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To a photo of the horrible crash described in this Dispatch

(And now, a story that will REALLY worry my mother.)



I knew when I began this trip that there would be moments of clarity,

and times of such profound emotional realizations that I would return

home a changed person. But I thought that they would come from within.

I expected them to be spurred by exposure to new peoples, disparate

cultures, and the trauma of thrusting myself into new perspectives.  



I forgot that usually, life-changing moments seek you ö not the other

way around.  Sometimes you find yourself speeding headlong into a changed world.



--



For the last month, Iâve been doing Cape Town on foot.  Itâs a tiresome

way to do it.  Most of the city is compact and accessible, but in

general itâs hilly, hot, and often dangerous. So, in honor of my

six-month visa and a decision to hang here in town for some months,

I decided it would be fun to get a car.



I consulted my friends, and looked in some guides, and decided it

would be a good idea to buy a vehicle from a private owner, and then

re-sell it when I left.  That way, if nothing serious happened, I

could get my money back.  So I went through the classified ads (the

lower price categories) and made some calls.



One of the cars I saw was so old and sun-baked that the dashboard

was cracked like parched soil.  Another was so rusty that the driverâs

door had a hole through it.  I wasnât feeling very encouraged until

I ran across an ad by a 22-year-old girl named Annabel.  Her car,

a 1976 Beetle ö sky blue ö was exactly the kind of car Iâve always

dreamed of having but Iâve never been cool enough to actually get.

 She was also really cool.  After I left my first message, I received

a call from an unfamiliar woman.



"Is this Jason?" she said when I answered.

"Yes," I said.

"Do you know who this is?"

"Give me a hint," I said, playing along.

"This is Tracy. From last weekend."

"Oh.  Yeah." I said.

 "I canât believe you forgot."

"I didnât forget."

"You promised youâd never forget me."

"Well," I said. "I was pretty drunk."



All the good omens: She was cool, for one.  She also had chosen the

fake name of Tracy, which happens to be both my motherâs and my grandfatherâs

name. And her name was Annabel ö spelled that way ö which is the

exact name of my ex-boss, of whom Iâm very fond.  She also had gorgeous

blue eyes, which is very strange for someone of Indian descent. 

So I test-drove the Beetle ö which Annabel called She ö and found

that aside from a faulty hand brake (when do you really need one

of those anyway?) that it was in good enough condition for me to

buy it.  And so I bought my Dream Car for R7500, which is something

like $1100.  A financial hit, of course, but one that would return

to me in a few months when I continued my journey.



I picked the car up from her on Friday afternoon and drove her home.

I was very pleased with my purchase, and with myself.  It was a splendid

feeling, to be making a sort of home for myself in a foreign city.

 I also felt human again, aided by a care package from Jessica and

Stacie at home. (Did you know the ads in the Village Voice list Cape

Town as the most expensive airfare from New York?) After months of

backpack living and foot travel, I was finally allowed to have an

extra measure of true freedom.  I could go anywhere and at any time.  



The next afternoon, October 3, was a gorgeous Saturday.  I studied

the maps and chose the perfect place to take my inaugural spin: Kirstenbosch

National Botanical Gardens, about a half hour around Devilâs Peak

in Constantia (where Princess Diâs red-headed brother, Earl Spencer,

lives).  The gardens, situated on the slopes of the back of Table Mountain, are world-famous.



I napped on the wide clipped lawns, among the exotic African proteas

and ericas and watched the strange garden-dwelling animals, which

were earless and ferret-like, as if theyâd leapt from the sketches

of some explorerâs field notebook.  It was another of my Nap The

World moments, with clear sunlight on my skin and the suburbs sprawled

below me like the opening of "The Simpsons."



At around 4:30 ö or was it 5:00? ö I headed back to town.  I stopped

for gas.  And got onto the divided, winding roads that zoom through

the outer suburbs.  Most of the road names in that part of town doggedly

reflect the Capeâs British seeds: London Road, Norwich Road, Glastonbury Road.



I was on Edinburgh Road.  Two lanes in both directions, winding past

fancy houses like Sunset Boulevard does.  And I was coming down a

hill, toward an intersection, when it happened.



I must have been going between 80 and 100 kph.  As I neared the cars

that were stopped at the intersection at the foot of the hill, I put my foot to the brake.



It resisted.  Then something gave, and the pedal hit the floor. 

The car didnât slow. There were no brakes.



I pumped the pedal.  Nothing.  If anything, the hill was making me

speed up. And, of course, the hand-brake didnât work. 



