"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
As many of you know, Exit133 is getting ready for another significant redesign and relaunch as we approach our 5th anniversary. With it will come a whole new look plus several new writers and voices. Daniel Rahe, aka Captiveyak, is one of those voices and he’s already writing. So, rather than wait, he wants to get started now. Inspired by Peter Callaghan’s most recent column, Daniel submits this piece for your consideration. We’re excited to see where these stories go. Please welcome Daniel to Exit133. – Derek
I’ve always been a history buff, and I’ve always hated the term “history buff.” To love history is to love every aspect of humanity’s journey and the tactile evidence of life. Shouldn’t every person love history? Yet the practice of historic preservation is almost always wrought with complication and conflict. Granted, resources are limited; But even if resources were unlimited, differing views of what ought and oughtn’t be priorities would persist. People can’t seem to agree on anything — even on where we’ve come from.
Perhaps especially where we’ve come from.
An idealist might look at the forward rush of mankind and wonder why anyone or anything must become a casualty of progress. Thankfully, people who wonder such things are burned at the stake. Mad progress and momentum are the baselines of culture, as if there is some alternative to trajectory, or some nobility in moving with the inexorable current of time. In this purposeful rush, the mementoes we leave are often as uncontemplated and unremarkable as the lives most of us live. They only acquire meaning because, at some point, they are not new – not because they are useful. Our lifetime of struggle and joy becomes encapsulated in some discarded object.
The Murray Morgan bridge will re-open to pedestrian and bicycle traffic on Wednesday, after a couple years of valiant civic effort by the folks at Save Our Bridge, and many, many others. I would be there to cheer as the ribbon is cut, but I have to be at the office, struggling for advancement.
Some might see the Murray Morgan Bridge preservation effort as a bit absurd. It could be argued that if the State had the time or resources to remove it, the bridge would have likely not lasted much longer than its usefulness. It’s continued existence just might be a budgetary fluke. But now, the bridge has stood for years while bigger and better things blossomed upstream. It watches our tail-lights driving away, and it watches our headlights return. The Murray Morgan Bridge watches us, and those of us who understand feel better because it does. We don’t care if the bridge serves us. We want to honor it’s careworn gaze.
When I moved to Tacoma in 2007, I had never once set foot here. As I negotiated the Budget rental truck through the confounding web of parkways and exits leading to the North End, my eye was immediately captivated by the Bridge — because it’s pretty easy to notice and I don’t like to pay attention to traffic when I’m driving (yes, I only have one eye). Its stoic persevering profile inspired my memory, which imperiled the immediate safety of the vehicles around me.
My memory turned to a SCUBA diving adventure I had undertaken in Lake Superior several years before. My friends and I explored the wreck of the Smith Moore, a steamer barge that sank in 90 feet of water off the coast of Michigan in 1889. Through the numbingly cold September water, I descended the rope from the buoy to the deck and watched the hulking structure emerge from the dark. Even after more than a century of submersion, the Smith Moore had the look of a discarded tool — not the eery aspect of a ghost. She was precise and mechanical, even in repose, representing well the months and months of dedicated craftsmanship and skilled construction that had once made her seaworthy. So much design and sweat, now slowly slipping beneath the sand. I thought of the cliched words of John Keats in Ode on a Grecian Urn:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The meaning of that silly couplet suddenly revealed itself to me: Sh*t happens. Much of what we toil at or consider significant could get rammed by another barge in a storm and end up sinking less than 300 feet from safe harbor. These accidents and failures and shipwrecks linger on, reminding us of our inability to properly care for our own creations, and they are beautiful. They make us feel small in a certain painful way even the starry sky cannot — we’ve never neglected or failed Orion. He’s just a big SOB, and reminds us of our insignificance. Now, the Murray Morgan Bridge — we put a lot of effort into building it. We used it and cared for it for decades, only to build another bridge a stone’s throw away while the Murray Morgan faded into disrepair. What a raw deal for a bridge! What a reminder of our short-sighted mania!
By watching us and reminding us of how we fail, the Murray Morgan Bridge serves a vital purpose and merits preservation. It’s longsuffering sillhouette should encourage us to see the beauty of our history. And it should remind us to quit looking at the stars, because they’re stupid.
Also, I did not cause an accident in my rented truck.
The End.
Filed under: Tacoma, Tacoma Landmarks, Murray Morgan Bridge, Historic Preservation
9 comments
E Erik B. March 29, 2010
Good news on the bridge.
