A view to a leap?

What do you see when you look out your windows, or when you go outside into your neighborhood? When I do that, I see other homes and trees. Lots and lots of trees. When I leave my street I see more forested areas interspersed with fields used for growing crops or raising livestock. If I go into the nearest town, I see many old buildings, some dating from the 18th century or even further back in time. Looking across the horizon there are just more rolling hills, fields and wooded areas.

This morning I had a look on a satellite map, which is something I do when I want to explore an area for future travel or just curiosity. The first place I looked was around the site of the fallen metal monster of Baltimore. The imagery still shows it being intact, indicating that the map has not been updated in the last several months since the collapse. Given the statements of those who said they missed seeing the monster when looking out their windows, it stands to reason that a good many live near enough to have that view. I identified at least two large residential areas from where the Key Bridge could have been visible. As well as from more than a few industrial sites. My husband says that if he is working on the roof of the factory where he is employed he can see the battered remains of the monster. Then I scanned the map further north, looking to see roughly how many might be able to see Delaware’s river monster, the Delaware Memorial Bridge. And on the Delaware side, there is also a spacious residential area just to the northeast. Again, I checked out the Savannah monster in Georgia, the Talmadge Memorial Bridge. Again, there were some residential areas nearby, likely within sight. Finally, I paid a virtual visit to the Tampa Bay demon. The area around its terminal points appears to be mostly marshland, but just to the northwest, on a peninsula, there are plenty of homes. I also took a look at some random street views in those areas but I could not see the Tampa monster nor the Key Bridge. There were a few places where the Delaware monster could be seen looming in the distance. Even the infamous Chesapeake Bay Bridge has residential areas within sight. My cousin lives on the eastern shore of the bay, right where the eastbound bridge feeds its traffic onto land. I have never asked him if he can see it from his house, but regardless, that monster is in his backyard. I wonder if he knows of its sinister reputation? But these views of course do not reflect what might be visible from the second story of homes or other taller buildings. Also, most all of the street views were taken in the summer, so it is likely that much more can be seen in winter.

It was mostly unbeknownst to me that most all of these concrete and steel behemoths have one or more public places nearby, usually a park, from which they can be photographed and admired. I did not know that the Key Bridge could be seen from Fort Armistead until after the collapse. Well, now I know a good place from which to observe its replacement! Most of these parks, including Ft. Armistead, have been around far longer than the monstrous bridges that sprouted up near them.

But regardless of the why and the how, imagine having such a beast in your own backyard, as it were. When I was a child I had that creepy old dead tree behind the neighbor’s house across the street. It loomed high above its woody companions and it was a constant fixture as viewed from my bedroom window. But only a few people had that view, unlike thousands with a creepy bridge in their figurative backyard (or front yard). Perhaps that is a reason as to why some feel compelled to jump from these structures. Visibility is definitely a thing, as any advertiser knows. In this case, however, such “advertising” for that lethal purpose is purely accidental, but that does not stop it from occurring. On that site dedicated to Tampa’s monster, someone had posted a message saying they could see the monster from their home and felt it was calling to them. An invitation extended to drive out onto its span, and get out and leap into oblivion for the last time. I have no doubt that the Key Bridge jumper had a great familiarity with the structure that he employed to help Atake his life. Maybe he could see it from where he lived…

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January 17, 2025

Hmmm… Now I am starting to see these bridges as slightly ominous as well as engineering marvels.  You do have a fixation with suicide jumpers.  Do you really know why?

January 18, 2025

@oswego I wish I did know why…I’ve only known two people (both mere acquaintances, friends of friends) who did themselves in.  One shot himself and the other made use of the Key Bridge.  Naturally both deaths had a devastating effect on those close to them, which I personally witnessed.  But the bridge was by far the more horrific of the two for me. The Key Bridge was scary looking when I was a new driver, but then after that death it became something far more horrible.  I don’t know, it seems when someone jumps off a bridge (or other structure/high place) that thing becomes forever tainted. I could never not associate that bridge with what happened there.  So many people end their own lives all the time, unfortunately, but most do so in private places.  Those deaths are horrible enough as it is for survivors. A bridge is meant as a quick and efficient means to cross a gorge, body of water or some other topographic feature.  But some people turn them into ghoulish monuments of self demise and public spectacle.  In the Bible, Cain was marked by God so everyone he came in contact with would know he had committed murder.  These bridges, I suppose, would have the “mark of Judas”.  Put there not by God but by those who have flung themselves from them. And I wonder what it means when someone chooses that method (jumping) over other ways.  Your co-worker also chose a bridge rather than, say, a drug overdose.  And then, in these cases, there are almost always witnesses, if not seeing the jump, then discovering the aftermath, all in a very public place.  Others are negatively affected by this and what should be a useful piece of infrastructure (engineering marvel, architectural accomplishment, etc) is now sullied.  I don’t know….I find there is such an intrinsic horror surrounding these deaths as opposed to accidents, or other ways of self elimination.

