2001-10-01

I feel kind of selfish being happy today. I feel as if I just want to avoid anything that threatens to upset this feeling. Because I got away (recommended to all weary NYers) and I enjoyed myself. I worried, I fretted, but I laughed, I slept, I relaxed. It was a good weekend.

Driving on 78 Friday night, as the autumn darkness came so early and the rains came pouring down and stopping just as fast, something terrifying happened. I was driving with about 5 other cars, all of us going 75 or 80 mph and then driving around the tractor trailers together. I kept this up for a bit, happy to be with other people driving fast in case a trooper was hidden somewhere. I got the urge to pee, which grew and grew and I abandoned the group of cars that were making it easy to speed. I had no choice but to get off. When I pulled back on to 78, there was a trooper stopped, no more than 100 yards from the on ramp. I thought, "Phew, I coulda gotta ticket," but there was no car stopped in front of him. He was sitting there to clear the right lane.

A couple hundred feet down the road was another trooper with two cars in front of them. I'd been driving fast with these cars. Between the two cars was a bent guardrail and the tail end of a third car. These 3 cars were toward the back of the pack with me. They got into some sort of accident. I don’t how bad it was because I hate rubber neckers, but a smashed guardrail isn’t a good sign. They got into what was definitely a bad accident. And I didn't, because I was peeing at a road side Dairy Queen/gas station/country store.

I forgot about this event and was too busy having fun in the very cosmopolitan Harrisburg, PA. Ben's neighborhood is beautiful; nestled between the capitol building and Susquehanna River in a neighborhood full of old homes that people once wore corsets in and tied their horses in front. The Susquehanna is such a neat river with all the Huck Finn type mini islands running up and down. They look like prefect places to get a little paddle boat to and sit, contemplate, away from everyone in a little island in the middle of the river that runs through the city.

I remembered this "geez, I could've wrecked my sister's car" incident the next day. I went to the Hershey Outlets to buy shoes. I was in the middle of fall shoe crisis. I bought 3 pair for $100. I got in the car, backed up and as I was going to put the car into drive, realized my car had hit or had been hit by another car backing up. To my degree of guilt, I'd say 50%. It wasn't even as if the cars hit each other, the more like gently scraped, no huge impact. When I pulled away, however, I left two big dents on the driver's side rear door.

Luckily, my sister did not kill me. This will hopefully not be put on my permanent record, shared with everyone I want to borrow a car from and used as the embarrassing story family tells the people you get gutsy enough to bring around. Hopefully, the car will be expeditiously repaired, the small other nicks from shopping carts, etc. repainted and looking better than before. Quickly forgotten, other than the bill I’ll have to pay. Shite.

On the way home Sunday, driving with long clouds overhead in Lehigh Valley, I was audience to the most beautiful sunset, possibly the most beautiful ever. It lasted probably a good half-hour as the entire sky was colored from pinks and purples to the east to golden blues to the west. The distant mountains were bathed in pink light. The gold in the sky played with the gold of recently cut cornfields. All the soft pastels muted the summer's old green of the trees and brought out the reds, yellows and oranges the leaves are just beginning to paint the leaves. The sky was long cloud after long cloud of color. People weren't driving very fast because everyone was completely awe struck by how gorgeous it was. Once I was out of the shadow of one mountain, I too was covered in pink light. Something amazing happens when you're driving a car through the pink dusk of autumn.

As I entered New Jersey I could see the tail end of the sunset, pinks on the horizon that I was leaving behind. The night came and rain started. It feels like every happy thing is the first happy thing ever. Every beautiful sunset is the most marvelous occurrence in my life because it’s almost as if I’ve forgotten. Well, not forgotten everything that existed before. But I’ve forgotten that the beautiful things happen all the time.

Missing a 4-car collision isn’t a beautiful thing but chance and life flew through me. My little bumper cars in the big sister’s vehicle showed me the bad things that are simply not that bad. Things that just happen, that suck and are annoying, but they just happen. Nothing could really be done. Sunsets happen, no place to pull over and watch, no way to take them with you. But they give you beauty, just for their time. Much like the process of driving out there and back, over miles of road and homes and cows, I felt just life moving through me again.