by Lee Rourke
The bridge was filthy. Litter clogged the gutter by the road. A sponge-like substance had formed over the grid, where stuff—old newspapers, cigarette dimps, and general matter—had gathered and morphed into one homogenous mass. A sponge-like substance had formed all around me. It seemed to absorb every sign of moisture within its vicinity, causing the trickle of water in the gutter to stop, to become caught, or trapped, and then slowly disappear, vanishing into the mush of sponge-like matter and debris, slowly but surely becoming erased from the surface of things. The canal was quiet. In the distance, to my right, over towards the Packington Estate, I could hear the shouts and boisterous yells of a gang of youths. It was probably them, up to something nefarious, sinister—a brand new day of activity, hoods up, the useless CCTV of the estate missing all their action. I looked at the rooftops of the old flats, soon to be dwarfed by the towering concrete structures that were forming at a staggering pace, designed in a minimalist office in Clerken-well, or some other part of the city, shutting out an old way of life from the canal and its environs. I looked down at the water: I could see all the way to the bottom, my new height giving me a clearer view through its depths. There were things down there on the bed—detritus left over from the dredger, bricks and manmade materials, plastic, computer parts, and machinery—but not as much as I thought there would be. Then, as some pigeons took flight from the concrete esplanade of the whitewashed office block, down to my left, I caught sight of something in the water, floating, or just beneath the surface, sitting there, stationary, flickering. At first I didn’t know what it was, but as I was about to turn away to look into the whitewashed office block, or follow the trajectory of the pigeons as they arched upwards with tremendous ease, I noticed that what I was looking at was, in fact, me: my own reflection wavering in the water, floating on the canal’s surface like some passing, unwanted and discarded product: a plastic bag, or some packaging. I concentrated on my image, my reflection, my face looking right back at me, into me, and for a short moment, until the sun shone back out from a passing cloud, obliterating my reflected image for good, I felt like I was floating too, or weightless, hovering above the canal, looking down on things. For that fleeting moment, not knowing what was going to happen next, gravity was nothing to me.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my editor and publisher Dennis Loy Johnson for looking beneath the surface and seeing the same things as I do—words cannot express how grateful I am for this; Kit Maude for the early edits and judicious, intelligent criticism—there’s a drink awaiting you in the French House; Dr. Paolo Feraboli of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, for taking the time to answer my rather rudimentary questions; Mathew Coleman, for digging in and weathering the storm; Brian Rourke, my father, for unwavering support throughout my life. And finally, to Holly Ahern, my beautiful wife, for teaching me the important things in life—this book is for you.