People always talk about moments like this.  That is, if they live

through them.  They say that time seems to slow down.  Even in the

movies, moments like this are delivered in agonizing slow-motion,

like miniature plays whose outcomes can possibly be avoided. 



But the reality is that time speeds up. It just seems longer because

your higher mind kicks in. I had a dozen different thoughts in those

seconds, and each one is etched in sequence into my memory.  I imagine

they always will be.  They were purely instinctual.



The first thought I had was, logically enough, "There are no brakes!"

 This was accompanied by a flash of irritation ö the kind of peeved

frustration you might get upon discovering that the puree setting

on your new blender has ceased to function. 



Then I noticed that the eight or ten cars at the intersection were

coming at me with astonishing speed ö which would translate into

astonishing force if I didnât manage to get them out of my path.

 At that velocity, shifting to first gear wouldnât solve the problem.

The backs of the other cars ö poor innocent victims -- were magnifying ever more.



In a matter of seconds, I had been trapped in a runaway car. I wasnât

frozen in terror, although I should have been. If I had been, Iâd

be dead right now. I was aware of what was going on around me.  I

sensed the ground rumbling beneath the car, the uselessness of the

machine to save me, and the an almost palpable collusion between

time and space to either deliver me or destroy me, depending on my reaction. 



I didnât think, "Iâm going to die."  I thought, "This is the kind of thing that kills people."



Then, quite sensibly, I realized (still in the same second or two,

I must remind you) that the only way I was going to be able to stop

was by hitting other things.  In fact, that I would HAVE to hit other

objects.  Large ones.  Not a fun realization to make, even when you

do it in just a split second.



With barely any time left before ramming the cars, I jerked the wheel

and drove up onto the sidewalk. My car groaned beneath my feet as

I jumped the curb.  I hurtled over grass as stopped cars whistled

past my side. My mind glossed briefly but painfully over the notion

of the cars traveling on the street I was about to roar into. The

last thing I truly remember is seeing the corner traffic light pole

heading straight for me, a yellow tower whose top was already too

high to see. Dimly aware that Beetlesâ front ends are hollow, I braced myself.



I must have swerved a little.  There was a cacophony of shattering

class and crunching metal.  I felt the entire car swing wide ö it

was like being trapped in a big blue cracking egg.  



It heaved, then stopped.  Then, silence ö like a silence I have never heard before.



I found myself hunkered over in the emergency brace position.  When

I sat up, chunks of glass spattered from my hair.  I was stopped

over the traffic island of the street that crossed the intersection,

pointed 90 degrees from where Iâd started.  There were all sorts

of slack-jawed people getting out of their cars -- no one else seemed

to be hit -- and I gave them the A.O.K. sign to indicate that I was

all right.  I realize now that was a strange thing to do.  It must

have looked like I was a stunt driver who was really pleased with the dayâs crash.



I got out, shaking but in control.  I checked my body for signs of

blood, didnât find any, then checked again; I think I mistrusted

it to tell me the truth about its injuries.  I mean, the car had

just let me down.  I guess I now expected the same of my body.



Glass everywhere.  The traffic light hadnât hit the front end, but

had dragged brutally along the side.  The back wheel was up at an

odd angle, like a dog hiking its leg on the traffic island.  I guess

the combination of the glancing blow from the pole and the immovability

of the traffic island are what stopped me.  The road was sprinkled

with chips of blue confetti -- that was my paint job -- and twinkles of cubed glass.  



My first really coherent thought was inappropriate and illogical.

 I had just been through a near-death experience, and not only was

I unscathed but I hadnât touched a single one of the other cars.

And what did I think?  "Dammit!  Iâm gonna have to get a new CAR!"

 

And what did I feel?  Damned sheepish.



Of the things that DIDNâT go through my head, but rightfully should have:

The driverâs side mirror.  It mysteriously materialized on the passengerâs

seat, without passing through me.  And lying on the street, 15 feet

from the traffic pole, was a slice of the press-button-to-cross sign

(It instructs you in two languages to "Druk knoppie," and to "Press

button").  It was a quarter-inch thick, a slab of heavy metal, and

it had snapped in half as cleanly as a mouthful of a Hershey bar.

That also should have gone through my head, since my head was so near it when I broke it off.  



I picked it off the road.  Itâs a triangular portion of the Afrikaans-language

bottom of the sign.  "Stap Vinnig Oor," it says.  "Walk Quickly Over."



No brakes.  And I was unscathed.  It only happens in the movies, or in my life.



You donât live through something like that and shrug it off.  I was

a trembling wreck standing in the middle of the intersection.  Someone

offered me water, and an older couple generously offered to take

me home after the tow trucks came.  Two people phoned for those,

which caused an ugly altercation between towing factions when they

arrived within minutes of each other.  They had to put the car on a flatbad.



