Hit by a Bus, a Recollection

Google weather says it's 51.2 °F on Capitol Hill this evening, but it feels colder. It's raining and through my window I can see the smoke from rooftop chimneys. I was supposed to go out for a run tonight in preparation for a St. Patrick's Day race. But a walk home in the chilly rain was enough for me. I am content to stay indoors and listen to the radiators click and moan.

Today while shelving old negotiation files in the new building I enjoyed Peter Gabriel's orchestral re-working of Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage":

I was stringing lights from a Genie boom in Chinatown one holiday season -- I was in the lift working with a big Cuban guy, Orestes -- when a Metro bus came barreling through the intersection at Jackson and Maynard and quickly moved to the curb to get out of the way of an ambulance approaching from its rear. The problem was that's where we were, working with the boom extended up in the trees hanging over the curb. I saw the whole thing develop. The ambulance with siren wailing; the bus barreling down on us. And at the moment of impact -- the bottom of the boom's lift was a about a foot higher than the bus' windshield (otherwise Orestes and I wouldn't have made it) -- I felt something -- my spirit? my chi? -- trying to escape my body. The heavy steel of the boom ended up glancing off the top of the bus. Orestes and I got banged up a little, a bloody lip, a tweaked back. The Metro driver seemed rattled; the collision must have made a terrific racket inside the bus. After a Metro supervisor arrived and interviewed everyone, Orestes and I went back to work.