Karma

In was thinking about writing this play about two weeks ago now: on a man's bikeride home from work, he is struck by a car door and the entirety of the play happens as he is flying through the air before he dies. The play opened with this interestingly cinematic focus on the biker (sorry, cyclist) as he pedals around the staged and then somehow glides through the air after he is hit. And then he stops in the air. Floats. I have no idea how this would be done. Strings, no doubt. But that is what is lovely about being behind the script: you don't have to figure this shit out.

Of course then I wrote about punching that one patron in the face. And I wrote about the eternal war between bikers and taxicab drivers. I am sure I sinned little sins throughout the week. So I should not have been surprised when a mother of two with a yappy mutt in the back of her SUV swung her door open right into my wrist and handlebar, flipping my bike to the side and sending me sprawling.Maybe the body knows when it is going to die and when it is not, and maybe it only entertains the almost-certainly-doomed with that fabled flash of a lifetime in the mere flicker of that last second. Because NOTHING flashed before my eyes. One minute I am up and going 15 miles an hour; the next minute I'm on the ground. There is no in between.

I have recreated what happened from my injuries. The most apparent is the bruised scrape and lack of skin on my left elbow and arm along with a bruise down my left thigh and a scrape on the outside of my left knee: the street. Little indentions and a bruise on my right wrist which aches: where the car door hit me and swung me. A bruise on the inside of my left shin where my bike must have landed on me. A bruise near my right shoulder. Where is that from?

I am on my feet. Checking my wounds. Pushing everything to make sure nothing is broken. I check my bike, which is an old heavy mountain bike: the Volvo of bikes. The woman is freaking out. Cursing. Jesus. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus. Oh shit. Oh shit. Replaying it in her head. I am going to say something nasty -- I feel the need to say something poignant and lasting on behalf of all the cyclists of Chicago who save money, time, and the environment by biking downtown everyday; the cyclists who are closer to the road than any save maybe the taxicab drivers -- but then her two kids get out, and I replay it in my head. Mother in front seat. Sons in back. Sons getting out. Be careful. Wait for mommy. Head turned backwards to make sure they are ok. Dog yapping in her ear. Quick. Need to get out before they run off: boys will be boys.

No time to check the side mirror for bikes.

Sigh. How can one stay angry?

She offers me a drink of all things. My elbow is bleeding pretty freely. I cannot tell yet if my wrist has a hairline fracture or some other thing that I have heard from one of many doctor-oriented television shows. I am fixing my headlight which has popped open. A drink? No, no, I'll be fine. Just some scrapes. I'll just need some bandaids. I have bandaids, she offers. Not big enough for this, I think. But I simply refuse. She walks away.

When you cannot put any weight on your elbow, it makes you realize how god-awful your posture is.

Taxicab v. Bicycle

Idea. T-shirt line. Taxicab v. Bicycle. Expound: a t-shirt line devoted to the eternal battle between these two outcasts of the streets. Outcasts? Or truest of patrons? Of the earth, it has been said.

But what of the road.

The taxicab driver: not breaking-even until around the 7th hour of driving, typically picking up assholes who are too worried, shy, drunk, or lazy to take public transit. The taxicab driver: sitting all day, back aching as his right calf grows progressively stronger than his atrophied left, counting the minutes until he can make a stop at his favorite toilet or White Hen, hoping that he doesn't get an asshole, praying that he gets a tip. Listening to yet another cell phone conversation.

The biker: pursuing a harmonious understanding of a planet in which one can get from point A (Lakeview) to point B (Randolf and Dearborn) by the sweat of his brow and the technological ingenuity of gears and spokes. The biker: dodging side mirrors and ignoring impatient honks as the roads provide and then do not provide designated lanes (into which open driver's doors will still fly). With every single stop sign he carefully glides through -- and let us be honest, most bikers slide through most stop signs -- he questions: would a police officer really waste time on me? It is a perilous existence -- the least sheltered of all commuters.

It only follows that these two honorable souls, the biker and the taxicab driver, these people of the asphalt, would share a fondness for one another. A bond. A brotherhood of liked minded pilgrims.

And yet, or so the myth goes, on the eighth day the taxicab driver Cain killed his biker brother Abel by pulling -- without warning -- intoa bike lane on Clark to drop off or pick up (the scrolls have deteriorated over time) a silly band of Depaul sophomores with their freshly intoxicated legality. The naive Abel thought himself invincible: he had his head light, he had his back light, he had his shiny reflectors, his helmet. No laws of the Department of Motor Vehicles nor the laws of mortality itself would apply to a fine young non-polluter like himself. And so, as he gazed at the beast that blocked his path, he decided, "Ah, hell. I'll plow right through it."

This rest, my friends, is historical fiction. Bloody, ugly, historical fiction.

Daily on the streets of Chicago, the war continues.

It is a subtle war.

Most commuters misunderstand it as a mere annoyance, that kind of annoyance complete strangers share when they pass on the streets and dislike one another's hair cuts, or shoes, or gait. Even the bus driver -- that lofty profession dared only by the patient and the desperate -- does not fully understand. He does not fear the biker, because us his enormity; and the biker does not fear him because of his lackadaisical sway from one stop to the next.

But the uneasy feud between the taxi and the bike is one of great risk and one of great worry for both.

In the end, there can, of course, be only one.

And it is time to pick sides.

It is time for action!

(and/or t-shirts)