Stepping Onto Sky

Four years ago, on a Sunday, a brilliant

spring afternoon, I was jogging at Fort

Point, while overhead a woman was,

with difficulty, climbing over the railing

of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holding

down her skirt with one hand, with the

other she waved to a startled spectator

before she stepped onto the sky.

To land like a spilled purse at my feet.

-- Richard Rodriguez, "Late Victorians,"

Harper's Magazine, 1990.

I sometimes get the eerie sensation that I'm on the verge of witnessing someone's personal tragedy -- as though my departures and arrivals will conspire to position me at the right wrong place at the right wrong time.

And I will observe a car crash in an abrupt flourish of violence.

Or I will happen on a homicidal rage resulting in the crack of a handgun's report and the instantaneous tearing of flesh.

Or I will encounter the severely injured after any number of possible acts or accidents had left them unattended and mortally wounded.

It is not a phobia. The only fearful part of it is that I won't make the right decision in the heightened moment.

It's not really an obsession. I mean, I'm not on the lookout because I want to see it. Rather, I'm vigilant because I want to act swiftly when it happens. I want to respond purposefully and judiciously.

Do you ever have vague prescience?