|
October 20, 2003
mark thomas I walked past a dead person today. He appeared to have collapsed while mounting his bike. He legs and arms wrapped tight around the frame of the bicycle, and his head lay on the road with a firmness, with a flatness of cheek and temple that showed he was not sleeping or faking it. I walked past, and rubbernecked from across the street. The man was certainly dead. Dead not like in the movies, where you can see the dead actor breathing. This guy was not making it up. He was DEAD. A man standing nearby appeared fascinated by the situation. People walked past the dead guy, glancing and pointing at the body but not breaking their stride. Their assumption might have been that the guy was a panhandler looking for attention. I almost asked the fascinated man "What the hell is that?" I was going to ask it like Steve Martin in the Saturday Night Live skit. But the fascinated man started talking to someone else. He said he called the cops. Help, for what satisfaction it would bring to the people who called for it, was on the way. I kept walking. I thought it rude to stand and stare. I thought about cemeteries, military funeral honors, 21 gun salutes, dixieland jazz funerals, JFK Jr. saluting his slain father, RFK's remarks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. My mind lept from Lyndon Johnson asking for God's help to Lyndon Johnson talking about the meaning of America. I thought about those moments throughout my life when I thought I could soon die. I remembered eyewitnissing the death of an elderly woman on 2nd Avenue and 72nd Street. A taxi ran her down, her body cartwheeled and her boots and wig went flying toward First Avenue. It was like an action movie, except after she landed she was really dead. A few blocks from where this man died you will find the Irish Potato Famine Cemetery, where Irish exiles who fled to New York City during the potato famine are buried. I read something today, in which Robert Moses described New York as an old city. I never thought of it that way, but the longer I live here the older this city seems. As I walked on I think I heard someone yelling "Sir! Sir!" Was that person yelling after me? Did he want to know why I stopped, surveyed the dead body, looked twice and three or four times, then just kept walking? I had my story ready, but could hardly hear the guy yelling after me.
Words deleted from these sentences:sorabji.com
|