Friday, March 11, 2005

Final Destination

11/03/05

Final Destination

I know I'm supposed to update this column every week but I got caught up in the maelstrom of life unable to swim away from the whirlpool our daily lives suck us into. Naah, I was just busy, but I don't think I'm going to be able to update the column every week, maybe as often as I can sounds better. Yesterday something really freaky happened to me, it was fucking weird. So this tale's gonna make up the column for today.

I was on my way home from university yesterday, on the monotonous route I travel everyday when all of a sudden the monotone was broken with some live accident action right in front of me. A huge streetlight (those massive highway types) had fallen across the highway onto a car. You would think that on Durban roads, with all the ramshackle taxis and sketchy souped-up car attempts, the streetlights would be the sturdiest things on the road. But alas it was not to be. I was in the second car behind the unfortunate one when I saw the street light collapsing right before my very eyes. It all happened in slow motion, in that moment it took an eternity for the street light to hit the car, floating in mid-air, but as it struck the car it was as if time carried on from where it had stopped. Wham! The pole crashed into the car (just to give you an idea of how huge the pole was, it stretched across three lanes of the highway and even went onto the other side). The impact of the pole caused the car to stop dead in its tracks. It was as if a kid had jumped onto a radio control car crushing the bonnet and stopping the vehicle. The back of the car looked fine but when I saw the front of it I was completely shocked. The entire roof had caved into the car, the windscreen was mangled into the dashboard and the bonnet was flattened. The driver of the car looked pretty much unscathed to me, so I thought that he had miraculously escaped unhurt, but when we got a bit closer I saw his arms covered in blood and glass bits, and I saw him pulling out glass shards from his face and head, it was insane. Then I realised that if I had been thirty seconds earlier it would've been me pulling glass shards out of my face and head. Damn. Mini epiphany - I also realised that every now and then you've got to step away from the chaos of life and take some time for the subtleties and finer details in life. After all the entire earth is made up of atoms and molecules, so the little things in life really do count. Maybe the 'Big Guy' was teaching me a lesson today (by dealing that poor dude with a small country's worth of bad karma) or maybe its just the Grim Reaper saying, "You're next in line, buddy." If I don't update the site again, you'll know it was the latter.

Peace out y'all. Drive safely and watch out for those darn highway street lights, you never know...

P.S - This morning I went past the accident scene and the pole had actually crushed all the tar surrounding it and was, in fact, inside the road. Wonder how that dude is?


Sombre Situation, Macabre Mood