Odd Little Accident
Stay Back 300 Feet
Somebody got run over last Monday in the middle of Telegraph Avenue.
It was evidently a hit-and-run, as there were no cars stopped nearby; merely a lumpy, indistinct supine human form in a purple t-shirt, black jeans, and a pair of hiking boots. When I walked past, an ambulance was on-scene, and paramedics had the victim in a stretcher, and already had him (?) attached to an IV. Two of them leaned over him in their dark blue jumpsuits, speaking to his eyes.
It was a surprisingly somber sight against such a warm, bright Monday afternoon. A large crowd stood mostly silent on the sidewalk. A physically disabled man with a surprisingly well-trimmed beard sat in the street in his motorized wheelchair, staring vacantly. As I watched, I heard sirens behind me.
Up pulled the hook and ladder truck from the Berkeley Fire Department, gleaming and rumbling diesel. I looked at the sign at the end of the ladder trailer, reading, "stay back 300 feet," and saw the fireman leap from the little steering cab at the very end. How exactly does a single hit-and-run victim warrant the dispatching of a hook and ladder fire truck? The car didn't run him over in his sixth-floor apartment.
I paused for only a moment, when I heard a spectator say, "The car just went right over him." I thought then about the shape of the human body, about the physics involved, how the body physically reacts, and how it retains its general shape, despite the trauma. Limbs may be broken, and organs ruptured, but that body did not bear this outwardly - no cartoonish dents. The cold physics exist separately from, and in spite of the psychological collision, the nightmarish revolutions of the subjective mind. The mind is crushed and deformed, sent spinning and screaming and weeping as the world lays sideways, while the body comes rapidly to rest, inscrutably plump. The cold physics would be the same under any circumstance where a body came into contact with such a force. It is up to the subjective mind to recognize how it has placed the body in the specific, subjective circumstances of the collision, and how it must now bear the consequences imposed by those ever-present laws that govern the behavior of matter.
As I walked away, I heard yet more sirens. From the other direction came one of those larger Fire Dept. rescue vehicles, built on the chassis of a Freightliner commercial truck, with comically small wheels. I put my fingers to my ears and scowled at the driver. They were rushing to the same scene.
The paramedics already had him laced up on the stretcher and IV'd. These were just more paper tigers, arriving with an empty ambulance to loiter uselessly and assess the situation brusquely from behind bristly mustaches. They would stand there and gaze down at the inert victim and perhaps keep the sun from his eyes. It was quite warm and bright.
There was no broken glass, no gasoline spilled into the street. There was no fire hazard, no wreckage to clean up. There was only an injured person, strapped to a plastic slab, staring up in bewilderment from the shadows of a dozen idle emergency workers.
It was evidently a hit-and-run, as there were no cars stopped nearby; merely a lumpy, indistinct supine human form in a purple t-shirt, black jeans, and a pair of hiking boots. When I walked past, an ambulance was on-scene, and paramedics had the victim in a stretcher, and already had him (?) attached to an IV. Two of them leaned over him in their dark blue jumpsuits, speaking to his eyes.
It was a surprisingly somber sight against such a warm, bright Monday afternoon. A large crowd stood mostly silent on the sidewalk. A physically disabled man with a surprisingly well-trimmed beard sat in the street in his motorized wheelchair, staring vacantly. As I watched, I heard sirens behind me.
Up pulled the hook and ladder truck from the Berkeley Fire Department, gleaming and rumbling diesel. I looked at the sign at the end of the ladder trailer, reading, "stay back 300 feet," and saw the fireman leap from the little steering cab at the very end. How exactly does a single hit-and-run victim warrant the dispatching of a hook and ladder fire truck? The car didn't run him over in his sixth-floor apartment.
I paused for only a moment, when I heard a spectator say, "The car just went right over him." I thought then about the shape of the human body, about the physics involved, how the body physically reacts, and how it retains its general shape, despite the trauma. Limbs may be broken, and organs ruptured, but that body did not bear this outwardly - no cartoonish dents. The cold physics exist separately from, and in spite of the psychological collision, the nightmarish revolutions of the subjective mind. The mind is crushed and deformed, sent spinning and screaming and weeping as the world lays sideways, while the body comes rapidly to rest, inscrutably plump. The cold physics would be the same under any circumstance where a body came into contact with such a force. It is up to the subjective mind to recognize how it has placed the body in the specific, subjective circumstances of the collision, and how it must now bear the consequences imposed by those ever-present laws that govern the behavior of matter.
As I walked away, I heard yet more sirens. From the other direction came one of those larger Fire Dept. rescue vehicles, built on the chassis of a Freightliner commercial truck, with comically small wheels. I put my fingers to my ears and scowled at the driver. They were rushing to the same scene.
The paramedics already had him laced up on the stretcher and IV'd. These were just more paper tigers, arriving with an empty ambulance to loiter uselessly and assess the situation brusquely from behind bristly mustaches. They would stand there and gaze down at the inert victim and perhaps keep the sun from his eyes. It was quite warm and bright.
There was no broken glass, no gasoline spilled into the street. There was no fire hazard, no wreckage to clean up. There was only an injured person, strapped to a plastic slab, staring up in bewilderment from the shadows of a dozen idle emergency workers.