Kudzu drapes the trees that line 40, turning them into hulking, lumbering beasts that reach longing arms toward the highway. The body language suggests the intent to either devour vehicles in some horrific way, or to clutch and snuggle them like a comforting toy that might be accidentally crushed also in some horrific way with need for comfort and closeness. They look fierce, but fragile … in decay … as the vines that give birth to their shapes also weigh and pull them down, suggesting edges like a child’s paper machet project, or an eroding sculpture of once chisel-cut jade.
I’ve become sort of a receptacle for stimuli this trip. I just want to look at everything, fill myself with it and lose myself in the details. A “closed for construction” sign that would normally have deterred me meant nothing this time. For once it was I who parked the car defiantly in front of it and made rob get out to find the covered bridge in Catawba County – one of the last – tucked away 500 yards off a road that was itself tucked away. I was reminded of the funny junk house, with rusting farm equipment tacked all over it like shingles, somewhere between Greenville and Wilmington. I could not raise the courage to investigate or get a close picture of it more than a year ago, which is something I still regret. So I walked around the gate that would keep me out this time, and it was beautiful: A hidden sort of place, with winding streams and shafts of light on falling water. Names etched and spraypainted onto the old wood of a covered bridge that will maybe outlast even all those promises. Apparently, if you cover a bridge to shield it from the brunt of the elements, it will last a century, decades more than if left unshielded.
I don’t even know WHAT this is. I have no idea. Not a clue. We didn’t look. We don’t want to know. If you DO know, don’t tell us. Really. No.
When I crossed it, I arrived at a grassy clearing and a metal gate to nowhere slowly being taken over by leaves. The old need for the bridge was gone, and whatever travel it once made possible, obsolete. Bridges are different from houses and other large structures because they are supremely about a function – and the same function every time. No matter where a bridge is built, whether it’s meant for foot traffic or tractor trailers, or from what it is constructed, each is made to span a distance and to make passage possible somewhere important enough to want to get to. They are built for necessity. They are built to solve a problem. And though they can be artful, they are, above all, useful.
For a bridge to outlast its purpose, and to go nowhere after all seems so sad. It’s truly a relic. A retiree. The last model of this particular wooden truss construction that’s left standing. And so it does, whether there is a destination or not.
If it knew to care, I wonder if it would rather have been left to rot than spend another hundred years, through the thoughtful preservation of concerned, historically-minded parties, staring at that closed gate and that empty clearing.
We came through a little rain to arrive on the Wilmington side of North Carolina yesterday. The gig in Raleigh the night before turned out to be a stroke of good luck, landing masterfully – but completely unintentionally – on one of the First Friday celebrations they have there. It’s the kind of thing where you grin and say, “I MEANT to do that.” We even opted to start a little early because of the crowd. Interestingly enough, though most of the audience looked to be strangers . they were strangers that knew US. One woman approached me with a handful of old guitar strings, saying her sister, Paula, had met us at Newsong and mentioned I made jewelry from the broken strings. The man she was with was a host from an open mic in the area that we had played a long time ago, who came to the show thinking the descriptions he was hearing about us from her sounded like the memory he had in his head of ilyAIMY, though he and she did not realize they were talking about the same people. Our friend Jamie, though she was dancing in Herndon, VA while we spent the night in her empty apartment, sent friends in her stead. One of the people who attended the house concert we played in Raleigh a while back came out as well as the hosts.
I know one day, ideally, we won’t recognize most of our fans. It’s still a little surreal when it happens now, though.
Our stay in Raleigh was brief, and the next night found us playing at the Soap Box Laundro Lounge in Wilmington. In keeping with the theme of this trip, Katy and Sara from Cary came all the way to Wilmington to catch the show since they couldn’t see us while we were playing closer to them in Raleigh. We’ve been away from here longer than it feels. I was here solo for the Cape Fear Folk Festival songwriter’s contest at the end of April and saw some people then, and Bambi came up to visit us in Maryland for a couple days after that. So those visitations have kept me from realizing how long it really has been.
I’d like to engage in some of my typical Wilmington pursuits: walking around downtown or combing Wrightsville Beach . but it is frankly just too hot and humid. Rob’s not much for heat and humidity, and his entire wardrobe is also presently indisposed in the laundry, so it doesn’t take much for him to convince me to stay inside. Tonight’s also an early gig, and we’ll be there setting up in less than three hours anyway. He reminds me that this would be an excellent time to continue work on the Journal entry I keep promising him.
