{"id":6328,"date":"2007-05-06T07:17:52","date_gmt":"2007-05-06T11:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6328"},"modified":"2025-09-25T18:13:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T22:13:57","slug":"the-books-the-bridge-across-forever-richard-bach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6328","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cThe Bridge Across Forever\u201d (Richard Bach)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – by Richard Bach. <\/p>\n

If you read a couple of the Amazon reviews on the re-release of this long-time NY Times bestseller – and the ultimate “soulmate” book – you start to see how angry people are at the author. Like: really angry<\/i>. <\/p>\n

I’ve spent some time on Richard Bach message forums and there’s a real sense of betrayal some express there. Because life down here – in the swamp – without astral travel, and tons of money – quite often sucks, and we all want to find OUR mates, but it’s not so easy! It’s not that Richard Bach makes it sound easy: he puts Leslie through hell. It’s that, after 20 years of marriage, he divorced her. So what does THAT mean for all the schmucks down here who looked to him as a guide? (Choose your guides carefully, is the lesson.) Whether or not you think it’s unfair to put all the responsibility onto Bach’s shoulders is another conversation, albeit an interesting one (there are entire forums devoted to discussing this on various Richard Bach fan sites). <\/p>\n

It seems to me that feeling “betrayed” is unfair. Richard Bach is, after all, just a man. He is not a floaty astral guide from the planet Vega. He is just a flesh and blood man, subjected to the same pressures and miseries as the rest of us. He has more money, but the day to day relationship is the same. He brought this on himself by setting himself up as a guide in his books. He’s even a Christ-like figure in Illusions<\/i>. Maybe he, too, had a problem with being a human being. All of his books, in a way, are about wanting to transcend reality, transcend “the way things are”. From Jonathan Livingston Seagull<\/i> on, this has been his jam. Being a pilot was one way he achieved near-transcendence, and release of the earthly ties that bind.<\/p>\n

I didn’t feel betrayed when I heard Bach and Parrish divorced. No, I had a petty response. It lacked sympathy. It was a “serves you right” response which I mostly associate with self-righteous hypocritical Christian gossips. I prefer the betrayal, actually! Glee in the face of someone else’s problems is so not me. But this is a post about my ongoing relationship with this man and how it has changed over time. My first response was the ugly one, and I have my reasons. If you read me regularly, you know my reasons. I’ve gone back and re-read all the books. Part of why I wrote those soulmate essays was an attempt to come to terms with the whole Richard Bach thing, and the outsized impact he had on me when I was 18-20 years old. I actually feel sad for Bach now. He has six children but you would never know that from any of his books. He never ever mentions them. Why? He was a broken person. I can’t stand the smug “serves you right” response, although I am not perfect and fell into it! Overall, with more distance, I am more interested in … what the HELL was going on with him??<\/p>\n

Some of the passages in Bridge Across Forever<\/i> still resonate today. It’s almost like it’s even MORE interesting to read now, with the knowledge that after all THAT they called it quits. I wish he’d write about the breakup. I wish Leslie had written her own side of things. <\/p>\n

But still, I wonder. His “soulmate” theory (and he says it himself in the book) requires perfection. Any time Leslie does something that doesn’t fit with his view of “Her”, his “ideal”, he’s all taken aback. All this MEANING is assigned to poor Leslie, who is just in love, and trying to have a relationship with this man. He discovers one day that, sometimes, Leslie swears like a longshoreman. He is shocked and offended. His “perfect woman” wouldn’t swear like that. Leslie, bless her, laughs until she cries when she sees the shocked prissy look on his face. “Ohhhh, did my swearing shock poor little Richie?” <\/p>\n

Anyone who thinks perfection is the ultimate goal is a totalitarian at heart. Something’s wrong there. We all want to be happy. But some people don’t want to feel<\/i>. Not really<\/i>. And not feeling<\/i> is their definition of happy. (This makes me think of Tennessee Williams’ great answer to an interviewer asking, “What’s your definition of happiness?” Williams said, “Insensitivity, I guess.”) Richard Bach was this kind of person. Leslie has a normal range of human emotions. She gets upset, frustrated, she’s not afraid of her own anger. If she feels like Bach is running away from her, she comes right out and says it. Bach thinks they should just float in and out of each other’s orbits, without expecting anything … no real obligations, because obligations are CHAINS on him. (There’s nothing more chain-like than six children, when you want to barnstorm through the American Midwest.) Bach’s ideal is to float above the mess of real life. This is a very neurotic ideal, but I only see this after 20 years of life, and having learned some hard lessons myself. I yearned for nothingness too. I yearned for perfection, I bought the lie “happily ever after”. Things didn’t work out for me. Maybe I gained something, I’m sure I did, but I am aware of the sense of loss. Still. I don’t blame Bach for this, but he is a part of the story.<\/p>\n

