Friday: Writing

Recently I had the pleasure of crashing on my bicycle. It was my fault, it was something my ego is still too wounded to confess, and all I know is one second I was riding and the next second I was on the ground with enough time to brace for an incoming chain reaction crash. My first thought was, "Oh my god, is my bike alright?!"

When we were younger, my kid sister was the one who made multiple trips to the emergency room for stitches and casts. She wasn't clumsy or careless, she was just fearlessly testing the limits, and I, as a chubby kid, admired her physical prowess.

Since I started riding, my relationship with the asphalt had become almost intimate, and only because I had learned to be adventurous. But when it was sheer oversight, the crash was only shaming.

So I trailed the pack for the rest of the night until we stopped to rest and drink. A young man approached me in the lavender dark and asked me if I was okay.

I grumbled an affirmative, and offered up my road rash-ed elbow as evidence to my unremarkable condition. He said, "Oh you're bleeding. Let me get you a bandaid."

I protested to no avail, and eventually submitted my wound to his care.

In a moment I relinquished all control and ego, and I was a child transformed, giving in to higher powers and sharing my mortality. He skillfully applied the bandaid, laying down one end and deftly peeling up the other, the way someone who's applied many bandaids would. There was a sudden security in his easy motion, and though the bandaid was merely a superficial and temporary aid, in that moment, it cured everything.

The extension of our humanity to one another stirred something deep and primal inside of me, and it occurred to me that we are the human animal.

Writing July 3 2009