May 6, 2006
Cranium Command….
As far as the move to Holland goes, one of the main things that I have been worried about is that I’ll have to drive around Europe quite a bit. I guess it’s fairly well known among my friends and family that I am not the worlds greatest driver - I haven’t parked properly for the ten years I’ve had my license and have also crashed two cars for example - I also don’t have much sense of direction, although given time, I do believe I am one the worlds greatest short cut discoverer’s - but driving round Europe, where I’ll be asked to pitch up, hire a car and go find random tea buyers across the designated country - to those that know me this sounds like a recipe for disaster - I’ll be on the wrong side of the road, hopelessly lost, refusing or unable to ask for directions and I’ll be late for everything - I don’t really argue too much.
Well you see that’s the simplistic easy option I can use as my excuse - something I’ve been thinking about a lot today after my dreams from last night.
You see I don’t think I’m that much of a bad driver - I also happen to think that when it comes to parking, I’m just forever lucky - there always seems to be an easy space to drive into - I also don’t care that much about whether or not my car is sticking out into the road or if it looks ridiculous to others - frankly cars, engines, custom made accessories and driving skills all amount to a whole lot of nothing in my eyes - I get from A to B and find it a chore - I’ve never been a petrol head and most of it is a foreign language to me - the rest of the world can get over my bad driving, I’m just not bothered - I don’t drive too fast and, Jakarta apart, I’m not exactly a danger on the roads - I’m just not a great advertiesment for the British school of motoring, that’s all.
The two times I crashed my car it was while under the influence of various mind and mood altering substances - both where fairly remote yet still brainless occurrences for which I cannot really defend, other than to say that at the time of driving I thought I was fine - the states of the vehicles afterwards would obviously suggest otherwise.
For the first I was around 23 when I took a corner at speed and jumped over a steep verge before diving down and smashing into the curb below at the bottom of the ridge - I was half cut on coke and booze and I busted the drive shaft after smashing the right wheel up pretty bad - lucky, in so much as it didn’t get any more serious than that and at so early in the morning, the only person I could of killed was myself - I was able to limp the car to the end of the road and leave it on my parents drive - it was a write off.
I’m supposed to write lesson learned there.
The second time was last year - details at a glance: 3am wasted after the club - picked the car up from the hotel 5 mins from home - kissed the girl driving round a corner at speed and drifted across the three lanes to hit and mount a concrete foot high central reservation - drove through some bushes and trees - dodged the upcoming flyover concrete wall by swerving at last minute to jump back on the road and continue on back to the apartment - dawning realisation kicked in the next day about how close a call it all was - car was fucked up, but fixable.
I didn’t really drive much after that - I guess there wasn’t much reason as taxi’s where so cheap and the traffic was atrocious - I’d do errands here and there and the short drive to work - but I suppose I definitely avoided it if possible - once I got back here in the UK, my old car was long sold and trains have been par for the course as far as work goes - moving to Winchester, I wouldn’t of needed a car either - I told myself it was the expense - petrol, parking, tax, insurance, MOT, upkeep - avoidable.
But last night I dreamt about the last crash for the first time - very surreal - I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of it before - even as I sit here now I remember the dream so well - as I do the crash - it was the peaceful serenity of the situation - how something so quick, out of the blue, violent and unpredictable just seemed like a perfectly calm state of affairs - there must have been maybe two or three seconds where I just watched events unfold in front of me - like the windscreen was in fact the next step in plasma TV technology and it wasn’t actually happening - something so quick seemed to last so long - I had time to look around and take it all in - like I can still remember what all the plants looked like - the way they would appear in the headlights and before suddenly being sucked under the wheels - as though a magician had clicked their fingers to make them disappear.
Drifting through possibly the last few seconds of your life in slow motion and not seeming to have any influence over events - quiet acceptance and faint amusement as events unfold - with Aphex Twins Selected Ambiance playing in the background - for all the world seeming like the scene in Fight Club where he just lets the wheel spin and come what may.
Apart from the girl - she was screaming but I wasn’t really listening - I mean I can remember her face - but not the sound - well, that is how it goes in the dream.
Could have been the whisky.
So I haven’t driven much since - and I always figured it was circumstance rather than actually avoiding it - up until last night I’ve never really given the incidents themselves much thought - and by that I don’t mean the stupidity of the situations or the possible consequences etc - I mean the experience itself - which I don’t remember as frightening or terrifying - quite the opposite - leading to questions of how wasted was I that I though a hi-speed car crash was peaceful - but really, it just seemed quite surreal more than anything else.
We were in the bar last night and another round of Sambuca arrived at the table - I dutifully downed the distasteful dirge and reached for the JD and coke to wash it down - my body reacted instantly to dispel the evil within - watering eyes, deep gasps and taking a moment to concentrate on not upchucking - it was an automatic reaction to drinking something disgusting - it didn’t matter that I wasn’t drunk or that I have no other problem with any form of alcohol - the body wanted rid of it and wasn’t in the mood for argument - however, I did argue and I won in the end - but the body had made it’s point - No More Sambuca or I would be losing my chin pretty fast and upchucking in a not so quiet corner.
