"Everyday above ground is a gift." ~ Common saying in the US, especially among the elderly
[Buckle up, this puppy's long...Wait, where are you going, come back!!...You can take breaks. Hey! Come back!]
Bus Battles
Photo retrieved from: https://toybook.com/moose-toys-unleashes-the-fortnite-battle-bus-play-set/
I originally began this essay with recounting two times I almost died involving cars (read on for more on that) and then in the middle of writing it, I had an experience which later made me realize that with minor shifts in circumstances, I could have died in this situation as well, so I added it.
The evening started with a great rehearsal in a band I just started playing drums in called We Miss The Earth. After rehearsal, the band had drinks at a neighborhood bar near where we rehearse. I parted to walk back to the rehearsal space to pick up my backpack and snare in a grocery cart (I needed the snare for an out of town session with a different band) as I needed to walk about 1/4 mile to the bus.
At the bus stop I met a nice person, a woman, maybe 45, white, and with a familiar accent, she said "This town is so weird," (not sure that is quite correct wording, but similar) and she was looking at what I think was a bus map, making me think that she was new to town, and so I said, "Oh, are you new to town?" and she replied, "No, I've lived here for 20 years, it's just still weird to me," (again, paraphrasing.)
I asked where she was from and she said Massachusetts, which was coincidental as I lived there, in Boston, for 5 years. It should be noted here that I moved to Portland, Oregon, from Boston in 2008, and of course when I lived in Massachusetts, I learned how to spell that shit, you better believe it. But tonight as I type, I realize the 11 year gap has removed my ability to spell Massachusetts - WAIT! HOLD THE PRESSES! That was the first time this whole series of sentences about the great state of Massachusetts (HOLY SHITE, I DID IT AGAIN!) that I actually spelled it correctly since just after I lived there. Boy, this paragraph is exhausting for me, I can't imagine how it is for you. What the fuck were we talking about? Who knows? Here. we. are.
So the nice woman and I chatted, I forget her name (Jennifer?) about the buses of Portland.
It was late and there were limited options bus wise, but I lucked out on a 17, though I had to catch a 2 to get to it. The woman I spoke with also was getting on the 2. I said, "Have a nice night," as we boarded, and she said, "You too," and as always after random nice chats with random strangers at bus stops, it ended with a bus boarding that separated us to wherever we each sat.
~~~~~[ [ ] [ ] ]
o o
I had the cart, with my backpack, drum shoes and clothes in it, so I sat at the front of the bus where the disabled/elderly seating areas are (which technically, I have right-away to, as I am disabled, but always give seats up for people who need it, I can walk and have better mobility than most folks who have preference there.) But the seats were down when I boarded the bus, and a young man was kind enough to get up from those seats, fold them up for me, and sit in another seat. He was a Latino man, mid 30s. I said, "Thank you," and joked, "You should get a Good Citizen award or something," and everyone in the front of the bus laughed, including him. He then sat next to a black man sitting in the seats at the front of the bus, the ones that face inward from the bus walls, across the aisle and to my left. The black man was in his 30s as well, and this man spoke to the Latino man in basic Spanish, randomly. The Latino man said, "Hey, man, why you keep talkin' to me in Spanish, bro? I don't speak Spanish," in a Mexican accent (causing me, the black man speaking bad Spanish to him and the other Latino man to laugh.) They worked through that, but in the middle of it, a voice from behind me boomed in bad, broken Spanish (I speak just enough Spanish to know how bad it was.)
I turned to see a young black man in his 20s with baby dreads. He was upset and yelling at the black man in his 30s, just ahead of me and to his left. I had been facing another man, Latino, in his 30s, who was eyeing the proceedings carefully, and eventually stepped in as the hero, and verbally took on the young man who was stirring up trouble. The young man behind me began chanting "Cesar Chavez!" over and over again, occasionally mispronouncing it as "Cesar Chivez!"
