On Trauma Bay 3

Luck is when you have been struck by a car backing down a driveway (see yesterday's post), suffered a mild concussion, a hairline skull fracture, various contusions and abrasions, and yet are not in such terrible shape that you can't look at your surroundings with interest.

It was a quiet afternoon in the Trauma Center at UMDNJ.

Peaceful compared to the four-bed ward where I spent the night, with monitors blinking, beepers beeping with increasing urgency, the sound of other patients' TVs, nurses (who were very kind) waking me every few hours to take my temperature, and so on.

In the Trauma Center, after CAT scans and X-rays indicated I was in one piece, I was allowed to turn my head and look around a bit more freely.

In the first picture, my wife's handbag sits at the base of a medical hieroglyphic. A good representation of what was going on. I could imagine a soundtrack by the B-52s.

In the second picture, a bunched curtain becomes the axis of my spinning world--or more likely my spinning head. Where has everyone gone?

Yesterday's post was called Near Death, But Not Too. The idea was that near-death experiences, aside from being the exclusive property of the living, are instructive. Not about death, but about life.

I was fortunate that I didn't come close to death in any literal sense, but I personally and physically experienced what all of us rationally know--that it can be over in an instant, without warning.

The moment before impact and the moment of impact (described yesterday) are forever branded in my memory.

I could take them as warnings, as turning points, as reprieves, as closures, as openings.

Signs, symbols and miracles are what the mind makes of things it cannot account for.

That's one way of looking at it. And probably a useful one. It gives mystery its due, acknowledges its power, but bends its frightful randomness to human ends.

Whether we impose meaning or discern it, we forge our lasting lessons from lightning bolts.

Tags: Newark | UMDNJ | photography

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