Close calls, death and the dark side of magic realism.

I'm not a religious person. I'm also not a scientific thinker. I am perfectly accepting of the thought that there are forces in the world acting beyond and despite our ignorance of their nature. I don't need to know what they are, but I do understand that by not understanding their patterns, I am leaving myself open for mistakes and upheavals in my life. Based on this felt-but-not-quantified belief that there is meaning in things, that events happen due to my choices and that if I am able to pay attention, I will be able to avoid hardship and gain success, I have made my way through life with a fairly good sense of my own morals and direction.

This "magic realist" way of seeing signs and patterns in the world works very well when things are working in my favor. When I make a choice based on observation and it turns out successfully, I feel relieved that I was able to read the cards properly and play them well. But when things start to go wrong, there is no way for me to take a step back and deal with the consequences without feeling ultimately responsible for their downturn. What did I do or not do to make this happen? This question is the centerpiece in the enormous bouquet of anxiety and judgment I turn over and over in my head all day long. Did I deserve this? Did I make this happen somehow? What can I do to make this stop?

The worst is when things happen in sequence. Human minds are trained to seek patterns. When something repeats itself I find it nearly impossible to refrain from assigning blame. It's much harder to throw your hands up and let go of analysis and judgment, taking a "things just happen" stance on the matter, when things repeat. I have been trying so hard to stop blaming myself for the random things that destroy a day, but I'm still unable to let them go.

A week ago I had the closest call on my bike that I've had in years. I had been hanging out at my friends Julia and Brody's apartment with our friend Tim, and I had just said my goodbyes and started riding home. It was dark, but I had my lights on as well as a light-colored helmet and coat. Not two blocks from their building, a car approaching me from the opposite direction decided to make a fast, unsignaled left turn onto a side street right as I was crossing. The hood of the car screeched to a stop about two and a half feet from my body. The driver rolled the window down and apologized, telling me to take breaths, telling me he was a cyclist, telling me he just didn't see me. If he had hit me, it would have been an accident. Just an accident. But I could have been catastrophically injured or killed based on this one man's negligence at that one moment - my life ended immediately due to a single moment's lapse of attention. It made me fully aware of how easily we die.

I've been thinking about death a lot lately, actually. How quickly it will come upon us. How at any moment we could get a phone call and someone has bad news on the other line. It could be anyone. How many years has it been since I received one of those calls? It's perhaps overdue.

I was terrified enough from that incident to stay off my bike after dark for a few days. So yesterday, in the clearest, sunniest afternoon we're likely to have for months, I was riding through the sidestreets of SE towards Hawthorne, soaking up the incredible colors of autumn and trying to really appreciate the scents and sounds of the day. I actually realized at the moment how important it was for me to be aware that I was, at that moment, happy and grateful to be alive and doing exactly what I was doing.

I came to a stop at a T-shaped intersection - I was on 31st or 32nd, and the major street was Stark. Traffic was a little heavy so I waited until I saw an opening on the left. I moved out into the middle of the left lane to see around some parked cars to the right, and was surprised by another fresh line of cars approaching from the right. Apparently I startled the first driver in line, a woman who saw me nose out into the street in the crosswalk, and she hit her brakes while waving me past her. I had just pulled out and was making a right turn when the two cars behind her got into a rear-end collision.

The woman drove away, and I pulled over to see if anyone was hurt. The two drivers got out and I called to them to see if they needed me to call an ambulance or 911. The driver in the foremost car (the one who got rear-ended) motioned me over, saying he needed me (as a witness I thought). I approached the two men and the one who called me over told me he was a cop. He said to me, "You know why I need you here? Because you caused this accident. You caused it when you blew through that stop sign and rode into the street."

I was so shocked that I was immediately put on the defensive. I started explaining what had really happened while he stood there shaking his head. He told me I could not leave until I gave him my ID. Meanwhile the man who actually hit him was standing behind him, clapping him on the shoulder and looking at me saying "You better do what he says, he's an officer." It is this next point that I cannot stop thinking about over and over in my head. My mind won't let this go. It tells me, "You should have left. You should have ran away. You should have refused to show ID. You should have, you should have." But I didn't. I cowed. I was afraid that if I tried to ride off, I would be tackled from behind and dragged off my bike, the way I was the last time I was arrested. I gave that piece of shit, lying cop my ID. And now my blood runs cold when I think about the possibilities of what could happen, all the worst-case scenarios of court appearances, fines, being sued for liability. All based on this cop's immediate assumption that I had flown through a stop sign and into the street. His immediate accusation did its job perfectly: put me in a state of defensive insecurity instead of looking at the facts of the situation: that I was neither the woman who stopped right in front of him nor the man who actually hit him. If the woman had continued on her way without stopping, she wouldn'tve come close to hitting me. I had entered the roadway slowly to see around parked cars, and if I couldn't see the line of approaching traffic there was no way the cop could have seen me.

I rode off and found a side street, parked my bike, sat on the curb and cried. It was a moment of deja-vu, since only a week ago I had done the same thing after seeing the front grille of a car aimed right at me. I ended up walking my bike ten blocks to the bus and taking my bike home that way, since I was too rattled to ride. And now, stupid as it may seem, I am terrified to get back on it and go out. The part of me that loves to feel connected to the hidden patterns of the world feels now that there is something out there waiting to get me, waiting for me to leave the house and place myself in its path. In both these cases I was not at fault - just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm actually glad that lying, shithead cop got his SUV crashed up a little. But things tend to come in threes and I've been lucky so far that I've avoided injury, but how long does luck last? If there is a message, am I stupid to ignore it? Why can't I stop beating myself up over giving that fucking pig my ID? I can't change it now. There's nothing I can do. If only it were possible to believe that I was not ultimately responsible for these bad events.