The great Cesar Chavez, AKA 'Cesar Chivez'
The Latino men both converged, and by the way, I haven't identified my own race in the story as you are reading my blog and just to your right you can see I am a white dude, but I do ask you, while we are on the subject, and I am talking to YOU white people, notice how pretty much EVERY white writer only refers to race when the character isn't white, and yeah we live in a world of some out of control pc norms, but here is the thing, those out of control norms are usually preached by white people who are afraid to live around people of color (these are the white people talking to white people about racism, for example, while afraid to live around black people - this is the Pacific Northwest brand of racism.) That doesn't negate the need to change things that make others feel small and not valued in society every single place they look. Listen to people of color in order to learn, not self-proclaimed 'woke' white liberals, see?
Where were we?....
The Hero stood up, confronted the young man who wanted to fight, and the young man was targeting the black man in his 30s who was speaking toddler Spanish earlier, "You need to shut up," said the Latino man. The young man was ramping up his rage, yelling in English with what sounded like a Jamaican accent, "He's fuckin wit ME. Cesar Chivez! Cesar Chavez!" The Latino man to my right came forward, and the Latino man to my left did also, both targeting the man immediately behind me. I was directly in the middle of this fight, and realized it was time to 'get outta Dodge,' so I stood up, saying, "Hey, I don't wanna be in the middle of this," and moved toward the area just before the front exit, near the driver. She was wisely calling Trimet security. I watched the situation between the young men unfold. The two Latino men were flanking the young black man. The other young black man, the target of the other man, sat, a bewildered look on his face.
After I determined that this situation wasn't going to resolve, by watching the angry young man as I stood just behind the first guy to stand up to him, and since I was only one stop away from where I intended to get off, I decided to bail, hefted my cart with my snare and backpack in it and began a walk to the second bus I needed.
So as I walked toward the stop to my bus home, I saw the black man in his 30s, walking behind me. I said to him, regrettably now in a 'Whattya gonna do?' shrugging tone, "That's living in the city, I guess." Then I said, "Did they kick just you off the bus?" and the man answered, "Yeah. Man, and I am homeless!" All I could say was, "Sorry this happened to you," because what else could I say? We went our separate ways. Why do I say I could have died in this situation? Because these kinds of situations can escalate and change very quickly, and often in a direction where a gun or a knife comes out. As well, in the last few years there was a brutal stabbing murder of two white men confronting a white racist who was harassing two Muslim women on the Max light-rail train stop. It is worth noting that the stop that this happened at was the Hollywood stop, a neighborhood which comes into this entry later.
Car Wars
Image retrieved from:
When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I lived in a SW part of the NE neighborhood, near what is called the ‘Hollywood’ district, officially named after the wonderful ‘20s era theater in the area (still a place to see films) but also the name traces back to the neighborhood’s Scottish roots, when it was called ‘Holly Rood.’
There is a busy thoroughfare boulevard that cuts through the neighborhoods called Sandy Blvd. I lived right off of Sandy on a street called Hoyt (24th being the number st.) I was off to see a friend get married in Seattle, the year was 2009, I had lived in Portland a year, having moved there from Boston, where I had moved from Seattle for a job 6 years prior. I was about to board a city bus to the train to the airport, waiting at the crosswalk with my suitcase to cross Sandy to the bus stop across the street, carrying a backpack, and a freezable lunch box.
It was a rare sunny November day, the 6th. The walk light came on and I looked both ways for traffic just to be safe. Looked right, looked left, began crossing in the crosswalk, rolling my suitcase behind me, adjusting the backpack and the lunch box slung over my shoulder by its strap. I looked right again to see if the bus was coming as I neared the middle of the crosswalk and a car turning left from 24th on to Sandy hit me as I was turning the other way to look for the bus (in retrospect, fortunate that I was looking away, as when the car hit me I was relaxed, as opposed to when you see it coming, and you tense and injuries increase as a result. Not that I got off from injury, I ended up with some time-release shit leading to disabilities for life, namely a mostly nerve dead left leg, the one the car hit that happened to be the side where I had intense sciatica years before that led to back surgery 10 years prior to being hit, but hey, I can walk, I’ll take it, and, if I could feel it, as I do in flashes, it would be the intense pain I had before it became numb. I digress, but do I need to write that I digress in a blog called ‘Short Story Long – an endless conversation'? Probably not.)
