I was in a car accident once

I was in a car accident once in which I didn't sustain any injuries and my car was untouched.  I live about seven easy minutes from my office, and at one point in my tiny commute, I get on the interstate to go up the highway about a mile and a half.  The interchange I use is angled so that the side mirror is not sufficient to see the traffic coming on behind you as you merge onto the highway, and if you literally don't turn your head and look back, you could be in a world of trouble.  

Well, this one morning I take the interchange and am driving fairly fast, as I have done it a thousand times.  I know the turns and the twists, and I know how to look back at the traffic as I start to merge.  

On this morning, I turn my head and see two cars coming towards me traveling at a much faster rate of speed -- the one on the left passing the one on the right.  

Only as I turn my head forward, I see death coming right at me in the form of a big blue van hurling like a projectile from the oncoming lanes in the other direction.  

This van literally has crashed through the median and is racing out of control directly towards the spot where I will be in a second.  It is vividly clear we both will meet at the same point on the highway at the exact same instant, and I know with absolute certainty all the way to the very core of my being I am going to die!  

Except, as I tighten my hands on the wheel and jam my foot on the brakes, I see from my side vision the two speeding cars passing by me, and, then, in front of me, a convergence of the two cars and the blue van.  I witness first-hand the unholy explosion, and, then, watch in shock as the two cars and the van tumble and split apart, throwing wreckage in every direction.  

My car squeals to a stop in amongst all sorts of crumpled pieces of metal and havoc.  I get out and am in a war zone; people are screaming for help and are horribly broken.  Other people from cars behind me and from the oncoming lanes are running up asking if I'm all right and racing on to help the injured.  

I remember thinking, "thank god, thank god, thank god...."   But why am I thanking god when three families have been torn apart and destroyed.  Am I thanking him for letting me live, or am I thanking him for throwing two cars in front of me.  

Why would god do this?  Why would he save me with two other perfectly good families?  

Shouldn't I have been saying, "oh god, oh god, what have you done, why have you done this?..."  

Except god didn't save me and didn't destroy those people.  It was just pointless utterances of an old fool who lived to tell the tale and was an hour late for work. 

****

Families

Lives lived and lost in time.
Who were they and why did they die?
I thought you knew back when I was young,
But it was a lie.  Time passes
So fast.
Details become someone's
generalities and
Subtleties lose their relevance.
Everyone's so confused --
Does anyone know how they lived?
This is useless.
Why did you tell me?
You didn't know and no one
Remembers.

Notes from the Field: Time

Recently I have had problems with birthdays and especially my own.  I spent this one in the skies ostensibly, flying to various cities to visit clients, and, I must admit, my family was not pleased at all as I didn't answer phone calls, return text messages, or communicate by email.  It sounds horrible in writing this down, though that wasn't my intent; I just didn't have anything to say and certainly nothing to celebrate.  

I remember one birthday spent in Costa Rica, and, again, I chose not to call home or acknowledge the day as anything special other than a day I spent alive in a tropical rainforest.  

I like the idea of getting into a car on your birthday and driving with your camera and shooting whatever moves you.  I like the idea of freedom to mourn the passing of time...  to take snap shots of items surrounding the day, pictures for the crypt.  

I decided that it was nice to be flying on a series of planes hither and yon right through my birthday.  At one point I got off a Southwest plane late one afternoon in San Francisco and got back on a Southwest plane the very next morning to Denver, meeting up with the exact same airline crew -- they must have thought I was a security official or someone from the airline, who knows.  In the middle of the flight the stewardess came up to me and said, "How are things with you, Mr. Giles!"  I can only guess at the machinations she went through to learn my name -- certainly she didn't ask me and no one had assigned seats…  

I didn't tell her my traveling on Southwest had nothing to do with her, that she and the crew were only a funny coincidence in my marathon run through time...  

On the plane I was thinking of regrets I have, and the one that kept coming to mind is not hiking the Inca Trail when I was in Cusco, Peru.  I had signed up for it months in advanced and even received official clearance from the Government of Peru, but family pressure resulted in my deciding at the last minute not to add a week to my journey and fly home.  

Now, in looking back at the opportunity I missed and looking ahead at my life, I don't think I will ever get that chance again.  I would have liked to have taken my camera and, walking behind the porters carrying my camping equipment, food stuff, and backpack, shot whatever came to mind, items surrounding the day, pictures for the crypt, all the while climbing to God sitting at the top of the world...  

