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Nov. 24, 2004 A couple of days ago a man had fallen asleep, had passed-out, had been knocked out, or just plain died on the railroad tracks across the street from where I work (my real job). A freight train ran over him and scattered his body throughout an area about a half-block long. The local police, street workers, railroad maintenance men/women scoured the area and cleaned as much of the pieces of corpse off the ground as they could. Still, there remained slivers of skin, cartilage, muscle, and bone lying in the area. To say the least it was apparently a gory picture. I say “apparently” because I didn’t find reason in seeing it, but of course there were those that insisted in visiting the scene of the evisceration. Several of my coworkers could be counted among the viewers. In fact, most of the neighborhood saw fit to look at the oddity. It was as though some invisible force drew them. It reminded me of the old movie, “Close Encounters Of A Third Kind.” No one knew exactly why he/she had to check out the railroad tracks, they just needed to go. I picture some of them sitting at their desks and sculpturing a railroad track out of pencils (you had to see the movie). What is it that makes us so curious about the results of violence, or about a death scene? What draws our eyes to the freakish things in life? It is a morbid practice in deed. I remember as a child going to a funeral home to visit the corpse of a family member. I swore to my mother that I wasn’t going to look at the body, but this invisible force took control of my eyes and drew me to the pale body lying in a flower-laden coffin. Why is it whenever there’s an automobile wreck people crane their necks to see who, what, when, where, or how? We love to see movies that are filled with blood and guts. We appreciated “Brave Heart” when masses of Scots were laid to waste. There’s nothing like a good vampire movie, or a movie about a mass murderer. Why?
I’m not sure the reason we humans act that way.
It’s probably some deep-rooted bio-sociological
imprint on our genes. Maybe it all started with
cave people, or apes. Who knows? Maybe it’s
the Republican in all of us (no, that’s not
it). I don’t have an ounce of Republican
blood. If there’s a good therapist in the
house, please write.
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