I have wondered if I ever could convey in writing the terror of being hit by a car. I will try. It will be hard, because the PTSD stays with you for life, itself also a possession of another, tense, reactive being whom you watch from inside yourself. It's like how when your back hurts, the muscles tense because they are trying to protect you but end up making it hurt terribly. I am hoping writing of it will be a kind of catharsis. That has usually worked for me in the past. But it won't solve the PTSD I experience when walking near traffic or almost getting hit in crosswalks now. Here we/I are/am. We shall see.
Having not actually seen the car coming when the car hit me, it was an instant shift from my every day reality into sheer terror (I recently described it to someone as waking up suddenly in an entirely different person's life, 'This isn't my life!'). I felt the bulk of metal slam into my left side, my leg, by nature of the juxtaposition of me and the car in spacetime. It happens so fast you almost have to catch up perception wise, that is, while it is happening it is so far outside your known reality, it is like briefly having your body yanked into another dimension, and then you are dropped back here to try and process it with a brain not up to the task, so it throws up defenses. I was sucked into a dimension of violence, chaos. Entropy touched me physically in a hyper sped up way, as if its normal decay and unwinding was not quick enough and extensive measures were taken up.
After going over it later, I pieced together as much as I could in sequence of what happened. My body was hit sideways, in the leg, and it folded in the middle, backwards, onto the hood of the car, as I instinctively, reflexively, swung my left arm out behind me to brace myself with my left palm (which led to a permanently injured left rotator cuff, an injury that once made me black out from pain just from reaching for something while sitting on the couch and it took years for me to add the two things together – I was mystified as to why, with all the pain I had from known things, would an out of the blue pain hit me when I didn't remember injuring it, and having it be the most intense pain I have experienced – no other pain has made me black out.)
I remember the classic frozen moment you read about or see in films when characters experience great trauma, or in my case maybe more of a very slowed version of time, and that frozen moment, accessible always, is feeling my body bent in half, my back sliding to the hood, my legs at the bumper, and the driver of course stopped in a panic such that I flew about ten feet through the air, my body naturally twisting in mid air, finally landing on the asphalt on my front and actually bouncing a bit, as if made of rubber, to then land on my back, where I lay still, completely bewildered and in shock.
I laid on my back on the asphalt, saw movement coming at me, and could just see the car that had hit me rolling to a stop. The driver, a white woman in her mid 60s, freaked out, yelling. "Are YOU ALL RIGHT!?!?" I slowly turned my head towards her, mostly motionless, like a turtle on its back, and replied, "Call 911," and even in shock, my daily attitude was intact, as I thought, 'Do I really have to tell her that?'
Then the movement I noticed to my left earlier formed into a man, a handsome Latino man in his late 50s. He was asking me how I was, what my name was, what day it was (later I found he was a volunteer fireman and knew the questions EMTs ask) and he told me not to move and that he had called 911 ('Thank you,') and I laid my head down. I was in front of the bus stop I got on and off of many times already in the year I had lived in that neighborhood.
I was freaked out because I thought for sure, due to my physical issues: intense sciatica and back surgery in '99, that I had really fucked things up (it turns out I was correct, but it was, as previously mentioned, a time-release nightmare of pain, then numbness, read on, dear reader...) I was most certainly babbling about this at the time. The EMTs came and loaded me in to the ambulance. One of the EMTs, a young white man, asked me some of the same questions the Latino volunteer fireman had, including my address, I paused as the tape in my brain slipped and spun, and I panicked. The EMT said, "It's OK, relax and think," and I gave my address, but it was my Boston address. I was in shock of course but this terrified me, as I thought I had said my then current address. I was taken to the ER. Within an hour, I had been examined with no major injuries found (in part because of the gym thing, that is, after back surgery I had to become a gym person to keep my core strong and protect my back and thus I was in good shape) and before I knew it, I was in a cab on the way home.
When I entered my apartment my cat was mystified by me on pain meds and in shock. He did that nose bouncing in the air thing cats do with new smells, and especially hospital smells, (probably brings the veterinarian to their minds) as it sniffed my scent coming to him in waves, a concerned look on that little cat face. And for two years, no injuries. The lawyer I hired only got my medical expenses covered ($5,000) and $2,500! This was largely because I hadn't been majorly injured.
