The Allure of Crashing

Dear Readers: You're about to learn something about me.

One and a half years ago, give or take a few months--specifics are for suckers (i.e., me), so I won't bore you with them--I drove from beautiful Seattle, WA to beautiful Savannah, GA. (I only live in cities which begin with the letter S, as a rule.)

While en route, I found myself regularly fantasizing about crashing my truck. Driving down any given road, I would randomly find myself imagining very serious traffic accidents in their entirety, from the point at which I would lose control of my truck to the point at which my truck would come to rest upside-down in a field or half-buried in a marsh or sinking in a roadside pond. The word "fantasy" is not misplaced; none of these daydreams were upsetting. A little disconcerting, maybe, but never upsetting.

It somehow seemed very natural to me that my truck should lose traction and skid off the road, down an embankment or off a bridge. In my mind, I would visualize the entirety of its roll, or the trajectory from interstate overpass to watery splashdown. Always in the first-person, too, the view from the driver's seat. And all the while, I felt completely calm, letting it happen, knowing that there was nothing more for me to do, that I had no hope of stopping the wreck.

When the vehicle reached its terminus my fantasy would end and I would continue driving straight down the road, just as I had been the whole time. And despite all the intensity and drama of the fantasy, I would remain calmly seated, inexplicably unaffected.

It has started to happen again, and I still don't mind. In fact, I think I've got it figured out.

I've come to believe that my imagined crashes are manifestations of my repressed desire for forced renewal. (I told you you'd be learning something.) When something irreversibly destructive happens, something completely crushing and inescapable, one has no choice but to come to grips with the situation and move on. Of course the first natural reaction is to struggle to bring the situation under control, but in some instances that option simply disappears.

If I were to run my truck off the road, for example--destroying it completely--I would have no choice but to accept that it had happened, lick my wounds, and go on with my life. Probably I would realize at some point during the roll or slide or collision that hope for recovery or rescue was lost. That my truck was already dead, and that it was time to start thinking of myself.

Of course, when I call this a "repressed desire," I certainly don't mean that I want to literally crash my truck. But I think maybe I wouldn't mind if I crashed my life. I'm not so unhappy with my current situation, but I'm not so happy, either. And when you've got yourself going in one direction or another, it can be difficult to force yourself to stop and reexamine exactly why you're doing it.

But a crash--a crash doesn't allow you to reason. You react to the situation, and once it becomes clear that you'll have to total your life in order to save yourself, everything kind of falls into place. A crash forces you to take stock of your situation and make a clean-slate decision about what to do next.

To me, there's something very appealing about having no choice but to start all over. Of course the thought of having something you've worked so hard for and become so attached to taken away is terrifying. But if you're able to eventually accept the loss and pick yourself up, the result can be unbelievably liberating. What better way to refine your life than to be reminded of its fragility, and the fragility of all its various parts.

Maybe the truck crash is a poor example. I don't know. Most people who know me well will know that I'm pretty attached to my truck, so to lose it unexpectedly would kind of break my heart. It ain't fancy, but it's been good to me. And, anyway, the story about the imagined crashes is true. I did(/do) daydream about crashing my truck. I was stressed out; still am, I guess. Cut me some slack. (To everyone I drive around: don't worry. I'm still a good driver.)

I'm not totally sure exactly where I mean to go with this. I mostly just wanted to get it out of my head, I suppose. But to anyone who reads this and feels like their life is about to go up in flames, know that it's okay. You won't always be able to keep each wheel on the road. Save yourself. So long as you're still alive, there is still hope. You can always start over.

From "The Laughing Man"

One afternoon in February, just after Comanche baseball season had opened, I observed a new fixture in the Chief's bus. Above the rear-view mirror over the windshield, there was a small, framed photograph of a girl dressed in academic cap and gown. It seemed to me that a girl's picture clashed with the general men-only décor of the bus, and I bluntly asked the Chief who she was. He answered unforthrightly, "Mary Hudson." I asked him if she was in the movies or something. He said no, that she used to go to Wellesley College. He added, on some slow-processed afterthought, that Wellesley College was a very high-class college. I asked him what he had her picture in the bus for, though. He shrugged slightly, as much as to imply, it seemed to me, that the picture had more or less been planted on him.