Did you ever have a premonition on what day you would die, like June 5, or October 23, or February 12?  I always thought I would die on my birthday.  It seemed like a good way to bring a life to a fitting conclusion, like being born at 7:23 AM and dying at 7:22 AM many years later.  At 7:22 AM, I was on a plane flying to Las Vegas and thinking what my last breath would feel like.  My chest expands, air exhaled, and then a nod of the head, a slump of the shoulders, a relaxing of the muscles...  The stewardess coming over… "Mr. Giles, let me turn off your reading light and slow the cold air on your neck.  Unfasten your seat belt, relax your feet, your flight has landed..."

****

The Swami in Encinitas

Just back visiting Houston and San Diego.  Took to the skies Wednesday morning (with a two-hour unscheduled delay in Baltimore) and was home three nights later, right on time. Two days into my speed trip through America sitting in a java joint in Encinitas, CA, I discovered I was missing the key stroke between "d" and "g" on my keyboard.  (What the uck!)  To use my computer, I would need to write without using any words that required this particular letter.  That seemed somewhat mystical!  Well, no wonder, I later learned that Encinitas is home to Swami Paramahansa Yogananda.  His Realization Institute and Temple was just down the street!  

Here I was, now, by chance, sitting so close to the actual temple door, that with a simple knock I could realize the answers to all the questions I never asked!  In truth, though, unless the swami could give me a quick or abbreviated answer, say, a simple yes or no, this would have to wait.  I had no time to seek drawn-out universal truths as I had just arrived in San Diego that morning and now was in Encinitas on a power mission to speak to a prospective client and his spouse about their wealth!  

Talking about time, Encinitas appeared to be a laid-back beach community lost in time!  Clearly, we were going to have problems!  Upon arrival, I grabbed a minute and paid homage to the ocean -- that is until I realized just beyond the water breaking against the beach were about 500 people in black body suits sitting on their boards like penguins polluting the view, waiting on "their wave."  Three guys with balding white hair and beer bellies jammed in wet suits walked by me carrying boards down the beach; they looked like they could be my age -- what the uck, don't these people work?  Behind me I realized I was listening in on an old beach dude talking about the USSR.  Hearing slurred Russian history and eyeing old guys waiting on a Tsunami was too much!  Swami!  

I immediately got back on task and met up with my contacts!  We decided to have lunch in a highly-recommended Peruvian hole-in-the-wall on Main Street.  On the menu’s opening page I read the owner had discovered god on a trip to South America and was compelled in tribute to open his restaurant in Encinitas.  I didn't think we were eating anything special but then realized he never mentioned discovering god's recipes, just god -- bummer!  

Later, my couple gave me a once-around tour of Encinitas and the low-down on the original Swami who arrived in town back in the 1930s and now owns millions in land next to the ocean.  My contacts assured me that the word on the beach was that Swami's Cove was the spot where only the most enlightened chose to ride.  

Secretly, I wondered about the connection between the swami, his exclusive cove, the Peruvian owner neglecting to ask god’s about his recipes, and the penguin-like particles of humanity bobbing out on the ocean like plastic ducks in a shooting gallery.  But I said nothing; I needed my contacts to like me.  So I pressed my plea and said goodbye and soon was back on the road in my rental car roaring down to San Diego and an engagement later that evening with another client and his spouse.  

Perhaps it was easy to put Encinitas in my rear view mirror, knowing that when I woke this morning -- just as spaced as ever, totally broke, and more-than-slightly hung over -- I would have the Encinitas swami still to consider.  The thought occurred to me, I should have slipped a note under his door asking him about the universal truths I had just witnessed.  Was it Encinitas that was so enlightened, the bobbers, or me?  I simply couldn’t tell -- though his advice on reawakening my “ucking” key sure would have been appreciated… 

Winter

It's cancerous!

Snow-like, drifting through our lives.

Silence, long and sad.

Friends emerging, suffering,

Madness, sweeping through their lives.

It's freezing!  Wake up!

Your touch so cold.

