Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Tenuous realities
One of the many reasons I sometimes wonder about my parents' sanities is that they lock up our house into two distinct sections. It does make a form of sense when we go out, greater security for the inner sanctum. But they also lock it up when I'm in the house too. Meaning I can't get into my room from the computer room.
Today, post humiliation by the energiser bunny teenagers (but the old man put up a good showing and almost had these... kiddy under 17 champion things, despite his audible wheezing and creaking...) I am showerless in Singapore. This is a most distressing state of affairs. If I had the energy in me, I'd pick the lock between the two sub fortresses but it's effort enough for me to move my fingers without keeling over.
*****
Sometimes - not often, mind you - I get strange flashes in my head; I know this all sounds a little crazy but my rationale is that since my mom is clearly at least a little crazy I at least have a reason, being that it runs in the family.
One of the first flashes in my head was when I had to change train at Potters Bar and head back into London thanks to a small mistake made by... uh, myself. It was a strange moment; I saw a train plowing into the concrete divider between the rails, and winding up slanted crazily within the station itself... and I thought how dangerous this station seems (which in retrospect, I don't quite understand, because it looks much like any other rail station)
It was a strange moment several months later when I opened the newspaper to read about the Potters Bar Crash.
I've been getting them more occasionally here in Singapore whilst driving along the road... nasty, gory pictures of cars wrapped around other cars, and bleeding corpses within. Sometimes they look a little like me. So when I get them, I slow down a little and take just a little more care, and nothing happens.
And I wonder if perhaps these are small slivers perhaps of alternate realities, where perhaps I perish in some horrific accident, another car broadsiding me into the road divider, or into an oncoming lorry.
And I also wonder how much longer I have before one day it becomes reality.
Of late, however things have changed just a little, and I see images of myself driving along relatively clear roads, and suddenly yanking the wheel off to the right. I can almost feel the thump as the car strikes the divider, and the rush as I lean forwards, at the once agonisingly slowly, and at the other in the flash of an eyelid, and my head strikes the steering column...
And then I just concentrate on driving, relax that hand just a little, but don't quite take it off the wheel...
I don't know what it all means.
And I don't want anyone to try to tell me, either.
Today, post humiliation by the energiser bunny teenagers (but the old man put up a good showing and almost had these... kiddy under 17 champion things, despite his audible wheezing and creaking...) I am showerless in Singapore. This is a most distressing state of affairs. If I had the energy in me, I'd pick the lock between the two sub fortresses but it's effort enough for me to move my fingers without keeling over.
*****
Sometimes - not often, mind you - I get strange flashes in my head; I know this all sounds a little crazy but my rationale is that since my mom is clearly at least a little crazy I at least have a reason, being that it runs in the family.
One of the first flashes in my head was when I had to change train at Potters Bar and head back into London thanks to a small mistake made by... uh, myself. It was a strange moment; I saw a train plowing into the concrete divider between the rails, and winding up slanted crazily within the station itself... and I thought how dangerous this station seems (which in retrospect, I don't quite understand, because it looks much like any other rail station)
It was a strange moment several months later when I opened the newspaper to read about the Potters Bar Crash.
I've been getting them more occasionally here in Singapore whilst driving along the road... nasty, gory pictures of cars wrapped around other cars, and bleeding corpses within. Sometimes they look a little like me. So when I get them, I slow down a little and take just a little more care, and nothing happens.
And I wonder if perhaps these are small slivers perhaps of alternate realities, where perhaps I perish in some horrific accident, another car broadsiding me into the road divider, or into an oncoming lorry.
And I also wonder how much longer I have before one day it becomes reality.
Of late, however things have changed just a little, and I see images of myself driving along relatively clear roads, and suddenly yanking the wheel off to the right. I can almost feel the thump as the car strikes the divider, and the rush as I lean forwards, at the once agonisingly slowly, and at the other in the flash of an eyelid, and my head strikes the steering column...
And then I just concentrate on driving, relax that hand just a little, but don't quite take it off the wheel...
I don't know what it all means.
And I don't want anyone to try to tell me, either.
