Signposts and Junctions

The Cosmic Bridge of November, 1999

In the novel “Bridge of San Luis Rey” by Thornton Wilder, a bridge collapses in Peru and five people die. A Franciscan missionary who witnessed the tragedy goes on to ponder the cosmic ironies that linked those five to the place and time of their deaths. Years later, when asked about the novel, Wilder said that within the work he was posing a question, "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?" I guess I never saw or read into that question when I first read the book in high school, but the cosmic irony of events struck me then, and strikes me again today.

It is November of 1999, and I have just finished reading a local paper. Beneath the obituaries appears a boxed grouping of paragraphs proclaiming “Deaths in the News”, within it are the death notices of people of interest from around the world, those touched by the aura of celebrity or infamy. Like the bridge in Peru, there are five people linked together by their deaths, linked by the cosmic irony of their juxtaposition here today.

The first is John Paul Stapp, MD, PhD, Col USAF (ret). John Stapp is the original rocket man; the man filmed being accelerated to incredible speeds by a rocket-propelled sled set on train-like rails. I can remember his face and mouth being distorted by the high-speed wind in his face and cheeks. In today’s high-speed world, there are people who, perhaps, have not seen the footage of those tests, but if you grew up as a kid in the 1950’s during the birth of television, you had the opportunity to witness it often. His research centered on aerospace safety, but there was a practical side to his research as well. His research led to progress in the area of restraints, and he was present when Lyndon Johnson signed into law the mandatory automobile seat-belt requirements of 1966.

Next is Daniel Nathans who, along with Werner Arber and Hamilton Smith, had received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1978 for their discovery of restrictive enzymes. He was the last of nine children born to Russian immigrant parents, his father lost his business during the great depression, and Daniel went on to the greatness that awaited him by attending public schools.

Walter Payton, the great running back of the NFL Chicago Bears, called “sweetness” by those that followed his career, died from a rare liver disease. He played thirteen years in the NFL, was elected to the Hall of Fame, and the Bears retired his number from play. As he waited on a list with others for an organ donor, his celebrity status would have allowed him the opportunity to receive a new liver ahead of others. He refused, because doing that would mean that someone else would die in his place. He was 45.

Fourth is Mary Kay Bergman. She was a voice-over artist and was well known and liked by those in the industry. She was working with the creators of ‘South Park’, and had sung most of the parts in the song “Blame Canada” from the “South Park” movie. She was the official voice of Snow White for the Disney Company since 1989, and she had many movie, television, and commercial credits in her list of accomplishments. She was 38 when she took her own life. Her family and friends were at a loss to explain why, they saw no indication of depression in her moods or actions in the period before her death.

Fifth is Paul Bowles, the expatriate writer, composer, and traveler, who died in Tangier, Morocco, at the age of 88. He became part of Gertrude Stein’s artistic circle in 1931, and he made his first visit to Tangier with Aaron Copeland. In 1947 he moved to Tangier permanently, and there he received such varied quests as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, and the Rolling Stones.

So here are the five, come together on this strange cosmic bridge of juxtaposition, united in death, just like the five on the “Bridge of San Luis Rey” in Peru. Every day, millions on earth take that bridge back to the well from which all things come. And out of that well, every day, millions appear to strut their hour on the stage. Most come and go in anonymity, others do not. But come and go they do, just as you and I must do as well.

As I thought about the passing of the five, I reflected in particular upon the passing of Paul Bowles: writer, composer, traveler, translator, icon, historical figure, friend and destination to many around the world. I had just finished reading “The Sheltering Sky”, and my paperback showed many turned-over corners that I used to mark interesting passages or prose. On everyone’s list of the 100 Greatest English Novels, it is an engaging and hypnotizing view of the edge of civilization in North Africa, set in the period just after World War II, as seen through the eyes of a world-weary and disenchanted American couple and their friend. That period in Europe and North Africa following World War II is such fertile ground for expression; the post-war despair amid the growing tide of nihilism in regards to all things human, that is rich soil to plant a seed in. There is the life we know, and the life out there in the desert, just beyond our horizon and experience, the one in which all things are possible. As for the life out there, (in which we may find the meaning of ourselves, or in which we may lose everything), that life awaits us if we seek it. As for the life we know, that is moving inexorably to its end, along with us and our possibilities, as we head for our cosmic bridge and the ironies beyond.

“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Paul Bowles, “The Sheltering Sky”