Parsons challenge 3: Fragile dreams on a bamboo scaffold

At many construction sites in Taiwan, scaffolds are made of bamboo, and secured with green nylon nets. Many tragic accidents happened at the construction site, where laborers fell from the scaffolds. I photographed this image from beneath a building to capture the scaffold against the blue sky, thinking how this image somehow symbolized dreams, ideals, and the future. And then I thought of how ironic it was that workers climbing scaffolds resembled children dangling on monkey bars at the playground. The image made me understand how life is short, and how dreams are illusive and fragile. The lives of the workers are as delicate as those of children, and the workers risk their lives in the playground of reality.

My fiend died in an accident yesterday. He fell from a bamboo scaffold.

I was there.

I watched him climb higher and higher into the sky, and his smile was as blinding and proud as the sun above our heads.

Upon his deathbed, he told me that life was like climbing a monkey bar

—You climb, you fall, and you climb up again.

But I thought I’ve told him a thousand times: “life is nothing like that.”

Life is but a fragile dream. All of a sudden you hear a shatter, and you wake up in a blank space of nothingness.

My friend sighed his last sigh on earth and told me to carve these words onto his stone grave:

“Have Fun at the Goddamned Playground.”