Concert at La Selva

It's five AM, and I am writing from the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica.  I am listening to a howler monkey outside in the forest letting everyone know he is awake and hungry.  His bark is long and low and seems to roll across the forest like a shiver of wind.  But, there is no wind.  It is hot and sticky.  Two-shirt-days, another at night.   The last couple of days I have gotten up early and gone hiking with a guide to see the most spectacular birds (even though, personally, I wouldn't know a bird from a bush).  La Selva is an incredible site, with iguanas in the trees, peccaries eating unafraid less than three paces from my feet, a troop of spider monkeys crossing in the canopy overhead.  A little bit of paradise in a tropical rain forest.  Yesterday, I climbed one of three metal towers recently built out in the forest that allowed me for the first time to emerge above the canopy.  It was beautiful with a sea of tree tops as far as the eye could see and three volcanoes hovering in the heat off in the distance.  I thought of how there was so much to describe, but I was speechless.  Today it's off, once again, as the guide is waiting for me at six.  A pre-breakfast concert of motmots, tanagers, toucans, and hundreds of other brilliant birds before a long journey that returns me to the U.S. by week’s end.  Breathe it, smell it, feel it, bask in it... it will be gone that fast.

William, Marcus and Eve

There are these two kids here in Durham County, North Carolina -- two kids literally out of thousands of teenagers in the county.  For example, my daughter went to one of six high schools in Durham, which had a population of over 2,000 students.  This is typical of all of the schools. 

The kids in my daughter’s school range from A to Z in terms of who they are, their interest, and how they live their lives.  One girl, an African American, let's say on the "A" side of the scale, was accepted into Yale, the only student in my daughter's class that went to that illustrious university.  

However, this story concerns two African Americans on the "Z" side of the scale.  In fact, one of them is a drop out from my daughter's school.  He is 17 years old and tired of working menial jobs.  His friend is 19 and in a similar situation.  

They have been in trouble with the law all of their lives and are currently on probation for a number of offensives, including breaking and entering and terrorizing a family with a baseball bat.

Unfortunately, the North Carolina's probation system is overworked, and probation officers have too many cases.  In fact, no one has checked in on these two boys in months.  Not that they are hiding, they simply are sitting on the couch at William's home egging each other on as to how they can make some easy money. 

The younger boy, William, who is the drop out from my daughter's school, has moved up in the world since the bat incident.  He now has a 22 caliber pistol that he bought from a friend several months back, and it is the one possession that he owns in which he is most proud.  

He constantly reminds his other friend Marcus, about something he did two months earlier after getting the gun.  William had broken into an apartment of a Muslim student going to Duke.  After pistol-whipping the boy and taking all the money he had in his possession, about $50, William put a pillow to the student's head along with the barrel of the pistol and, while the student literally pleaded for his life, shot him several times through the pillow killing him instantly.  

No one heard the gun, and it wasn't until several days later that anyone found the body.  The incident barely made the papers and certainly no one knew it was William who had committed the crime.  In fact, the word in the press was that the Muslim student probably had been a drug dealer.  

So William and Marcus agree that this was something they could do together this time.  However Marcus was concerned that he didn’t own a gun.  He suggested that he could steal his stepfather's shotgun and that that might be the additional firepower they would need.  

So they agreed to try it a second time, only this time they would go over to Chapel Hill and find one of those rich Carolina girls...    

So, one early spring night, they drive to the university town about ten miles away and begin the hunt, trying to find the right person, the right place, trying to work up the nerve.  

All night they drive the streets of Chapel Hill getting more and more agitated.  Finally, they spot a small house on a quiet lane and one of the boys thinks it might be a sorority.  They see girls coming in and out of the house and decide that, if they are going to do it, this is the place.  

So, after things settle down, at around 5 AM in the morning, they go to the door and simply walk in.  The house is unlocked.  It turns out no one is home except for one person.  She is pulling an all-nighter working on a paper that has to be handed in that morning.

She thinks she hears something, turns from her computer, and there they are, William and Marcus, with pistol and shotgun in hand, demanding money.  She has no money; she is exhausted and can't believe that this is happening.  

This girl, Eve, is an incredible person.  With blonde hair and good looks, she easily could have been a cheerleader – a Carolina girl through and through.  In fact, she is in her element.  She grew up in Athens, Georgia, the home of the University of Georgia, and is quite used to campuses and life alongside a major university.  