During the next couple of weeks, the picture--however forcibly or accidentally it had been planted on the Chief--was not removed from the bus. It didn't go out with the Baby Ruth wrappers and the fallen licorice whips. However, we Comanches go used to it. It gradually took on the unarresting personality of a speedometer.

But one day as were on our way to the Park, the Chief pulled the bus over to a curb on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, a good half mile past our baseball field. Some twenty back-seat drivers at once demanded an explanation, but the Chief gave none. Instead, he simply got into his story-telling position and swung prematurely into a fresh installment of "The Laughing Man." He had scarcely begun, however, when someone tapped on the bus door. The Chief's reflexes were geared high that day. He literally flung himself around in his seat, yanked the operating handle of the door, and a girl in a beaver coat climbed into the bus.

Offhand, I can remember seeing just three girls in my life who struck me as having unclassifiably great beauty at first sight. One was a thin girl in a black bathing suit who was having a lot of trouble putting up an orange umbrella at Jones Beach, circa 1936. The second was a girl aboard a Caribbean cruise ship in 1939, who threw her cigarette lighter at a porpoise. And the third was the Chief's girl, Mary Hudson.

"Am I very late?" she asked the Chief, smiling at him.

She might just as well have asked if she was ugly.

"No!" the Chief said. A trifle wildly, he looked at the Comanches near his seat and signalled the row to give way. Mary Hudson sat down between me and a boy named Edgar something, whose uncle's best friend was a bootlegger. We gave her all the room in the world. Then the bus started off with a peculiar, amateur-like lurch. The Comanches, to the last man, were silent.

On the way back to our regular parking place, Mary Hudson leaned forward in her seat and gave the Chief an enthusiastic account of the trains she had missed and the train she hadn't missed; she lived in Douglaston, Long Island. The Chief was very nervous. He didn't just fail to contribute any talk of his own; he could hardly listen to hers. The gearshift knob came off in his hand, I remember.

When we got out of the bus, Mary Hudson stuck right with us. I'm sure that by the time we reached the baseball field there was on every Comanche's face a some-girls-just-don't-know-when-to-go-home look. And to really top things off, when another Comanche and I were flipping a coin to decide which team would take the field first, Mary Hudson wistfully expressed a desire to join the game. The response to this couldn't have been more clean-cut. Where before we Comanches had simply stared at her femaleness, we now glared at it. She smiled back at us. It was a shade disconcerting. Then the Chief took over, revealing what had formerly been a well-concealed flair for incompetence. he took Mary Hudson aside, just out of earshot of the Comanches, and seemed to address her solemnly, rationally. At length, Mary Hudson interrupted him, and her voice was perfectly audible to the Comanches. "But I do," she said. "I do, too, want to play!" The Chief nodded and tried again. He pointed in the direction of the infield, which was soggy and pitted. He picked up a regulation bat and demonstrated its weight. "I don't care," Mary Hudson said distinctly, "I came all the way to New York--to the dentist and everything--and I'm gonna play." The Chief nodded again but gave up. He walked cautiously over to home plate, where the Braves and the Warriors, the two Comanche teams, were waiting, and looked at me. I was captain of the Warriors. He mentioned the name of my regular center fielder, who was home sick, and suggested that Mary Hudson take his place. I said I didn't need a center fielder. The Chief asked me what the hell did I mean I didn't need a center fielder. I was shocked. It was the first time I had heard the Chief swear. What's more, I could feel Mary Hudson smiling at me. For poise, I picked up a stone and threw it at a tree.

We took the field first. No business went out to center field the first inning. From my position on first base, I glanced behind me now and then. Each time I did, Mary Hudson waved gaily to me. She was wearing a catcher's mitt, her own adamant choice. It was a horrible sight.

