After expressing my views about rainbow bridges, I’ve been informed that many pet owners believe in the rainbow bridge. When their beloved pets leave them, it is to cross over the rainbow bridge into an eternal back yard.
Although I haven’t explored this thoroughly, I’ve been told there are condolence cards specifically citing the pet’s rainbow bridge. So it seems I’ve hurt and shaken up a lot of people when I referred to the rainbow bridge as myth.
I take my tongue out of my cheek to explain the rainbow bridge to which I referred as myth was the one that was constructed and then destructed in Richard Wagner’s four-opera Ring Cycle. That’s the only rainbow bridge I can cite out of my deep, long experience with fairy tales, myths, legends and fantasies. That rainbow bridge collapsed and burned when Valhalla burned and the Norse gods died. I am absolutely certain because I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes quite a few times.
The other rainbow bridge which, I suggested, might be envisioned as separating the land of politics from the land of law, is entirely mythological. That is, it doesn’t exist; it never did. I know this because I invented it when I wrote the above linked piece.
I cannot speak to any other rainbow bridges, especially not one which your beloved pets — as unlike flawed, selfish, venal, dishonest, stupid and nasty Norse gods as could be imagined — use to leave you for somewhere else, somewhere eternal.