Also, as with the previous story, I later realized with a minor shift in factors, my head could have ended up like my freezable lunch box, which had rolled under the wheel of the car (I saved it for a few years after as a reminder of how precious life is.) I am so grateful that I didn't fall under that car. I will take a permanent limp and not being able to really run over that, thank you very much.
I have some photos I shot for a photo essay project on this incident in a digital photography class that I will find and post here later.
Two years later, out of nowhere, from my hip, groin and left leg came sheer pain, 24/7. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, it was excruciating to lie down or get up from lying down, and I only had one spot on one side of my body that I could lay on and not be in pain.
My poor girlfriend helped me with everything, helped me move, fed me, did my laundry. I am forever grateful, FO! My daily routine was to get up super early in order to have time to slowly, painfully, rise from bed after everything had totally settled in in my back and leg, and walk off the pain, or walk it down from unbearable back to excruciating. Then I would stand at the back of the buses to school (it was way too painful to drive, I tried), I had gone back after 21 years away from college, was at the time working on an Associates of Arts degree (which I achieved, with a high grade point average, and on to a BA in Community Development from Portland State University, in spite of all the pain, thank you very much.) I stood at the back of my classes. Standing, as you can see, was very slightly less painful, but of course I had to sit when I became weary from standing so much.
Then one day it was so bad, I couldn't get out of bed. I just couldn't, the pain was too much, and my left leg muscles were spasming (not a word beyond slang, but totally should be) violently. By chance, this happened right as my girlfriend randomly stopped by to see me. She called the ambulance. As the EMTs gently tried to maneuver my my 6'2", 230 lb frame out a sharp, short right angled hallway, it hit me that this was the second time in my life where different girlfriends have had to walk out of the house with me on a stretcher and see me put into an ambulance. There we were.
And again, a familiar scene at the ER, a doctor taking me into any open examining room and having me drop trou to get a shot in the ass of some serious shit. Mind bending shit, so mind bending that pain is merely amusing, because you can't feel it anymore. "Yes, thank you, I am fine now! Thanks Doc! Guess we'll be on our way-What's that? Oh you want me to wait. Ok! Whatever you say Doc, but I feel great." Memories floated/float to me of myself sitting in the waiting room next to my previous ex at the ER, in Boston, watching TV as Leonardo DiCaprio accepted a Golden Globe award for his role in the Scorsese film 'The Aviator' and a doctor had just done the drop trou trip with me and we awaited our turn and I was so happy for DiCaprio. "That must be great, that must be amazing for him...To win a Golden Globe and be recognized by his peers it's so nice." I was so fucking happy for him. My girlfriend laughed at me, with me, "Yeah, Honey," she said, a huge grin on her face,"real nice."
A couple weeks after the ER visit (in Portland, not Boston) the feeling in my left leg and foot suddenly went numb, about 75% of my foot and close to the same for the leg. It was as if my body said, "That's too much pain. Shutting it off!" I am about to determine why at a doctor visit the journey to which has been long, partly due to not having insurance for 10 years, partly through procrastination (which if I am honest is the mother of my affliction) and one theory randomly posed by the anesthesiologist as I was having my belly shaved for gall bladder surgery recently, was that maybe I had a mini stroke. Maybe. We will see. There are other factors since then, too. The side note is that the anesthesiologist looked exactly like a Hollywood Nazi doctor; thin, pale white skin, shaved bald, with of course the medical wear, and he was German. I felt so awful for thinking that of this nice man. Thanks Hollywood! (which in this story has a double meaning, am I right? The Hollywood Neighborhood where I was hit...and the...Hollywood Nazi...nevermind.)
Car Wars - Part II
- Sandy Boulevard Strikes Back
Since that day, when I was driving in a car, I was very sensitive to people walking in crosswalks, as you can imagine. As I was waiting to turn left from Sandy on to 28th, I noticed out of the corner of my left eye that a guy I knew, I forget his name now but he owned (owns?) a tattoo shop right there near the corner of Sandy & 28th - I met him at a local dive bar that I sometimes ate cheap breakfasts at - anyhow I saw him and a couple friends talking at the corner, and they had the right of way in the crosswalk, I was waiting for them to start walking. At the same time, I unintentionally nudged forward a little as I turned my wheels slightly in anticipation of turning after the pedestrians passed. It was raining slightly and the sky went gray as I flipped on my windshield wipers.
