April 28, 2009
Dear Clusterflock
Do you turn your head to see the carnage of an accident? That is… if you were given the choice to witness a display of death, would you? Why?
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comments:
- Deron Bauman: It’s a start.
- Joel Bernstein: The first of many things, no doubt.
- Deron Bauman: I’ll pick him up at eight. He may not like the way I smell.
- Michael Smith: Joel’s Dream Date: Phantom Menace; Cat urine cologne; Deron.
- Joel Bernstein: For the record, if you pay to see this, you are no longer my friend.
- Deron Bauman: Meow.
- Joel Bernstein: This must be why I fuck so many cats.
- Michael Smith: Seems to me the experiment almost does itself.
- Casey Cichowicz: No. It is not possible. I can assure you.
- Joel Bernstein: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes?
- LaurenH: I’m with those who say get that girl out of that household. The father has now very effectively...
- Rick Neece: Holee sh..!
- Rick Neece: Asian calligraphy, ‘cept instead of a brush, hot glass. The image of her controlling the glass and...
- Rick Neece: For the gull-wing, I’m sure it would knock me in the chin every time I opened it.
- Marco: Oh god yes.
The question occurred to me as I found myself clicking the warning on The Big Picture‘s objectionable content — by which they mean, photos depicting death. Why do I look?
I make a point of not if I’m driving, because slowing up traffic doesn’t help what is a potentially improvable situation.
I guess there is a certain degree of fascination, at least for me, with human maladies and injuries. Seeing people open, voluntarily or otherwise, is a peek at how they tick or how they aren’t. The same applies to the couple of times that I’ve been under the knife. I love to watch. I just can’t deal with watching a needle go in to me is all.
Yesterday a friend and I took a walk in Greenpoint (Mary Jeys’ neighborhood) and came across the scene of a hit and run. We looked across the police tape with some interest until we saw a woman’s purse in the middle of the street, the contents spread out over 15 feet. At that point we decided to forgo our previous route and use a side street. Too heartbreaking.
this is actually a pet peeve of mine, when people slow down to gawk. I have no problem with someone wanting to see the carnage. I have a problem with the reflexive nature of it. move along, folks.
I don’t seek it out, but if it is within eyeshot I do tend to look. It is curiosity partly, but mostly it is to remind myself.
I sometimes wonder if my suburban upbringing brought with it a sterilized sense of humanity — of biology. Everything is so packaged and branded these days, I really have to go out of my way to exist in the world of what came before it.* So maybe I look for examples of mortality to more easily remember that we’re all fated to a messy, anonymous death. Is that what you meant by “to remind myself,” Andrew?
*Less so in San Francisco than New York, but still.
I’m not inclined to gawk. “Rick, move along, there’s nothing here for you to see,” seems to be the voice I hear in such situations. I remember a time when my second ex-wife and I topped a hill before an interchange in Springfield, Missouri, headed into town and came upon a terrible accident involving semis and a compact. The accident was just beyond the ramp we needed to take to continue on our way. It must have just happened, as folks in the emergency vehicles seemed to be just getting started with attending. I did not slow down, gawk. I took my ramp. Joni was looking, though and she burst into hard, inconsolable tears as we passed. I didn’t ask then, but to this day I wonder what she might have seen that day that might have triggered her response.
That is largely what I mean, Kelsey.
I am not squeamish and am not disturbed by the sight of blood or mangled flesh. I am troubled by the suffering that accompanies the carnage.
I don’t gawk at car accidents because I don’t want to make a bad situation worse.
If I come across a dead animal while walking, I will stop and look closely. I will linger for a long time over a dead bird.
I glance and then–don’t; it’s like a little delay in the mechanism that registers shame in my inquisitiveness. One thing I do like to scope out in such situations, though, is any evidence of perfunctory job performance. The cop yawning as he waves cars around, and the wrecker driver laughing on the phone….
I guess it is human nature to take a peek! I certainly don’t linger, but, then I spent many years first on the scene of such carnage – oddly the dead are the least trouble and least stressful aspect of such occasions. Blood and guts are just, well, blood and guts. Dealing with a family by the roadside whose husband and father has just had half his head removed by a truck is however not nice.
