Thursday, April 14, 2011

snakes in a truck

I remembered a little bit ago, half an hour maybe, that today is Friday. Friday! What great excitement that is.

Of course, I'd only forgotten for a short while. I knew yesterday was Thursday, and I knew I should start thinking about weekend plans, but somewhere along the line the reality of two days without obligations had slipped my mind.

Oh, sweet bliss.

That has made my day, almost before it's even started. That makes two good days this week. We're on the upward swing.

There are a few snippets, random occurrences that have left me thinking things over.

1. I've been fearful of everything lately. Take for example, leaving my house each day. I worry about the doors being locked. I worry about leaving my most precious, irreplaceable possessions there in case of fire / flood / earthquake (all of which seem not just possible, but probable these days). I worry about heaters being left on, hair straighteners not being switched off (I was the culprit for that one last night), taps dripping into a blocked sink that then overflows and destroys an already destroyed house, the river rising with too much rain and spilling into the property, the ground opening up and sucking down the rest of the foundations, the water not actually being safe to drink, the house being knocked down without our awareness, the world spinning off its axis and imploding.

I know it sounds a little silly, but there was a night I was in Australia and the weather raged outside the car as we drove the dark, twisting roads into the Blue Mountains. The rain lashed against the windscreen harder than the wipers could keep up with, and every half a minute there were flashes of brilliant white lightening in the sky. Half an hour earlier we had learned of the earthquake - only the earthquake, at that stage - in Japan, and for that night, though I smiled and interacted and we ate dinner as if our lives were unaltered, for that night it felt as though the straps on the world had come undone, and the very worst was happening. It seemed that no one, no place, no thing was safe from the forces of nature, and that the most terrible things you could imagine were at our doorstep.

That night, it seemed like nothing was ever going to be right again. And yes, while believing in God and a future greater than this is all well and good, when it comes down to living out a life in these circumstances, it's rough, and sometimes there is little consolation. There is no denying that it is hard, and often scary. The unknowns, the unpredictables seem so much more menacing these days, lurking in the shadows ready to leap out as soon as a back is turned.

That's what February's earthquake felt like. It sounds silly in hindsight, but for that afternoon and the few days that followed, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had let my guard down. I felt that my focus had been distracted by trivial things, I hadn't been keeping things under control and had looked away for a second, for a minute, I'd been thinking about other things and suddenly the earthquake happened. As if it was my fault. I've talked with a few people about this and have been reassured that while it's not entirely a natural reaction, it's not as uncommon or absurd as it seems.

Anyway. I got sidetracked as seems to be the case. In fact, I think I may have used that exact line in last week's post. Instead of all the other points I was going to discuss, most of which have packed up and left my mind, let me leave you with a story of ridiculousness as far as fear goes, so we can all laugh at me:

Yesterday, I had a snake in my truck. No, really.

After my small group finished at 9pm, I quickly walked out to the truck in the dark, opened the door and hopped into the driver's seat as I threw my bag on the passenger seat. Immediately I heard a loud, angry hissing, and I froze on the spot. My heart lurched painfully before I had time for conscious thought, and in a split second I assessed my fight-or-flight response. SNAKE, in the truck, how far away is it, and is it about to lunge at me before I can even see it!?

Before enough time had passed to make a move, rational thought kicked in. I hadn't forgotten I live in a snake-free country. I looked at the passenger seat, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, my hand still on the door handle for a quick exit. The snake was a book, that had slid across a receipt, ruffling the edges to elicit a hiss.

I am a fool. How about you tell me an embarrassing story of your own for solidarity?

1 comment:

  1. The other night I was sitting on the floor with my back to a dark hallway, and fear ran through me when I realized that someone was touching my arm! "Someone" ended up being my other arm.

    ReplyDelete