I loved riding my bike when I was a kid about 11 and 12 in Southern California. I sometimes would ride into the night up above the high school. And it was there or somewhere around there that I first saw a guy on a motorcycle get hit by a car. He seemed to be scrambling to get up I thought at the time his arms and legs moving back and forth and there was a lot a whole lot of blood on the street. But then he stopped -he stopped moving entirely just laid there and an ambulance showed up. So I kept riding and it was real dark when I got home.
It didn't seem gory to me, but for some reason it did seem sad, all the colors were dark and getting darker.
The second time was on Sunset Boulevard near the elementary school and me and my friend had stopped for the light. We were just ready to get going again and I was thinking it was a pretty afternoon and a motorcycle pulled into the intersection. A small car was passing us and hit it and spun it around and there on the street in front of me was a guy in a helmet, a green helmet and beautiful yellow leather jacket with his legs around the motorcycle. I sat there and looked at the illimitable silence and stillness of his pose while cars passed. I thought he is dead, how do I know that?, there is no blood, I wonder, what should I do? I was woken as I heard the loud siren coming behind me.
I never talked about those guys to anybody, what could I say?
CHARLES SIMIC
Doug I had a similar experience and I also kept it to myself. It was something that happened in the mountains of Honduras. Thinking About it makes me want to cry. Experiences like that are intimate and profound. Somehow I think we feel implicated on a subconscious level. Feels burdensome to foist it on another person, like too much for them to understand, so we carry it around. I don't even know if I can tell you. My story is more gruesome. Maybe I will tell my university of Chicago guy.
ReplyDeleteThe only time I saw someone die right in front of me, was from a motorcycle accident too, although for me, it was in the emergency room, as an x-ray student. It was a big eye opener on how people are of "service" behind closed doors. The event was eerily sad, but the actions of workers that are supposedly of service was even more sad...I slowly, got the understanding that it seemed about half the people were genuinely in the medical field because they cared for others...and then there was the other half... I guess they just needed a job, but oh, the lack of dignity, the utter loss of basic consideration..
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