Mary Hudson batted ninth on the Warriors' lineup. When I informed her of this arrangement, she made a little face and said, "Well hurry up, then." And as a matter of fact we did seem to hurry up. She got to bat in the first inning. She took off her beaver coat--and her catcher's mitt--for the occasion and advanced to the plate in a dark-brown dress. When I gave her a bat, she asked me why it was so heavy. The Chief left his umpire's position behind the pitcher and came forward anxiously. He told Mary Hudson to rest the end of her bat on her right shoulder. "I am," she said. He told her not to choke the bat too tightly. "I'm not," she said. He told her to keep her eye right on the ball. "I will," she said. "Get outa the way." She swung mightily at the first ball pitched to her and hit it over the left fielder's head. It was good for an ordinary double, but Mary Hudson got to third on it--standing up.

When my astonishment had worn off, and then my awe, and then my delight, I looked over at the Chief. He didn't so much seem to be standing behind the pitcher as floating over him. He was a completely happy man. Over on third base, Mary Hudson waved to me. I waved back. I couldn't have stopped myself, even if I'd wanted to. Her stickwork aside, she happened to be a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third base.

The rest of the game, she got on base every time she came to bat. For some reason, she seemed to hate first base; there was no holding her there. At least three times, she stole second.

Her fielding couldn't have been worse, but we were piling up too many runs to take serious notice of it. I think it would have improved if she'd gone after flies with almost anything except a catcher's mitt. She wouldn't take it off, though. She said it was cute.

The next month or so, she played baseball with the Comanches a couple of times a week (whenever she had an appointment with her dentist, apparently). Some afternoons she met the bus on time, some afternoons she was late. Sometimes she talked a blue streak in the bus, sometimes she just sat and smoked her Herbert Tareyton cigarettes (cork-tipped). When you sat next to her in the bus, she smelled of a wonderful perfume.

J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories is one of the best books you'll ever read. So read it.

Stuck in my head tonight: "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys. Perhaps the best love song ever written.

Old Hat

I write things sometimes. And sometimes I don't completely hate what I've just written. But given some time apart, my writings and I generally don't get along too well upon reunion. That is, I can't stand roughly 90% of the things I've written once I've successfully separated myself from the process of writing them.

So you can imagine how nice it is to come across some old stuff, re-read it, and still like the way it sounds. Below is a story I wrote almost two years ago. I still don't hate it.


The wheels had slid out from under him without warning. No telltale slip of the rear tire. No tremor in the handlebars. Just up one moment, down the next.

He was not so shocked, really. It was raining. It hadn't rained in weeks. So of course the streets would be slick. Still, he had never guessed the fall would happen so abruptly.

His body had come to rest in a dirty curbside puddle. The bicycle was on its side a few feet away, its front wheel spinning slowly in the air as passing cars swerved clear of the scene.

He lay motionless as his clothes became saturated with puddlewater. His eyes were closed. He wanted to sleep.

It had been just two days. Two days, and already he was prepared to throw in the towel. Life in a puddle on the edge of the street was an acceptable fate anymore. After just two days.

He heard a car slow down as it passed, then pull to the side of the street ahead of him. A door opened and he winced at the sound. Short, quick footsteps approached, becoming steadily louder.

Rain continued to fall. He listened intently to the raindrops as they struck the surface of the puddle next to his ears.

"Are you all right?"

A woman's voice. He didn't answer. Didn't move.

"Oh no," he heard the Voice whisper. Then, at full volume again, "Hello? Can you hear me? Are you conscious?"

He was annoyed. He was tired and wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep and this Voice wouldn't let him.

"Yes, I can hear you. And yes, I'm conscious."

There was a moment of silence. He was grateful for it. He thought the Voice might leave him alone now that he had answered its questions.

"Can you stand?"

Again, he did not answer.

The footsteps came nearer still, grew even louder. When he heard the Voice again, it came from a place just a few feet above his head. Raindrops had stopped falling on his face.

"We need to get you out of the street, okay? If you can't stand on your own, I can help you up."

