Bridges: iconic, archetypal and otherwise

Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds (Part #2)

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The covered Bridge of Sighs exemplifies the transition from one condition to another, given its traditional association with the movement of those convicted of crimes from the place of judgement on one side to the place of condemnation across a canal. The "sighs" derived from the last sight offered to the criminal before being finally restricted in cells, possibly never to emerge.

As a metaphor, this construct offers a means of holding and distinguishing the place of judgement, or of any informed choice, from the place where the consequences of that choice must necessarily be lived out with little possibility of recourse. In traversing the bridge there is indeed a brief opportunity for reflection on the relation between the two -- a kind of timeless meta-perspective.

This timeless perspective has long been echoed in the romantic associations of that bridge for couples passing beneath it in a gondola -- an experience possibly catalyzed and enhanced by song. The gondola moves along the waterway between the two original  conditions, essentially orthogonal to the perspectives they represent. The song may enable the experience to be subsequently recalled. Neither on the bridge nor on the gondola is there any realistic opportunity for tarrying. Both are moments in time variously to be recalled -- whether with the sigh of the condemned or the sigh of the romantic

By contrast the iconic Ponte Vecchio in Florence offered space for some to live. It was also a place of exchange and trading, notably in the shops located there. The question is who is able to live and work in such a place and how -- a middle place in which living is otherwise unsustainable?

This construct offers a means of holding the sense of a meta-stable place where it is potentially possible to be -- contrary to the conventional expectations typically associated with living at either end of the bridge. It is a construct offering a kind of "container" for living the experience of polarization, without requiring identification with either "side". The cognitive significance of "container" has been stressed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By , 1980).