Driving home to Tennessee, we passed through Columbus , Ohio. It’s about a third of the way home for us. We started in Rochester, NY with a terminal point just south of Nashville, TN. In Pennsylvania and some parts of NY and Ohio, there’s the occasional slow traffic of Amish buggies when you take the side roads . They bounce down the shoulder, cluttering the dirty road air with dust pebbles . Their historical and pastoral appearance of hand-sewn dresses and chinstrap beards, in addition to those stern faces, makes everybody in my car sigh and relax . It’s one of those moments for turning the radio down to silence , and when everybody wants to be most attentive to a passing mystery.
It makes no sense.
If they were on a bicycle, each and everyone of us would be agitated– cussing out the window, maybe even spitting.
But because they’re driving buggies and look ancient to us, we stare at them as if staring at a river that leads down into Columbus, Ohio– the land of unfinished bridges. I couldn’t count all of them — because I was driving, balancing my coffee with one hand, not wanting to spill it on my wife. However, there was one bridge I noticed, less finished than the others, and I wondered where it would lead to, what lands or people would it be joining, what states of consciousness would it stitch together to make a person whole. Lastly, I wondered what toll it would charge for its use.
And that’s when I felt scared, and mute. I turned the radio up, and prayed for the music to yank me up out of my skin, to stretch me from one side of the unfinished bridge to the other side, which I couldn’t see.