4 weeks ago

@schrecken13 Agreed that there is a deep sense of “intrinsic horror” associated with jumping off a bridge as the chosen form of ending one’s life.  The final motivations of such sad and  tormented souls will never be known most likely, unless they survive the leap and tell their story.  I feel sure this has happened many times.  The person has had a brief flash of time to fearfully (I would think, in most cases) imagine their demise.

Your fixation on this subject in your  writing, at least, would confirm, I suppose, your acknowledgment that you don’t know the reason for this, and yet would it be better if you didn’t know and stopped dwelling on this morbid subject? Or, do you actually feel this strange fascination and/or obsession will lead to some answers you are seeking on related subjects?

My co-worker was perhaps the most intense empath I have ever known.  A single expression on her face would allow someone (myself, for example), to see deeply into the pit of her suffering, though I don’t think anyone who casually knew her could imagine her doing what she did.

3 weeks ago

@oswego I am getting to the point now where I am attempting to tease apart the symbolism of the bridge itself with that of the jumper.  Part of me wonders if the bridge isn’t the main focus and the jumper is just an incidental aspect that just happened to be connected to that particular bridge.  I try to think back to when the Key Bridge fell and how I felt about it, but I don’t know if those feelings arose because of my knowledge of that jumper, or because of my fears of that bridge much longer ago. I don’t know if I would have had the same reaction if it had been the Bay Bridge that was destroyed, since it had no negative connotation to me.  Right now I’m leaning a bit towards the bridge itself and me associating it first with fear, and then with horror and disgust.  Somehow, the Key Bridge must have represented something to me, however distant in my past and long forgotten, until the day it was destroyed.  I have written another entry where I try to separate these aspects.  I don’t know that I can isolate the bridge from the jumper, or vice versa.  The notion of jumping from a great height intrigues me in a thrill seeking sort of way, although it never really did before the bridge collapse.  I am planning on bungee jumping this summer to see how that action of leaping off of something (and the psychological aspects of doing so) might fit into all of this.

3 weeks ago

@schrecken13 It’s beginning to seem more clear to me that the bridge metaphor goes beyond that term, or  even symbolism.  It has become, since the bay bridge collapse, an archetype of what you fear and yet desire intensely — the confrontation with danger and death for the purpose of defeating it once and for all.

The psychologist Ernest Becker wrote a seminal book, “The Denial of Death.” He argued  that the fear of death is the primary driver of human behavior. People engage in activities and belief systems to escape the existential terror of mortality.

He wrote:  “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

People cling to “vital lies,” he said —illusions of safety and permanence — to avoid confronting death, often limiting their engagement with life’s “fullness.”

I think this ties in with your posted horror stories here at OD and your obsessive pursuit of roller coaster thrills (confronting the “fullness” of life in ways you deem necessary for keeping life exciting instead of dull and routine).  The desire to overcome the monstrous terror of bridge metal and steel “monsters,” also fits with Becker’s ideas.  And last, but most spectacular, bungee jumping, is in my view, the closest thing you can do to experience what jumping off a bridge feels like. Personally, sky diving and bungee jumping are insane pursuits, not my cup of tea, shall we say.  Haha.  But if that’s what helps you cope with your unsettled and unyielding of your own mortality and acceptance of it, then far be it from me to pass any sort of judgment save for my own personal opinion. 🙂

 

 

 

2 weeks ago

@oswego Wow, that’s a lot to think about…those “illusions of safety and permanence” sound like a perfect description of the Key Bridge before its collapse.  Or perhaps most any bridge.  That is one attribute that many bridges, especially large ones, tend to have – a sense of being everlasting.  Many such bridges exist for a human lifetime or longer and therefore seem to be permanent.   I was born in a hospital that stands not more than about two miles up river from where the Key Bridge once stood. If it had existed then, my mother could have looked out her window and seen it.  It started construction in 1973, but plans to build it were underway in 1970.  The Bay Bridge also started construction on its newer span that same year.  Those bridges are a part of my history, and now one of them is gone.

I suppose the destruction of the Key Bridge, the “death” of that metal monster, could represent mortality in general.  It was something that was supposed to last a long time.  In my mind it came to represent death, and then it was demolished.

The desire to bungee jump I think reflects my lifelong desire to closely study things that can be lethal, but in relative safety.  My fascination with animals might lead me to hold a grizzly bear tooth in my hand, where I can look closely at that potentially deadly weapon.  All without actually coming face to face with an aggressive bear in the wild and seeing its mouthful of teeth coming at me.  You are right – to bungee jump is like taking on the “bridge monster” and being able to experience the jump without the lethal ending.  I can look into the “jaws” of the killer bridge monster in a reasonably safe way, and live to tell about it.