Yesterday, merrily barrelling through holiday traffic on the way to work, I was dicking around with another clown who was also riding a motorcycle in much too cold Thanksgiving-like weather. He zigged right, I zagged left, and the Nissan Frontier in front me decided it was a good place to slam on his brakes. Locking the brakes up on my scoot, I clearly remember the progression of thoughts racing through my mind. First was, I am gonna face plant in his tailgate. Second was, I wish my ex-wife was with me, so I could escort her to the Gates of Hell.
I have not won the lottery yet, because I was saving all of my luck for that
moment. I was able to stop the bike, stop the "controlled skid" and maintain a heart rate below the "pop a brain vein" level without showing off my Evel Knievel impersonation. After roundly chastising myself for several minutes, then going over the list of lessons to be learned from my two-wheeled tom-foolery, there was that little voice that asked, "Why do you do ride this two-wheeled widowmaker?" Brave, but foolish little voice...
I don't know if the individuals in any generation in any society has been more willing to define themselves by what they do as this generation seems so eager to do. Some of the worst offenders have got to be lawyers. Our self-imposed and sometimes enforced ethics imprison us in a bubble, sets us apart form everyone else. Our current, overwhelmingly accepted architecure for day to day work models largely keeps us in our offices, seperated from everyone. For reasons not important here, most lawyers leave lawschool emotionally stunted. We spend all day around similarly emotionally-stunted lawyers, finding new ways to push one another's buttons. Life loses its color, and the only remaining fun is finding new and interesting ways to be too clever by half, and succeed at the favored past-time of our predecessors, commonly referred to as "trick-fucking" the other side. I have said it before, I hate the job, but I do so love the work.Driving around mindlessly in a four-wheeled cage is another form of the same kind of
isolationism. In my little pimp-mobile, I am in my own world, master of my domain, all I need is me, fuel, GPS, satellite radio, telephone and a DVD player to get drive the 20 miles into work without having to consider, or really even see, the world around me. Narcotized mental masturbation.On the bike, I can smell the eggs and the chorizo from the whole in the wall Mexican food restaraunt that I ignored for a year. I can feel the drop in temperature and the increase in humidity as I drop over a ridge that conceals a creek bed running through the bottom. I can hear an approaching ambulance nearly a full 30 seconds before any of the P. Diddy-thumping, blunt smoking, cage driving retards surrounding me in traffic. Watching the Blue Angels practice a performance from the relative safety of an SUV is one thing, feeling the growl of a jet engine, feeling the vibration of your helmet as they roar past is something all together different.
Having avoided a permanent tattoo on my forehead advertising the Nissan Frontier, I rolled into downtown and into the realization that, whether I like them or not I have the same sensory appreciation of the squibs walking through downtown. 30 degree weather means a hell of a lot more to that crazy homeless woman who told me several years ago that I was too fat. After just 30 minutes in the cold, I was freezing my fat ass off.
The summer was the same, though I didn't realize it at first. A few blocks form the office, there is a newly formed whole in the ground that used to be an abandoned office building. I had a small hand in the bankruptcy that, somehow, ultimately led to the implosion of the building. During the summer, the mexicans doing the cleanup at the site walk across the street at lunch time, arms and faces glistening with sweat from the ungodly 100 degree plus heat. Many of them sit at the street corner, under sparse, precious shade.
On the bike, I pay more attention to young lovers walking hand in hand down the street. It is easier to read the body language and see who hates who, who is kissing up to whom, and who just wants to be some other place. Two weeks ago, a friend (since undergrad) who screwed me out of a sweet job opporunity a few weeks ago was walking through the crosswalk earlier than usual. No one else was around, and I had to fight the urge to run through him. We were breathing the same air, but his seemed cleaner, the rareified air of a man much closer to the top than myself. Asshole.
I watched one of our longtime panhandlers slide up next to a tourist or conventioneer. Fort Worth has some of the most creative, laid back and god-fearing beggars in the country. He was shucking and jiving just seconds after introducing himself, and even shaking hands, with his mark. I could see his pointing and gesticulations aimed generally westward. This meant one of two things, either he was using the tried and true line about the church not yet being open and needing a cup of coffee, or he was falling back on the sometimes more plausible, but less sympathetic story about his car being out of gas at the 7/11 on 7th Street, and his child is waiting on him in the car, and he just needed a little gas money to get back to Irving. I love our panhandlers here, and will take them over indigents from any other city any day of the week.
Riding the bike, narrowly avoiding cranial/tire inversion, dodging soccer-moms with a cell-phone in their ear and their head up their ass reminds me that I won't live forever. I cannot wait to get help for my older kids, living in an emotional hell. I need to call my mom and my dad, more often. My brother works within walking distance of my office, and we cannot even pull off lunch together once a month. I need to tell my wife everyday that I love her.
If I have to explain, you won't understand... Formerly Living.