Then the car was slammed into and turned completely in the other direction. Again I was transported into someone else's life, a life of instant, overwhelming metal violence and forces beyond defense but for seat belts and air bags and Volvo roll cages (thank God or Gods or whomever for those) and the air bag was like a punch from The Hulk, and ended up, lucky for me, being the source of the only injury I sustained from this wreck, a scar on my abdomen.
I had been hit by a car coming toward me as I waited to turn, and had rolled just enough for them to hit me, as I was glancing quickly at my friend and his friends waiting to cross the street. So it was technically my fault, this is a matter of record in the settlement and of course I own my part in this head on collision. No one else was hurt, thank goodness. But I maintain that they were going way too fast for that street. This could never be proved, however. I am certain that if they were driving the speed limit, the damage would have been much less, and they may have even been able to stop all together. Whattya gonna do?
I sat there in the car, seat belt on, airbag deflating, trying to land back into my consciousness, which had in part risen above all of this violence, like before, when I heard a woman's voice ask how I was feeling. It turned out she was a passenger in the car that hit me. She was genuinely trying to calm me down, I don't remember everything she said, but I remember becoming suddenly very conscious of what I said, because I knew from experience that you have to watch what you say about injuries or anything else as it can fuck up your insurance claim. But I was also in shock, so I kind of sputtered, not forming words because I wanted to talk but felt I shouldn't, and was too out of it to talk anyway.
Another EMT trip and ER visit in my life. No major injuries. Again a cab home. Plopped back into my life again from the land of violence, near death experiences and trauma. What's on TV?
I went to see the car, my '90 Volvo 240 wagon at the tow truck place and my jaw dropped. Volvos, especially up to the 2000s, are tanks, they have a roll cage and plenty of real estate in the impact zone (which somehow sounds dirty.) That car saved my life, no question about it. I am forever grateful to Mingus (the name of my car, named after the great composer and bassist Charles Mingus.) And in that moment, seeing the whole front end of my main ride for the previous 15 years crunched up to the windshield on the driver's side, even more than being in the wreck itself, it hit me how I could have died.
Below, photos I took of my 1990 Volvo after my head-on collision. This car saved my life.
The crazy thing about all this was, this happened
4 blocks from where I had been hit 5 years prior! Sandy Blvd was trying to kill me! I have tended to avoid it as much as possible since both accidents happened, though I practiced drums near it for years.
I carry these near death experiences with me always. One of the things that stands out from almost dying I didn't expect; you can easily lose that, 'Life is Precious, I Will Never Take it for Granted Again' feeling you get right after, and thus the challenge becomes to not lose it. So far I have done ok with that. It is the best and most powerful thing you can get out of these experiences.
I have been a person who has tended to stress the past sometimes, things I can't change, and, to sweat the future, something I can try and influence but never totally control, yes, I know this is an issue for most of us, and I also know my solution reeks of pop psychology appropriated from Eastern, specifically Zen Buddhist, beliefs, that is, I engage in a simple exercise, where when I find myself stressing backward or forward, to paraphrase the above tendency, say for example, while petting my cat, I am stressing that my cat will die, most likely before me, and so what I do is ask myself, "What is going on right now, Wayne?"
"I am sitting on my bed on a beautiful summer day, a breeze coming through the window, and hanging out with my cat," and so on. It helps me appreciate what I have when I have it. That is what I take away from almost dying; learning to live in, and appreciate the Present as much as possible. It is fleeting, sometimes more than we know.
Love to Folks and Critters,
Wayne Ray Flower II
All photos by Wayne R. Flower
Feeding time at Gateway Transit Center
Inter-dimensional mirror
'Bottled Joy'
Window to drums
Scuba shop window display
The Saint of Shadows
I don't know what the hell to call this photo
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