God bless the roadkill
I want to build an altar and on it I want to honor all of the animals killed by vehicles. I want to honor the roadkill, as I do with every little prayer I say when I pass by another soul lost to the pavement. I tell the crows to enjoy their meal, and the ease of access to it. It’s almost like stolen valor: these crows didn’t have to kill anything in order to feast on that unfortunate squirrel who was simply trying to make it to safety. And yet, they feast. Valor or no valor, everyone’s gotta eat.
Those who would feast on my remains—and gleefully so—didn’t do the killing. It’s me who flung myself off of any imagined pedestals and landed squarely in the middle of the asphalt, standing suddenly in the face of those blinding lights. They will feast on their stolen valor and absorb the nutrients I’ve provided for them, and they will metabolize my mistakes to make themselves stronger. My shortcomings, performed publicly, are turned into calories and churned away in their stomachs until what’s left behind is all burned up. Reduced to carbon, our common denominator.
This carbon settles in their bones and hardens them, providing more structure to the story. Whatever doesn’t suit the narrative gets sent to their intestines to be processed as waste. All of these nutritional benefits come from my hasty decision—much like a squirrel’s decision to dash across 5 lanes in a 40 MPH zone—which was mine alone to make, and remains mine to reckon with. And yet, they feast.
Sometimes roadkill feels like an inevitability, due to the omnipresence of vehicles and the humans operating them. And indeed it is inevitable. It’s hard to pretend like this country doesn’t have asphalt veins all over it, all stained with so. much. blood.
In some ways, I saw it as inevitable that one day I would be the one smeared across the road, like my fate was to be smushed by tires and it was only a matter of time. These are the risks of being dedicated to honesty, I tell myself, and I should expect to take some damage. The honest truth of myself is many very messy edges and clumsy attempts at embodiment.
But the other honest truth is that becoming roadkill is always a matter of time when you are constantly playing in traffic.
It’s not any more or less respectful for the scavengers to pick away at the roadkill; it’s a matter of instinct before it’s a matter of respect, anyway.
In the last week I’ve dreamt twice about vultures as I’ve been shedding my uterine lining. I’m losing so much that I’m excited about losing. In some ways, me and these vultures are in cahoots, but I don’t think they realize it. There are some things that just refused to change until I let them pick away at my insides. How can period cramps feel so good?
Maybe I’m losing it, finally. Whatever ‘it’ is, it’s something I’ve needed to lose for a long time, and I became aware of that long before it actually vacated my life and long before I took my turn being roadkill. I can’t blame my nervous system for rewarding the things that felt most familiar, even if it meant playing in traffic.
I’ve lived next to freeways many times in my life. It’s a non-stop slew of information and movement. The traffic produces this thunderous roar that is nearly constant, and you have to get far enough into the woods and away from the roads to replace that roar with the eternal praise! eternal praise! of the creek’s rushing waters instead. [1]
The creek has enough good sense to ebb and flow in its stream of consciousness. The freeway rarely, if ever, shuts the fuck up.
The creek also doesn’t produce roadkill. The creek does not make untimely death a near-inevitability.
I’m trying to play in the creek more, to replace the bad habit of playing in traffic. You have to replace the bad habit if you want it to go away. I’m actively seeking out silence and the gaps in the near-constant stream of noise. I’m getting far, far away from the freeway and deep, deep into the woods. And I’m finding so many treasures there.
from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
