Death- car

Other than my having been killed in a thousand ways... deep fried, crashed, stabbed, poisoned, decapitated... etc in my direst state of psychosis, there were two times in my life when I must had felt so very closed to death that my head went totally blank or in shock for quite a time...

During the summer of my sophomore year, I got this stipend to study German in Goethe institute in Regensburg, a town in the Bavaria. There, I met this Japanese girl, this Russian scientist and this American guy who claimed to be a undercover cup from New York whose cover just got blown, got shot in the leg, and got shipped abroad to hide out for a while.



One weekend, the four of us decided to take a tour to the Ludwig II's country of Neuschwanstein and the infamous Dachau.

Of course, Mr. Undercover Cup was the designated driver.

It was about 16 years ago when we took that trip and, to be honest, like many other trips I have taken in life, I have forgotten much of the things I saw including the lake by the castle where Ludwig II drown and the places I have been to.... except for the following....

We were riding on the country road and there was only one lane on each side of the road. If I remember correctly, it was one of those ordinary cloudy, hazy and, perhaps, rainy day while, off the road, miles and miles of green field with distant hills. Occasionally, you would see some houses standing in the big lot of green with lights coming through the windows giving out family kinda warmth. (OK... I have to admit to the fact that I am not even quite sure whether this is the scenery I saw during that specific trip... It could be another other of those days when I was backpacking along, riding on the train, in Europe. Or, I simply made it up. lol)

In any case, it was one of those moments in a road trip when nothing seemed to be too exciting while all seemed sort of new and disconnected.

Since we were in Germany and given that Mr. Undercover cup was supposed to be a cup like those ones you see in the movie, he must have been driving fairly fast... sort of like at the speed of 100 km per hour. So he drove in haste and we casually sat while many a car we passed on that monotonic kind of country road.

Then, we came across this gigantic truck in front of us... and it is one of those truckers who would speed up when he sees your intent to pass ahead of him...

At some point, Mr. Undercover Cup hit the gas to speed the car to its full capacity while the trucker also tried the same thing to stop us from getting ahead of him (in my imagination at least).

It was as if these two cars were racing on a two-lane roads--- except for we were on the wrong lane.

Before we all realize, there came this other truck coming towards us at high speed while there was not enough time for us to either move pass or behind the first truck...

The next thing we realized was... our car was sandwiched by these two trucks on that narrow road... while all three autos at the speed of 100 km or so...

The time seemed to have frozen or distorted within the seconds when our fast going car was squeezed in the middle of the other two.

I still sort of recall seeing the second truck coming towards us while knowing there was no place for us to me. In split second, we were in between two moving walls and these walls seemed to be too close to us. I also saw Mr. Undercover cup seemed to be holding on to the wheel really tight and straight, perhaps. We all were silent. My head was clear, thinking of nothing... yet, I think I did sort of wonder, moment by moment, what was to happen the next mini-second and the body of the trucks were really long... Until, finally, the second truck past us and continued its journey towards the opposite direction.

For a long long time (at least that was how it felt), nobody in the car talked. We kept on driving and driving... Then, the Russian scientist, who was then the cup's girl friend, leaned towards him and caressed him on the back.

It might have been him who, eventually, broke the silence and said something like, "It was close."

I don't recall much what happened after....

The only thing I remember was... after settling down in the hotel, when knocking at their door, we realized that they were already in bed... and, perhaps, already had some wild sex.... (actually, this is what I just realize now... lol)

Ok, let's try again...

The only thing I remember was... perhaps, what I felt might be what Frankl coined as the sense of "cold curiosity" or I, like the rest in the car, was pure in shock. There was the detached kind of contemplation about what was to happen the next moment and its next... although I am not quite sure now whether there was time to process the thing called fear for danger or for life as the could've-been death car, us, passed.