There are several bridges in Paris coated with padlocks. Each lock is engraved --- or sharpied in a modern take on the tradition --- with two names or sets of initials. Then padlocked to the bridge railing.
Crowdsourcing a windblock? |
But it's a terrible metaphor. For one, the locks are small. Is your commitment to the relationship small? Easily broken by a pair of bolt-cutters or even just a screwdriver and a few seconds' work? Your relationship is periodically removed, cut free, and cleaned up by public employees sent to keep the bridge clean. It does not lock anything; it serves no function; it is empty, meaningless, a dead weight. (Not to cast your relationship too cruelly.)
In short, this supposedly-enduring emblem of your relationship is doomed to end. Soon. Just like all the other, identical, not-special-or-unique romances that led to the same strained metaphor and what I'm sure were very sweet, but transient, kisses on a bridge in Paris.
Other photographers shared my prospect. |
This post's theme word is gris-gris, "a charm, amulet, or fetish." A true gris-gris of a devoted relationship should have more properties in common with its object: permanence, size, import, durability. The monument to my love will be more like a swimming pool filled with concrete --- large, heavy, immovable, and requiring specialized machinery and many man-hours to disassemble. Ah, concrete pool! light of my life!
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