“The door pull is the handshake of a building, which can be inviting and courteous, or forbidding and aggressive.” - Juhani Pallasmaa
“Such experiences, such privileged moments, can be profoundly moving; and precisely from such moments, I believe, we build our best and necessary sense of and independent yet meaningful reality. I should like to call them direct esthetic experiences of the real” - Michael Benedikt
I’m standing at the foot of Erszébet híd, looking. The sun shines from above Gellért’s northern arm. A whipped orange and yellow gleam drapes every object in the city. The white bridge is orange. The row of buildings behind me is orange. The water is orange. The clouds are mostly gray – I wouldn’t call them objects in the city.
Rain pours from the mostly gray clouds.
I am supposed to be on my monthly run – hence, the blue sneakers from the department store surrounded by snow. She has a talk to attend. Neither of us stop walking in the sun shower that reminds me of Florida. I don’t know what it reminds her of. I don’t know if sun showers are common here.
Now, we stand on Erszébet híd. My face turns itself to the sun. I think it must be instinct to glow your face by turning it to the sun. She’s standing there doing the same. As if the whipped orange and yellow gleam is fulfillment itself, we stand there turning our faces to the sun.
Skipping and dancing were involved in getting us up to the peak of the bridge’s arc. There was certainly some shouting as well. I haven’t shouted in a while.
She stops a few steps behind me and like Rose, leans out over the rail, gleaming orange and yellow. She turns to me. “Benji, I want to fly. Don’t you just want to fly?”
My journal entry this morning:
13 October 2017
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I feel like flying. I don’t know what it means, but I feel like I want to spread my wings and soar.
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying.”
I smile because I know what happened this morning. She smiles because she knows what happens next.
Now, these smiles are both smiles which veil knowledge, but they couldn’t be more different. The smile of someone who knows what’s happened while the other is clueless shines from the face of someone who is about to inform. The smile of someone who knows what’s to happen while the other is clueless shines from the face of someone who is about to display. The former is anticipating consolidation. The latter is plotting separation.
She steps up on the white railing draped in a whipped orange and yellow gleam, her feet poke out over the water which has no swimming access. Then, she pushes herself up on her arms, her legs swing over the rail, and her feet land on the white of the forbidden side. Now with nothing between her and the air, her hands spread out and up as her knees bend and her hips sink slightly. She extends fully – a launch. After a slight arc upward, her body shoots straight down, pointed – an orange and yellow pencil.
I’m left alone on the bridge, still smiling. I begin my monthly run, heading west toward the hill, to then turn left along the Danube’s flow south – toward home. My pace is slow and deliberate. Before I enter the shadow of Gellért, I close my eyes and lift my head toward the sun. A black bird swoops in from behind me passing above my left shoulder and darts out to my right, opening up to the wind and gliding north.