So I’m thinking that the body and deeper reaches of the mind are subconsciously running the show called my life - that I’m being tricked into thinking my conscious thought is making decisions when really there are some automatic choices made for me - for my protection - where instinct is overstepping it’s usual duties and getting involved with conscious decisions, taking over - Jedi mind trick style - instinct has looked at conscious thoughts track record and decided to step in - sort of inner monologue along the lines of:
You don’t need to drive a vehicle
You aren’t very good at it
It’ll endanger us all
You might not have been scared by that last experience with the crash in Jakarta
But the rest of us vital organs sure where and we’ve decided no more driving.
You can’t even park for Christ’s sake!
As though my instinct has decided my mind can’t be trusted and has taken command of the master controls - and telling me that I no longer drive because of circumstance - when really it’s just not a very good idea.
(I think like this thanks to this evenings consumption of Jameson’s Whiskey and something I saw during a family holiday to America when I was about 13 - we were in the Epcot centre and there was this film where Norm from Cheers and a few other people where all in charge of different areas of the body, running it like a factory with orders getting passed down from the management in the brain - all supposedly working together to get you through the day)
I’m supposed to write lesson learned there.
The second time was last year - details at a glance: 3am wasted after the club - picked the car up from the hotel 5 mins from home - kissed the girl driving round a corner at speed and drifted across the three lanes to hit and mount a concrete foot high central reservation - drove through some bushes and trees - dodged the upcoming flyover concrete wall by swerving at last minute to jump back on the road and continue on back to the apartment - dawning realisation kicked in the next day about how close a call it all was - car was fucked up, but fixable.
I didn’t really drive much after that - I guess there wasn’t much reason as taxi’s where so cheap and the traffic was atrocious - I’d do errands here and there and the short drive to work - but I suppose I definitely avoided it if possible - once I got back here in the UK, my old car was long sold and trains have been par for the course as far as work goes - moving to Winchester, I wouldn’t of needed a car either - I told myself it was the expense - petrol, parking, tax, insurance, MOT, upkeep - avoidable.
But last night I dreamt about the last crash for the first time - very surreal - I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of it before - even as I sit here now I remember the dream so well - as I do the crash - it was the peaceful serenity of the situation - how something so quick, out of the blue, violent and unpredictable just seemed like a perfectly calm state of affairs - there must have been maybe two or three seconds where I just watched events unfold in front of me - like the windscreen was in fact the next step in plasma TV technology and it wasn’t actually happening - something so quick seemed to last so long - I had time to look around and take it all in - like I can still remember what all the plants looked like - the way they would appear in the headlights and before suddenly being sucked under the wheels - as though a magician had clicked their fingers to make them disappear.
Drifting through possibly the last few seconds of your life in slow motion and not seeming to have any influence over events - quiet acceptance and faint amusement as events unfold - with Aphex Twins Selected Ambiance playing in the background - for all the world seeming like the scene in Fight Club where he just lets the wheel spin and come what may.
Apart from the girl - she was screaming but I wasn’t really listening - I mean I can remember her face - but not the sound - well, that is how it goes in the dream.
Could have been the whisky.
So I haven’t driven much since - and I always figured it was circumstance rather than actually avoiding it - up until last night I’ve never really given the incidents themselves much thought - and by that I don’t mean the stupidity of the situations or the possible consequences etc - I mean the experience itself - which I don’t remember as frightening or terrifying - quite the opposite - leading to questions of how wasted was I that I though a hi-speed car crash was peaceful - but really, it just seemed quite surreal more than anything else.
We were in the bar last night and another round of Sambuca arrived at the table - I dutifully downed the distasteful dirge and reached for the JD and coke to wash it down - my body reacted instantly to dispel the evil within - watering eyes, deep gasps and taking a moment to concentrate on not upchucking - it was an automatic reaction to drinking something disgusting - it didn’t matter that I wasn’t drunk or that I have no other problem with any form of alcohol - the body wanted rid of it and wasn’t in the mood for argument - however, I did argue and I won in the end - but the body had made it’s point - No More Sambuca or I would be losing my chin pretty fast and upchucking in a not so quiet corner.
So I’m thinking that the body and deeper reaches of the mind are subconsciously running the show called my life - that I’m being tricked into thinking my conscious thought is making decisions when really there are some automatic choices made for me - for my protection - where instinct is overstepping it’s usual duties and getting involved with conscious decisions, taking over - Jedi mind trick style - instinct has looked at conscious thoughts track record and decided to step in - sort of inner monologue along the lines of:
You don’t need to drive a vehicle
You aren’t very good at it
It’ll endanger us all
You might not have been scared by that last experience with the crash in Jakarta
But the rest of us vital organs sure where and we’ve decided no more driving.
You can’t even park for Christ’s sake!
As though my instinct has decided my mind can’t be trusted and has taken command of the master controls - and telling me that I no longer drive because of circumstance - when really it’s just not a very good idea.
(I think like this thanks to this evenings consumption of Jameson’s Whiskey and something I saw during a family holiday to America when I was about 13 - we were in the Epcot centre and there was this film where Norm from Cheers and a few other people where all in charge of different areas of the body, running it like a factory with orders getting passed down from the management in the brain - all supposedly working together to get you through the day)
Spo | May 6, 2006
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