Tuesday, January 18, 2011

TACOMA NARROWS



i remember seeing this footage as a small child and being terrified by it. in fact, i still feel slightly uneasy driving or walking across bridges to this day. i'm not sure what made me think of it today, maybe a preoccupation with destruction in general i've had lately. it just seems like chaos and disaster are occurring everywhere around the world these days and eventually they have to reach here as well. the noose is tightening, so to speak. this is the kind of shit that haunts me. of course, living on a major fault line doesn't help. the other day i was watching the news and they had a segment about "THE BIG ONE", something i've also been hearing about and subsequently been terrified of since i was a kid, but the only clear point they were trying to make was that it could happen any time, today, tomorrow, 50 years from now... nobody knows. but rest assured (ha ha!), it WILL happen. i mean, it's great to be aware and try to prepare yourself, but it just seemed like fear-mongering to me. thanks guys, i needed that. i think more and more every day about leaving the city for the idealized small town/country in my mind and i would be lying if i said that the idea of "THE BIG ONE" wasn't lingering prominently in there with all my other half-baked reasons for wanting to go. my sister actually did leave the city for the idealized small town/country in her mind and openly states that her growing paranoia of total destruction was a key deciding factor. how can you not have that fear lurking in the back of your mind? i guess the key is to be prepared (whatever the fuck that means) and to not live your life crippled by fear. and truthfully, i'm NOT crippled by fear, i still go around doing my thing every day, i function reasonably well (debatable). my fear is more like a bad case of athletes foot- persistent, annoying and hard as fuck to get rid of.
another fact about the above clip that's haunted me since i was a child: the only casualty of the collapse of the tacoma narrows bridge was a dog named tubby, he was in that car you see just before the whole thing goes down. they tried to rescue him, but he was too scared to leave the car and bit the hand of the guy who tried to grab him. sad stuff.
this one's for you, tubby.

1 comment:

VIN said...

psychedelic. we should go to tacoma for BBQ one day...