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Yet, anyway.
What's changed?
Not the dream, not the result of our dreams which we call the world, not our
hi-tech life. Me, then?
Maybe. Who knows; could be anything, inside here. Just won't be able to tell
until I get back out again, and start living the shared dream, abandoning my
own, of a thing become place, a means become end, a route become
destination... Three of diamonds, indeed, and a quality bridge, an everlasting
bridge, a never-
quite-the-same bridge, its vast and ruddy frame forever sloughing off and
being replaced, like a snake constantly shedding, metamorphosing insect which
is its own cocoon and alway changing ...
All those trains. Going to be on a few more in the future too. Sure to get
banned from driving. Stupid bastard. Writing the car off, drunk-driving just
before Christmas; how embarrassing to have to come back to that. At least
there wasn't anybody else involved, just me and the two cars. Not sure I'd
have wanted to come back if I'd killed somebody, or even injured them badly.
Hope whoever owned the MG didn't dote on it too much. Poor Jaguar. After all
that time and money, after all the careful crafted work people put into it.
Maybe just as well I didn't have it very long before I wrecked it; might have
got sentimental about it, might have come to feel something for it ('Were you
very attached to the car, Mr X?'
Attached to it? I
was jammed inside the bastard for three hours.').
And that bridge, the bridge ... have to make a pilgrimage to it, once I'm
better; if I can. Walk over the water (assuming I can walk), cross the river;
throw a coin for luck ha ha.
Sections three; first second third Forth Firth ... loco me loco ... There were
great grey Xs in the road bridge towers too; I remember now. Three big Xs one
above the other, like laces or ribbons ... and also ...
and also ... what else? Oh yeah and I didn't get to hear all the Pogues tape
either. Missed
A Man You Don't
Meet Every Day
; fave track that; sing it kid ... Had the Eurythmics on the other side furra
bitta contrast like; young Annie beltin out wiff auntie Aretha; doin' it for
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themselves and why not? and singin
Better To
Have Lost In Love (Than Never To Have Loved At All)
; so it's a cliché? Clichés have feelings too.
I want to come back. Can I come back?
beep beep beep this is a recording; your conscious mind is out at the moment
but if you'd care to -
clunk.
Can I? Can I please? I want to come back. Now. Now we try. Sleep; wake. Do it
now.
Let's go there
.
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Very soon; waking. Before that, a word from our sponsors. But first, three
little asterisks:
* * *"
I was on the beach at Valtos once, one rainy and not too warm summer. I was
with her and we were camping and we took a chemical which altered reality.
Rain pattered softly on the tent; she wanted to stay in, looking at a book of
Dali's paintings, but didn't mind if I went out.
I walked along the edge of the curving tide, where the waves ate into the
golden crescent of sand; I was alone with a warm damp breeze and a mile or two
of beach, rain smirring from the greyly wisping clouds.
I found razor shells like fragments of a broken rainbow, and watched rain
drops fall on some still dry sand as the wind blew over it; the whole beach
seemed to heave and flow, like something living. I remember my delight, my
childish touching of that sand and its dark spots, the feel of the grains
blown across my fingers.
I was on the outer edge of the Outer Isles, rough sea to Newfoundland and
Greenland and Iceland and the skull cap of rotating ice above the Pole; there
at the end of the Long Isle which is many isles, a curve of broken land lying
hard against the sea like a column of spine, like a blossoming of brain above
a central system. My mind was that Isle, bared to the sweep of sea and weather
by the cutting edge of the drug; a wide escape.
I thought I saw it all then; the way the brain flowers at the end of its
articulated stalk; the way, our roots in the soil, we grow and become. It
meant everything and nothing, at the time and still.
And to myself I said I've been away a far place ... because I was my own
father and my own child, and I
went away for a while but I came back. Child, your father's been away a far
place. That was what I said to myself as I headed back: Child, your father's
been away a far place.
... Yeah, sure, but that was long ago; what about now? I mean, good grief, six
months without a drink or a smoke! I've probably been healthier lying here
unconscious than I've been in the rest of my adult life; not much exercise
maybe, but nothing more dangerous to ingest than whatever it is they shove
down this tube in my nose. How the hell has my body survived six months
without drink and drugs?
Maybe I'll become a reformed character, maybe I'll stop drinking and never
smoke or snort or chew anything else ever again and when I do get my driving
licence back I'll never exceed the speed limit again, and in future I'll
never, never say anything nasty about our legally and democratically elected
representatives or those of our allies and I'll have a lot more time and
respect for other people's views no matter how fucking stupid they - No; if I
was going to do that, why bother coming back? Bugger it; I'm
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[5/21/03 1:50:43 AM]
file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,%20Iain%20-%20The%20Bridge.html going to do
more of all that stuff just as soon as I can; I'm just going to be a bit more
careful in future.
Child, your father's -
Yeah I know; so we heard. I think we got that message, thank you. Anybody else
...?
Our revels now are ended
(thanx bill)
These proceedings are closed (ta Mac)
Brammer wakes-
(can we get that right, please?)
Brahma wakes
(thank you)
'sokay
(shut up; and get on with it)
Blackness.
No; not blackness. Something. A dark, almost brown red. Everywhere. I try to
look away but I can't, so it isn't just the colour of the wall or the ceiling.
Is this behind my eyes? Don't know. Dinnae ken.
Sound; I can hear something. It's like, having dived into a pool, floating
back up towards the surface again; that sound, a sort of bubbling white noise,
slowly altering in pitch from very low to high, and bursting like a bubble
itself to -
Conversation, a woman laughing. Clinks and rattles, a wheel or a chair-leg
squeaking.
Smell; oh yes. Very medicinal. No doubt where we are now. Something flowery,
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