Many people have had similar experiences – heartbreak, thinking you met your soulmate and then OOPS it wasn’t after all – and took it out on Richard Bach. “I lost my soulmate – NOW WHAT?” they scream at him in the forums. Bach was a guru to them, and he failed. He lied to them. (according to them). When word came out that he divorced Leslie, he got death threats.<\/p>\n

Bridge Across Forever<\/i> – as I wrote in one of my soulmates essays – got me through a really rough time – freshman and sophomore year in college. I read it and re-read it, and the copy of the book I am looking at right now is the same one I read back then. It is falling apart. I eventually moved on from Bach, but the “soulmate” thing continued to inform me until everything fell apart in my late 20s. It all came crashing down. I can still look at Bridge Across Forever<\/i> and appreciate it for what it is.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt. Richard Bach thinks he and Leslie have been spending “too much time” together. He’s feeling trapped. hHe goes off to his house in Key West, where he has an airport full of planes which he owns (this was in the wake of the success of JLS<\/i> and Illusions<\/i> – he suddenly was richer than he knew how to handle). He walks into his empty house in Key West only to be greeted by a knight in clanking medieval armor. The knight scolds him: “Why are you spending so much time with Leslie? She is not your perfect woman. You have to keep searching, Richard. Don’t tie yourself down.” A long philosophical argument ensues.<\/p>\n

The message in the following excerpt still resonates with me: So was there some future ahead of me that could not possibly happen without my first having lived this free lonely present.<\/i><\/p>\n

I often feel trapped in my “free lonely present”. I wonder if someday I will look back on this time and think, “All that the chaos back then now makes sense.” David says he is sure that will be the case. I have tears in my eyes. How much I want to believe that.<\/p>\n

Excerpt from The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – by Richard Bach. <\/b><\/p>\n

How much to learn if we could spend one hour, spend twenty minutes with the us-we-will-become! How much could we say to us-we-were?<\/p>\n

Smoothly smoothly, with the gentlest touch of one finger on the control stick, the little airplane eased out of its dive. At redline airspeed one does nothing sudden with an aircraft, lest it become a puff of separate parts stopped midflight, fluttering here and there into swamps.<\/p>\n

Lower clouds shot past like bursts of peaceful flak; a lonely road flicked below and was gone.<\/p>\n

Such an experiment that would be! To say hello to all the other Richards flown out ahead of me in time, to find a way to listen to what they’d say! And the alternate me’s in alternate futures, the ones who made different decisions along the way, who turned left at corners I turned right, what would they have to tell me? Is their life better or not? How would they change it, knowing what they know now? And none of this, I thought, is to mention the Richards in other lifetimes, in the far futures and the far pasts of the Now. If we all live Now, why can’t we communicate?<\/i><\/p>\n

By the time the airport was in sight, the little jet had forgiven me my neglects and we were friends again. It was harder to forgive myself, but so it usually is.<\/p>\n

We slowed and entered the landing pattern, that same pattern that I had seen the day I got off the bus and walked to the airport. Can I see him now, walking there with his bedroll and news he was a millionaire? What do I have to say to him? Oh, my, what do I have to say?<\/p>\n

As easy to land as it was tricky to take off, the BD-5 hushed down final approach, touched its miniature wheels to the ground, rolled long and straight to the last taxiway. Then primly she turned and in a minute we were back at the hangar, engine-fire off, turbine spinning slower and slower and stopped at last.<\/p>\n

I patted her canopy-bow and thanked her for the flight, the custom of any pilot who’s flown longer than he or she thinks they’ve deserved.<\/p>\n

The other airplanes watched enviously. They wanted to fly, too; needed to fly. Here the poor Widgeon, oil leaking from the nose-case of her right engine. The seal had dried from being still for so long.<\/p>\n

Could I listen to airplane’s futures, as well as my own? Had I practiced and known her future then, I would not have felt sad. She would become a television-star airplane, opening each episode of a wildly popular TV series, flying to a beautiful island, landing on the water, taxiing to dock sparkling and pretty, no oil leaks anywhere. And she couldn’t have that future without the present she lived right now, dusty in my hangar after flying her few hundred hours with me.<\/p>\n

So was there some future ahead of me that could not possibly happen without my first having lived this free lonely present.<\/p>\n

I climbed the stairs back to the house, absorbed in the possibility of contact with the other aspects of me, Richards-before and Richards-yet-to-be, the I’s of other lifetimes, other planets, other hypnotic space-times.<\/p>\n

Would any of them have looked for a soulmate? Would any of them have found her?<\/p>\n

Intuition – the future\/past always-me – whispered back, that moment on the stairs:<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story – by Richard Bach. If you read a couple of the Amazon reviews on the re-release of this long-time NY Times bestseller – and the ultimate “soulmate” book – you start to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[75,1048,1050],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6328"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201223,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328\/revisions\/201223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}