Yes, surely it is the living who prompt us to sorrow and pity. I’ve gazed upon the dead and born witness to the dying (though not anything like the extent you have, Phil), but only in the face of those who must endure pain for time unspooling have I felt myself in the presence of something almost unendurable.
…only in the face of those who must endure pain for time unspooling have I felt myself in the presence of something almost unendurable.
How those words ring in me this evening. I do not say this to create sensation among those who might see this comment, but merely as a statement of fact. My brother, a year-and-a-half my junior, has been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. I don’t yet know what I will do in support of him, of my immediate family. Danny is in “high-action” mode. Figuring out “where to go, what to do next.” Plans for the next few days and weeks will likely change.
Oh Rick, my most sincere condolences. I hope we can weather this with you, as a buttress of support during your time of need.
Thank you Kelsey. I just realized I made a comedic comment on a post in the wake of this comment. I tend to run to comedy when I don’t know how to really respond to my immediate world. I’m going to shut down for the night and try to let things sink in. I so appreciate your thoughts and support.
Temporary shut-down is sometimes the thing, Ricky Cameron. I love you all up, and I’ll be here when you wake. We’ll be here.
all my love to you, Rick.
My thanks to Phil and Sheila for their appreciation of the vastness of this question.
Rick, you dear, dear man–you have my undying love.
When I was 15, I found a dead man beside the road on Christmas Eve. He was the victim of a hit and run. It was 1973, and I was sick with the flu. I asked my father to take me and two neighbor friends for a ride to see the luminarias commonly displayed in El Paso. I was wearing fluffy pink house shoes. While the rest of the car’s inhabitants looked at a yard resplendent with glowing lights, I was looking at the other side of the street–at the bars, the dirt sidewalks, the old adobe buildings, and, finally, at the man lying face down in the dirt beside the road. I screamed at my father to stop the car. He stopped (I have always had a certain authority in my voice), but he didn’t want any of us to get out of the car, lest we be “involved.” Of course, I got out anyway, only to hear the click of the car’s door locks–the work of my 18-year-old friend, Bud, believing the entire thing to be some kind of ploy to rob us all. I went to the man and saw that his shoes had been knocked off of him–they lay about 20 feet ahead. His skin had goose bumps. I immediately turned him over, remembing all I’d learned about CPR and resuscitation techniques. Finally, other cars stopped, and the police arrived, and my father–guilty from having told so many lies in his life–apparently gave the police an odd story that they questioned. They didn’t speak to me–I was too busy trying to bring the man back, trying to make sense of the whole thing, trying to understand how someone could die on the side of the road in his white socks on Christmas Eve. I read in the newspaper a couple of days later that he was the father of 10 children. And several days after that–just after having had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled–I heard on the radio that the police were seeking the young woman at the scene of the accident for questioning. I couldn’t speak (my cheeks were swollen three-times their normal size), so I wrote my mother a note telling her what I had heard on the radio. My father contacted the police and went to the station, where he spent over 6 hours answering questions. My father never understood the value of honesty, of truth. He thought the fact that we had stopped made us look guilty somehow. Had I been able to speak to the police, I would surely have been able to put the situation to rest. But I do not know what ultimately happened with my father in his questioning–he never spoke of it again. That was common in my childhood–I never knew the details, the larger issues, the truth.
I cannot tell you how often I have thought of that man, newly dead, still covered in goosebumps beside the road. His shoes had been knocked off by the blow.
Cindy. I will love you forever for having lived that and for having told it. Compa~nera.
I’m one of those hard, inconsolable weepers, so, no, I don’t look.
I also try to to think for more than a few seconds about things like what Mike and Rick and Cindy said up there, because, look, here I go . . .
Rick. Honey.
All of our best, Rick.
Oh, Rick.
I woke up at 3:30 this morning still trying to make sense of the news. It isn’t real yet. Thank you all, I am buoyed by your words of love and support.
Rick, if my arms could reach, I’d give you a hug.
Our thoughts are with you, Rick. God bless.
I am terribly sorry to hear that, Rick.
I think we all want to hug you, Rick.