Vitality and Morbidity

Death is nothing to be afraid of, even if certain methods of dying are frightful. Death is merely the absence of life, much as darkness is an absence of light, or cold an absence of heat. It is not a thing in itself, but just a name for when something else is missing.

Of course, these fine philosophical and semantical shadings were themselves absent the other day when a giant pickup truck decided to swerve across the road towards me and my bicycle.

I say “decided” because it was a conscious act to point the vehicle at me, pretending to run me over, before swerving away again at the last instant. And since you are reading this, you know I likely made it through unharmed.

I’m not sure what the driver was looking for. Anger? Fear? For me to fall over or get knocked down? I was concentrating on pedaling and didn’t have time to flinch before it was over, or react at all really, so I don’t suppose he got his desired reaction. It was so surreal, in fact, that I neglected to look behind me until several seconds had gone by — a long time to gather my wits and suddenly wonder if he was going to turn around and come back.

Strangest of all, this wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, where one might expect something like this to happen, like in really good or really bad horror movies. It was in the middle of suburbia. With witnesses. It was only a matter of chance that cops weren’t around at that moment. What was he thinking?

Explanations? Evil of humanity? Stupidity of same?

My guess is a combination of the “methinks he doth compensate too much” size of the truck and weekend’s usual alcohol-related past-times. And a need to frighten in order to not be frightened.

My original idea for this essay was inspired during bicycle trips even before the truck showed up.

When you go on long rides, particularly through less-developed areas, you expect to see plenty of fauna, both domesticated and wild. Just before that truck, in fact, I caught sight of a pair of jackrabbits with amazingly long ears, hopping away from me into an orange grove. There was a snake in the gutter on another day. Of course I see numberless squirrels, both earthy ground and woody tree varieties. Horse ranches, chicken farms, dogs (friendly and otherwise) barking from behind fences (hopefully), cats scattering into hedges or looking coolly from their porches. Birds of all kinds.

But often, the animals you encounter on the road are in various stages of decay. In fact, depending on how long your ride is, you might see more dead animals on a given day than live ones. And you realize that probably every last one of them was killed by a car.

Or a truck.

You might start to wonder how many people steer to avoid the animals and how many people steer to hit them.

Their remains appear in many forms, from just-stiffening corpses to sun-bleached leathery strips to mere stains on the asphalt. However, my purpose writing this is not to distress my readers with macabre descriptions of body parts or crawling insects or carrion birds. My purpose is to contrast vitality and morbidity. Life and Death.

When you are on a long bicycle trip, you can enter a sort of zone where you, your bicycle, the road, and the environment become one. Not in a spiritual sense necessarily, but rather in a physical sense. No matter how much your head was spinning before you left, no matter how much you were trapped in your head, the spinning of your feet and legs will force you into your body eventually. You are Present.

You are also Moving. You are the opposite of Static. What separates you from that boulder you just passed? Vitality. Life. Movement. You are muscle. Your heart, another muscle, pumps blood through you. You produce heat. You sweat to cool off.

We probably all know what death smells like, at least a little. (On a bicycle, it takes longer to escape the roadside stenches.) But what does life smell like?

Food cooking on the stove?

The scent of your loved ones?

Sweat?

The word “animal” comes from the same Latin roots that give us the words animate and animation and animus: life force, spirit, soul, breath. You are alive when you first take a breath, and you will die if you stop breathing. In a sense, you are most alive when you are breathing deepest.

And what if something captivates us? It takes our breath away.

Is it any wonder that the same orifices that breathe also speak and sing and eat and smell and taste? It’s all wrapped up together, don’t you think?

Now, what happens if you stop moving?

It is with regret I come across those animal victims of other people’s haste, but there’s not a lot I can do about it, except to not let the regret become all-encompassing. Don’t let their fate stop you from moving.

Death is nothing to be afraid of, truly, even if certain methods of dying are frightful. Death is merely an absence of movement where once there was movement. Like darkness is an absence of light, or cold an absence of heat. Death might be scary to you, but it is not a thing itself, merely a label we use when something else isn’t there.

Of course, fine philosophies and semantical wordplay are all well and good… and moot if an ass in a giant pickup decides to swerve toward you for no reason. But who has more to regret in that situation? The pathological driver who has momentum because he moves his foot a little, or the unsuspecting bicyclist who is exercising his right to Move?

Not me.