He made a point to speak very clearly this time, pausing briefly between each statement: "I'm not getting up. Okay? I don't want help. I don't want to stand. I just want to be left here, alone. I want to stay right here. All right?"

He was being very rude to a voice that seemed genuinely kind, genuinely concerned. He felt guilty. "It was good of you to stop. Thank you for that. But I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave now. Just get back in your car and drive away. Okay?"

The ensuing silence lasted longer than the first. Again, he was grateful. And again he thought that perhaps he had succeeded in persuading the Voice to let him be.

He listened for the sound of footsteps walking away, waited for raindrops to fall on his face again. He heard nothing, felt nothing.

"I can't just leave you here." The Voice was quieter now. It sounded confused and sad, even hurt. "I can't just leave you here in the road. In this puddle."

"Yes, you can. You can. It's a very simple thing to do. Turn around, walk back to your car, open the door, get inside, and drive away. Just like that. It's easy."

He listened again for footsteps. Waited for raindrops. Nothing.

He opened his eyes suddenly. Big brown eyes stared back. The Voice's eyes.

The Voice belonged to a not quite middle-aged woman. The woman's face possessed the sort of youthful beauty reserved for confident young mothers. She was crouched next to his head, her face directly above his. Her lips didn't move; she made no effort to speak.

"Please. Go away. Let me sleep."

"No." Her response was simple and resolute. Any indecision she may have felt was long gone now. "You're not going to sleep here. That's stupid. It's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard."

She paused. "I won't let you do something so stupid. Get up. Get out of the street."


Full disclosure: I changed a few things from the original. All edits were minor, however.

An Open Letter

To A , A , & N :

You ruined my confidence.

Thanks for nothing.

Colin

I stared through the windshield at the trees in front of me. I didn't see the trees, but I stared nonetheless. If I had seen the trees, I might have thought to myself: "Those trees seem to go on forever. Those trees are never-ending." But, like I said, I didn't see them.

I didn't see them because my mind was elsewhere. Or maybe my mind wasn't anywhere at all. Perhaps my mind had stepped out for a moment to get some air. I don't know.

What I do know is this:
I saw nothing and felt nothing. I tasted and smelled nothing. All I did was hear, and what I heard was the ocean. I heard the sound of a wave rolling in and crashing on the beach. I heard another wave do the very same thing. Then I was underwater, and the waves were crashing over me. The dull, rhythmic, muddy roar of the ocean surrounded me. Between swells, I heard momentarily peaceful saltwater burble around my head and past my ears. It was wonderful. I was nowhere near an ocean.



A voice was speaking. I could hear the voice--knew that it was a voice--but couldn't hear any words. Didn't want to hear any words. As the voice grew louder, the roar of the ocean began to fade. And as the roar faded, a remarkably desperate disappointment filled me up.

"--wanna come with?" It was my brother's voice. I had no idea what he was talking about. I responded accordingly.

"What?"

"I said, do you wanna come with?" My window was rolled down. He was standing outside, looking in at me.

"Come with where?"

My brother stared at me through the open window for a few moments. "Did you hear anything I just said?"

"No. What did you say?"

"I'm gonna hike up to the viewpoint and take some pictures. The sign says it's just a half-mile up. So...do you wanna come with?"

"Okay...yeah, I do. You go ahead, though, and I'll meet you up there in a couple minutes."

"I can wait for you. I'm not in a hurry."

"No, it's cool. I'll be right behind you."

"Okay." He was speaking slowly now, carefully. He looked weird. That is, he looked at me weird, like he thought I was acting funny. (I was.) "I'll see you up there, then."

"See you up there."

My brother walked away.



I tried to go back to the ocean, but I couldn't. I wanted to be underwater again. I wanted more waves to wash over me. But I couldn't. And they wouldn't.

After ten minutes of trying and failing, I rolled up my window, locked the door, walked up the path, and found my brother. He took my picture. I took his picture. Through the lens of his camera I saw mountains and wildflowers and rocks and birds and glaciers and trees.

And yes, they were beautiful.