It's Friday the 13th, Let Me Tell You About Seeing Dead People

This December I was in Santo Domingo with Kristina and Sylia (and Johan and many more Alcantaras, but I don't believe any of them where there for this.) We were taking the bus back into the city from the beach at Boca Chica and passed what looked like a pretty nasty car accident with a bunch of people standing around and what looked to be a white sheet over a body on the ground.

That came up later, I think when we were in taxi en route to drink some caipirinhas or maybe some ice-cold Presidente. Kristina and Sylia thought it was strange, maybe even one of them said they'd never seen something like that before... and I had this realization that I have seen a lot of dead people while traveling.

In probably 1992 or so, my friend Hannah and I were walking along the beach in Mexico and passe some policias wrapping up a body that appeared to have washed in from the ocean. Later that night, my mom's friend told us it was probably a guerilla from Chiapas. I pretended to know what that meant.

In 2001 I went to Japan for two weeks. I spent about half the time in Tokyo where my dad and his wife were living, and half of the time traveling around. I was very taken with the place, the culture, how everything was so different and efficient. At the end of my stay, the three of us were waiting on the subway platform for the train to bring me to the airport. As the train pulled in going the opposite way, a man on the opposite platform jumped in front of it. My dad and I were the only non-Japanese people in the station and were in shock, I was looking back and forth between the mess that used to be a person, my dad and the people around us. Everyone in the station immediately got on their cell phones, obviously annoyed that the station would be shut down and they'd have to find another way to get where they were going. Men with white sheets came out from who knows where and started cleaning up the blood and body parts. Masako said that this line, the Chuo line, was nicknamed the suicide line and that once a day, somewhere in Tokyo, someone does this. Maybe they lost their job, maybe they are failing their families. The curtain fell and I was no longer in love with that culture, I was disgusted. I hadn't known how I felt about it, but all of the sudden it was clear-- I don't think you should kill yourself because you lose your job. I think you should stick around and take care of your family and get a different job and... oops, I was about to miss my flight, we made a mad dash to the airport. I spent the time waiting there talking to a man who was in the military and now comes back to visit his girlfriend in Okinawa. It was very retro. And my dad and I didn't speak of this whole episode for over a year.

I went to South Africa with my mom and sister in the summer of 2006. My major memories are me doing all the driving (manual transmission on the left side of the road? I'll collect my badass badge later) and World Cup soccer. Oh, and also it was really, really pretty. Anyway, one day I was driving along the Southern Cape, my mom and Zoe were asleep and I passed an accident. An accident that didn't look all that terrible, but there was clearly just a dead person laying in the road. South Africa is strange because in some ways and in some places, it is so developed. And there, for those black South Africans and their dead friend... it was completely third world. (That term is like "retarded," sometimes there just isn't a better one.) It was dusty and no ambulance was there and everyone looked dazed.

I thought there were more examples. Maybe there are and they will come to me. It's interesting how different death is in other countries, whether just more people die and they have to get used to it, or so many people cause their own deaths and it's socially acceptable. When Erin and I were in Peru, I remember having what seemed like an epiphany. Maybe our silly modern life is overburned with safety features and padding, maybe we should just be living more simply and more dangerously. A short time later, I saw a man with a tumor taking over his face. And after we left, the same bus we'd taken, white-knuckled, form Trujillo to Huaraz drove over the side of a mountain and everyone was killed. And then I had a second epiphany, which was that I sure am a moron sometimes.