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Photo of the Mario Cuomo (formerly called Tappan Zee) bridge- I guess the photo itself is the creative thing. I moved to Tarrytown NY during the pandemic to work as a Physician Assistant at the Bronx VA. From the kitchen window in my apt I had a view of the bridge, and I took walks in my immediate neighborhood as often as I could given long work hours and the short days of winter where the view of the bridge was even better than from the kitchen window. At first I took a picture to show friends who were ALL far away (I did not have any friends in Tarrytown nor did I make any) the view from my window and where I was living. But then I kept taking pictures of it for some reason, at different times of day, with different stunning sunsets, etc. I'm not sure they came out all that differently, and I was just using my phone camera and I have the cheapest old iphone. I didn;t actually really share these, how many bridges could anyone want to see? And I don't know why I did this, but it was like a compulsion. I guess a lot of times I am motivated to take pictures because I see something beautiful (often) or meaningful (sometimes) and I want to be able to share what I see with others, I want them to experience it. Inevitably though the pictures disappoint. They can;t capture what I see or feel. I usually just delete them. Ultimately, I deleted almost all of my bridge photos because my phone has so little space, but I kept this one as a souvenir of that time. I will always think of my time during the pandemic in Tarrytown... it is the only period that I lived there, in contrast to the previous apartment in which I lived for a full year prior to the beginning of the pandemic and where I stayed for a few months. One cool thing about the bridge that is not apparent in this photo is that they often changed the light colors. Anyway, I used to kind of chuckle to myself as it was as if I fancied myself a Monet with his paintings of the church in Rouen at different times of day. Ridiculous, since certianly I was not trying to produce any art, but I did engage in this compulsive behavior. I guess it gave me a distraction.
I will also say that perhaps not the bridge itself, but the landscape of the Hudson River and importantly the lights and civilization across the river on the other side of that bridge did have an important symbolism for me. Seeing those lights across the river made me feel like there is someone out there- there are people doing their things, there is life, maybe those people are alone like me or maybe they are not, but somehow all of this made me feel less alone.
