One Year Past Death

On April 8, 2008 I was hit by a truck while riding my bike on The Bowery. Thinking about it one year later it seems like a lifetime ago. It seems like another life altogether. I have the memories of everything that happened but they are foggy and all run together. I can’t tell you what time it is or what the paramedics looked like. But I can tell you what the air smelled like and what the cold damp concrete felt like. In issue #5 of COG Magazine I wrote an essay about my experience. It ran with pictures I shot from the scene of my accident when I visited it 6 months later. Before my accident I used to think to myself, “I wonder what the closest I’ve ever come to dying is.” Like when a big car accident happens on the highway a mile in front of you and you wonder if that would have been you if you had left five minutes earlier or not been caught at that stop light. Through everything I’ve come to this understanding; there are things happening in our world that are out of our control. No matter how hard you strive for something or strive to avoid something, we only have so much control over our destiny. Things will happen whether you want them to or not. So do everything you can to live in the moment and take it all in. You really never know when your life might be extinguished.