She is at Chapel Hill because she received a Morehead - Cain Scholarship, which is one of those incredibly unique scholarships in which anyone in the world can apply but only a select handful receive.  The Morehead-Cain pays for everything, every year, every summer, every trip abroad, every meal, everything.  

She, in fact, has used her scholarship already to go to an extremely remote area of Ecuador to work with an elderly doctor in a one-room clinic treating the indigenous people of that region.  

Eve, however, was no innocent abroad, and it is clear she understood that she was alone in a remote, rugged part of Ecuador in which horrible things could happen.  She did it though because she truly believed she could make a difference – a trait for which she was famous and that had earned her the scholarship.  

She comes back to Carolina that much stronger and that much more confident in her beliefs and abilities and decides to run for student government president.  

Amazingly, she convinces enough kids, whites, blacks, Hispanics, everyone, that even though she’s a blonde-haired beauty who easily could have been mistaken for a rich, sorority chick, she could represent the students at UNC better than anyone else.  

She wins the election and takes the leadership position on the student government as well as the seat that comes with it as the student representative on the University of North Carolina’s Board of Trustees.  

Well, at 5 AM one night in early spring, all of Eve's dreams and hopes and accomplishments are reduced to a single moment standing by a computer, staring in shock at William and Marcus screaming demands at her.  But Eve gets them to stop shouting and suggests even, when finally they are prepared to listen, that she can find an ATM machine and give them what they want – only, however – if they will let her go.  

They agree and get into Eve's Pathfinder and start driving around Chapel Hill visiting first one ATM machine and then countless others until they have withdrawn more than $1,500 from Eve's checking account.  

Finally she has no more money.  They are back on a side street trying to decide what to do next.  

Eve reminds them that they said she could go free, but William knows they will be free only if she is dead.   Marcus wasn't involved in the Muslim student slaying and now is not so sure he wants to go through with it, especially with her sitting next to them, calming, asking for her life.  

Finally, Eve, with all the power of persuasion that she has accumulated from all of her life experiences, from all of the committee meetings, from countless interviews for the Morehead - Cain, convinces them to let her go.  

She gets out of the car slowly and starts walking down the street.  William watches her walk a few yards but knows clearly what must be done.  He opens his door, aims his pistol, and shoots her in the back.  

He gets out of the car and in point blank range shoots her four more times.  Only Eve's not dead....  

Marcus gets out of the car and cannot believe this.  There is Eve still moving, maybe even begging for her life.  

William has no more bullets in his pistol and yells at Marcus to do something.  Lights are coming on in houses nearby.  Marcus lifts his stepfather's shotgun and aims it at her at point blank range and, with William screaming at him to do it, shoots her, straight on, right there, killing her finally.  

The boys run back to Eve’s Pathfinder and drive to their car and back to Durham and the safety of William's mother's couch. 

 Only, now the community is awake to the horror of what has happened.  A student body president, a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina, a Morehead - Cain Scholar a year returned from saving indigenous lives in remote Ecuador is now dead, riddled with bullets on a sleepy side street where professors and lawyers and good people bring up their children to be like her – in fact, just like Eve was brought up in Athens.  

She is one of their own, one of their best – and she is dead.  

After a couple of days, William thinks he has gotten away with it, once again, but then, with the morning papers, he realizes that this one wasn't as clean as the Duke one.  The papers are showing front page, semi-blurred pictures of the three of them taken from an ATM camera in which Eve is at the wheel, William is beside her and Marcus is in the back.  

The heat is on for anyone knowing who the boys are, and Marcus, in a state of panic, tells his girlfriend what they've done, looking for her help in getting William and him out of town.  

However, it's too late, too many African-Americans in the Durham community recognize the two of them, and within hours they are arrested, and, shortly thereafter, Marcus' girlfriend tells the police everything.  

The hunt is over.  

The combined forces of the Chapel Hill and Durham police have them squarely.  Even the Feds are involved and have them nailed for aggravated kidnapping.  

For William and Marcus, it is over.  

The full weight of justice is upon them.  However, William is a minor and cannot be put to death for either of his crimes; he gets life in prison without parole.  Marcus, an adult at 19, plea bargains and, because Eve was adamantly opposed to the death penalty, also gets life without parole.  

Finally, with a parting gift from Eve, an incredible person who easily could have been mistaken for anyone, it's over.

****