I wanted to stay at the scene forever.  It was like a shrine.  But

there was no need, so the older couple (cherishably named Edwin and

Pat Valentine, from Wilderness, up the coast) brought me to their

daughter-in-lawâs, or son-in-lawâs, or someplace like that.  Itâs

all a blur.  I do know that there was a family there, with children

and little toy dogs.  I had just been in a brakeless car, and now

I was clutching a glass of tap water and telling my tale to a semi-circle

of concerned suburbanites and their platter-eyed kids.  Near the

end of my story, one of them got a spanking for throwing something valuable into the pool.



Chiefly, something like this makes you examine yourself.  Gratitude

is guilt's sexy sister; it implies you got what you donât deserve.

 Why would God protect me like that?  Maybe the big blue egg sensation

wasnât wrong; I was in a death trap and nobody died.  Nobody got

hurt.  The loss was purely financial.  Big deal.



I have this image of someone or something else borrowing my body

to steer me through those final crucial seconds of driving. I imagine

invisible but impenetrable force fields rising from the ground around

me and sliding back into the earth as I passed.



It could have -- SHOULD have -- happened in any other way: Traffic

could have slammed me in the other street.  Someone could have appeared

in my way.  I could have had a head-on with the pole.  Or worse ö

this could have happened a mile down the road, where circumstances

for my survival would not have been so favorable.  Worse, someone

else could have been, including Annabel.  Anything could have happened.

Instead, everyone walked away laughing.



Anyway.  I came home to an empty apartment.  Death, loss, near misses,

shock· it all slowly accrued in my mind.  I felt the loneliest Iâve

felt let during this trip.  There was no one to talk to, no one to

share it with.  I phoned a few of my Cape Town friends and got machines.

I paced the living room.



It was the first time returning home crossed my mind.



But Iâm not going to.  "Stap Vinnig Oor."  Walk quickly over.  Keep

going.  Donât laze about, Jason, because things can end before they

begin.  And youâve got something worth saving.  Act like it.



The only time I broke into tears was when, after taking a shower

to wash the glass out of my ears, I huddled on the couch and realized

I had been so protected. I couldnât imagine why. It made me feel

special, like a superhero or a future world leader. Everyoneâs mother

tells them theyâre going to grow up to be something.  But my luck

makes me believe itâs true.  Iâve been so lucky all my life.  Iâve

usually gotten everything I wanted, and then some.  My jobs, my education

ö even this trip is such a gift that it requires a lifetime of gratitude.  Now this.



After Iâve sent out these Dispatches, Iâve sometimes gotten notes

from people telling me how much they enjoy them, and how I am destined

to do great things, and to write memorable things.  Up to now, I

havenât been doing it.  I havenât been using my talents as much as

I could, or should.  On Saturday, I was shielded from a hundred kinds

of death and destruction.  Why?  Iâm not going to develop a Messiah

Complex·but what does this tell me about my value?  That I should be so cared for?



Eventually, Deon came home with his father and I told them.  Then

my friend Mark took me out and liquored me up.  It was good.  Iâve

never been able to say, "I need a drink" and really mean it.  I really DID need one.  Badly.



A car with no brakes, hurtling down a hill toward traffic!  Iâve

never heard a story like that before!  Probably because so few people live through it.



Stap vinnig oor.  A strange new watchcry.  And a great new paperweight.







++++



Before this happened, I was going to make this e-mail all about South

Africa and my life here.  That will have to wait until next time.

 If anyone has any questions about SA, nowâs the time to ask them.



Also, do you do IRC?  (Thatâs Internet Relay Chat to the uninitiated.)

 If you do, we can chat on the computer FOR FREE.  I have an account

at the local internet café, which is open for 16 hours every day!

 The server I usually use is ZAnet, and my nickname is either Nemo

or Dhar.  Send me an e-mail ASAP to tell me what time to meet you

on the server!  (Remember weâre six hours ahead of New York and two ahead of London.)  



If youâre not on IRC yet, get on it!  Download MIRC for your PC or

Ircle for your Mac.  Yahoo will help you find where, and itâs free.

 Itâs not only a great way to talk for free with your globe-trotting

friends, but itâs also a great way to meet cool people from around

the world.  How do you think I made half my friends here in South

Africa?  (And, no, itâs not all about sex.  Thatâs just the Americans.)  



I also have a phone number, as some of you know.  Itâs +27 82 746

0603.  Naturally, IRC is free.



Staring down the untaken road,

Jason



Day: 158.



---

Right now I'm in:  Cape Town, South Africa