.
It's also the only bridge invariably connected in my mind with 1010 WINS traffic alerts.
August
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