Song of Kali plays on...
So I was in the car, stuck at the red light at the intersection about half a kilometer from my home. This green minibus with a Malaysian plate just ran the light, and promptly collided with a black car.
It happened SO fast.
You know how in the movies, it goes with an ear-splitting screech of brakes, with a deafening crash, followed by an explosion or the shattering of the car's windscreen? It's nothing like that. Okay, there was a horrible screeching as the cars tried to brake and swerve away from each other. But the crash that followed as the minibus rammed the car wasn't that loud after all. The cars' windscreens didn't shatter, but the black car spun over to the side of the road. The minibus stayed in the middle of the intersection. All around me, people in their vehicles sat straight up and wound down their windows and craned their necks to get a better view. A man in the double-decker bus next to our car whipped out a camera and took pictures of the crash.
And this occurred in the space of one and a half, or two, seconds.
There's no time to really react when you witness this. All you feel...is nothing. Nothing but infinite silence that flows on and on until you snap back to reality, and your mind screams, YOU'VE JUST WITNESSED A FUCKING ACCIDENT! That's when everything floods back and you feel a knot of tension in your stomach, and you hear the radio playing Lady Gaga, and all you can do is sit back and wonder, with a faint, flat curiosity about the safety of the passengers in both cars. When that moment of shock fades, everything returns to normal. The lights change and the cars move, avoiding the green minibus, and things move on, just like nothing happened, like everything's cool.
I guess it's human nature to react that way - to block out the incident or push it away from your mind, to reject the possibility that death or serious injury lies less than five feet from where you're sitting behind your wheel. All you really do about it, is:
1) Curse at the driver of the green minibus, say a few sympathetic words for the passengers in the black car, and drive away, with the memory of it fading as the scene leaves your vision.
2) Shake your head sadly and take pictures of the scene to show to all your friends the next day, or post it up somewhere on the net. It'll probably be on Stomp in a couple of hours.
And that's it.
Life as usual, when death hangs all around us.
Updated by Theodora on 9:36 PM
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
How to Be a Parent
Updated by Theodora on 12:36 PM
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Frankie
Life is so, so cruel.
I want my Frankie.
Updated by Theodora on 11:45 AM