M Mr. Mike Thacker March 29, 2010
“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” – Carl Sagan, secularist astronomer, claiming that only material things are worth consideration.
R RR Anderson March 29, 2010
will the bridge work again? can the cops still raise it up when the protesters permitted route to the tideflats tries to cross the ol’ MMB?
P Paul Pival March 30, 2010
Actually in its context, the couplet isn’t silly. Johnnie Keats is addressing it to some figures on an ancient urn. To those figures, the artistic beauty they participate in is their only truth, and that truth is all they need to know. Good post, though.
T tom waits March 31, 2010
It’s not all frailty and fragility. Of course, old things can serve as reminders for the nostalgic of the times before we seemed to have lost our way. Of course, that is a natural tendency, because the past is far more certain in most people’s minds than the future.
Culturally significant sites are also preserved as high water marks in cultural/artistic achievement and symbolize success.
They also commemorate, or mark, “place.” Such and such happened here. It gives meaning to the geography we are surrounded by, lending identity, and a reason for being.
No history = no conscience.
C captiveyak March 31, 2010
tom waits –
I agree. I wanted to write much more on the subject, but in the interest of focus, chose a somewhat post-Luzon emotive appeal. I enjoy this community’s deliberate and insistent approach to community history. We can choose the story of Tacoma’s past and future by carefully preserving our significant cultural landmarks.
I intend to explore the topic of historic preservation in future articles, and will be watching the comments to get a sense of what people are thinking about (I’m remarkably clueless about many of the movements going on in this City).
A artifacts March 31, 2010
A bridge can succeed for the most basic reason; it connects two places together by spanning an obstacle. Each time a bridge is used its success is affirmed. In structure, a bridge can act as a place with purpose and function. In design, its appearance can evoke confidence, interest, curiosity. When a road becomes a bridge passage is evident, a journey is advanced more significantly, distance is diminished in larger, more important measures. Inches become feet on a bridge, steps become leaps, lengths become leagues.
A bridge can also connect places in the realm of ideas, span obstacles of the mind and expand possibilities. A bridge can stand for defiance and adventure, it can be an odyssey, a challenge met, a metaphor. In its simplicity it can make a fool of its obstacle and in its complexity and nobility it can lionize the difficulty it overcomes, the way a champion can elevate an opponent.
Like a plank across a puddle to a child, a bridge is the first practical encounter with architecture for most people, the first step from play to real, from imaginary to actual, from model to full scale, from helpless to powerful, from here to there.
T Thorax O'Tool April 1, 2010
Don’t forget what the bridge originally meant.
We forget that in the early days, the railroads owned Tacoma. They owned a huge amount of the land and wielded an economic and political power that would give Steve Ballmer a wet dream.
When the Murray Morgan was completed in 1913, it gave the citizens of Tacoma some power back. It let the workers in the port get between their homes and their jobs without having to deal with the railroads… they simply went over them.
The bridge has historic significance like most of us don’t even remember.
A Andrew R Campbell April 2, 2010
@Artifacts- sounds like the words of Mr. Sullivan himself! I’d say the Murray Morgan does all of those things for us collectively and individually, in our own ways. There are very few things that have served as both a mechanism and a muse in the way that bridge has (would there be a “Skid Road” without it?).
That’s probably the real value of having it around, in my mind at least, to bridge gaps both physically and historically. It’s a testament to the steady innovation and forward drive that saw Tacoma flourish and the support it’s received recently is a tangible vestige of the ever-present creativity and communal passion that will see Tacoma rise again. The fact that we rally behind our artifacts is precisely what gives this place its unique value and our awareness of the rarity of a place like Tacoma (and its history)is what will keep so many of us from leaving it in the face of change. Plainly, the Murray Morgan is what so many people in Tacoma need- a physical and unwavering monument that grounds and connects us to what we were as we inch uncertainly toward the Tacoma we’ll become.
Daniel R hit the nail on the head with this one, “…reminding us of our inability to properly care for our own creations”. In a lot of ways, allowing the bridge’s destruction would be akin, in some symbolic way, to allowing the destruction of the beautiful and fragile creation that Tacoma itself is. So much has gone in to making this place what it is and so much of that has already faded away. We need tangible and evident reminders of what we are and why a community willing to invest such effort in preserving the beautiful is exactly the kind that deserves to keep it.
Really excellent article- looking forward to those that follow.