Shift

I am biking from Venice to my job in Santa Monica as office manager for an animation studio. I am pedaling fast as usual, intent on the destination, not the journey.

It’s an old ten-speed, with lever gearshifts set below the handlebars. After gaining momentum, I shift up, and the lever breaks off. The piece still affixed to the bike plunges into my hand, between my right index finger and thumb. I look down, pull my hand off the shifter, and see white tendons staring back.

I don’t remember stopping. I don’t remember blood. But I remember calling my boyfriend from a payphone; he picked me up and took me to my mother’s house. The look on her face — not of concern, no; of disbelief that I was so upset. I wasn’t badly hurt: nothing broken, nothing severed. I didn’t even need stitches. She had trained in the army’s burn unit, and now worked with para- and quadriplegics, stroke victims.

But something shifted when the shifter impaled me. That’s not exactly right. Something shifted when I saw inside my body, when I saw my tendons. Reminder: mortality! Why am I walking around without a carapace? Anything could happen! It was the potential that shocked me. I saw clearly in that moment the miracle that so many bodies survive, day after day, when they can so easily – quickly! – go. It shook me to the core. Nobody understood my new perception, and I couldn’t seem to explain it. But I knew it was big news.

A right-handed writer, I adapted to the injury by holding pens between my index and middle fingers. It became a habit. The wound healed well; it was deep, but clean, and soon it didn’t even hurt. But the realization stayed. Skin can be penetrated so easily, so smoothly. We’re all just walking around lucky.

Now I know — thanks, John — that bodies are ephemeral, but the spirit is forever. Still, I will never forget seeing those beautiful white tendons, perfectly functional. They said, Listen up. Don’t wait to do exactly what you want, every single day.