Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 26

“Why do you think people leave their bicycle locks here?” I asked three companions as we walked across the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, Germany. Thousands of padlocks had been attached to the chain-link fence separating the pedestrian walkway from one of the world’s busiest train bridges.

A local, standing there reading the inscriptions, explained: “Lovers carve their name on a lock, lock it onto the grille, kiss, and throw the key into the Rhine. It expresses their conviction that their love is a ‘lock’ for life.” One lock read: “Daniel and Nicole 21/12/2009.” “Christiana and Willfried” was scratched crudely on another. One creative person had attached with three locks a polished brass ship under full sail, professionally engraved with two words: “Special RelationSHIP.”

Many of us did something similar in days of yore when we carved initials into a tree, like “WW + PS.”

I like the location. Bridges, like love, connect two separate or isolated entities.

I like the symbolic act of throwing away the key. In our easy-come, easy-go culture, love locks express a desire for something more, a commitment more than a connection, more tenacious than a tryst, more lasting than serial fallings into lust.

I think I can understand the cynicism of those who are disillusioned with love, even those who have taken wire cutters to the padlock. And I can understand those who argue that humans are not wired to be monogamous, or that it is a holy calling to stay celibate, or that it is morally acceptable, even superior, to choose a life devoid of romantic entanglements.

But there is also a place for love-locked souls on the Hohenzollern Bridge who resonate to Shakespeare: “Love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds / or bends with the remover to remove.”12