For my next act, I'll set myself on fire
First, for anyone who keeps up with me this way, I should apologize for the dark evasiveness of the last entry. I am alive and relatively unscathed.
The day before the accident I was teaching Russell Banks' "The Sweet Hereafter" and read aloud the passage where Dolores Driscoll describes losing control of her vehicle in an upstate New York snowstorm. She describes the "formal clarity of her mind" when she resigned that she was "no longer the driver" and spun off the road.
this is what I remember: my ipod was playing.
I was running a little late.
It was starting to snow.
I started swerving.
I thought I fucked up.
I thought I'll get away with it; I always do.
I kept spinning.
I knew it was going to end with impact.
I missed the other cars.
There were trees around me.
I jolted back and forward.
I was okay.
My ipod was still playing.
I thought I got away with it.
I crawled out the window, broke some branches and crawled on to my hood.
A man in a truck stopped.
He asked who I had called.
I said "I'm not sure what one does in this situation."
I started giggling.
He showed me that my car was jammed up in to a tree.
The sheriff came.
Things started to get a little grim.
But I am okay, lucky, more sure than ever of my die hard will to live.
The neck brace is off, a little whiplash and a rental car for the time being.
Be back soon.
xoc
The day before the accident I was teaching Russell Banks' "The Sweet Hereafter" and read aloud the passage where Dolores Driscoll describes losing control of her vehicle in an upstate New York snowstorm. She describes the "formal clarity of her mind" when she resigned that she was "no longer the driver" and spun off the road.
this is what I remember: my ipod was playing.
I was running a little late.
It was starting to snow.
I started swerving.
I thought I fucked up.
I thought I'll get away with it; I always do.
I kept spinning.
I knew it was going to end with impact.
I missed the other cars.
There were trees around me.
I jolted back and forward.
I was okay.
My ipod was still playing.
I thought I got away with it.
I crawled out the window, broke some branches and crawled on to my hood.
A man in a truck stopped.
He asked who I had called.
I said "I'm not sure what one does in this situation."
I started giggling.
He showed me that my car was jammed up in to a tree.
The sheriff came.
Things started to get a little grim.
But I am okay, lucky, more sure than ever of my die hard will to live.
The neck brace is off, a little whiplash and a rental car for the time being.
Be back soon.
xoc
posted by caitlin grace | 7:25 PM
3 Comments:
zheesh! thats effed up. glad you are OK!!!
you should teach a book wherein the lovely lady teacher gets a MacArthur grant.
(just an idea.)
Yes, well, but in order to empathize with you, I need to SEE the brace.
"Here is what happened:
I was cut apart.
The liver of a dead person was placed inside me so I might live again.
This took twelve hours and thirty-three pints of blood.
But who was I afterward?
I could still recall the body I'd had when I was ten, the body in which I carried what I called 'myself,'..."
from Richard McCann's "The Resurrectionist"
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