Excerpt from a draft chapter: The Death

The bike ride home is the penultimate revelry in the rejection of moderninity. I swerve around and fly by gawking, fat people trapped in their steel, aluminum, and glass cages of opaque existence. Their trip to their loved ones is an indeterminate, indefinite, infinite period of time plagued by anger, frustration, ignorant apathy, and a misplaced sense of entitlement, “this is my car, this is my road, this is my lane, this is my right.” These feelings are stoked by variations of rustling electronic leaves that kindle their dying fire through self-important talk radio, bad music, and even worse accompanying singing safely within the confines of their mobile, man-wrought, invincible world. Some of them will shake their heads in disgust at my animalistic, sweaty work. Some of them will shake their heads in admiration that one of us can commit to a greater personal cause and shake off the yoke seemingly forced on us by an invisible hand, and they will have their recurring New Year's resolution to do something about it once they get home. Judging by the decided dearth of fellow riders, I can only discern that this never happens. I wonder how many New Year's resolutions the same lumbering obesity has sworn to himself seeing me on separate days- the previous promise already forgotten, the new one fervently sworn with the utmost trust in its righteous intensity.