I was very nearly killed a few minutes ago. An absolute idiot waited until the traffic light turned green to pull out in front of me and then stop dead blocking two lanes, so the only place I could go to avoid them was into the now-oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. But more on that later.
I am more awake than I have been in ten months. Part of it is having a job that I can be good at again. Part of it is the pain from the sunburn I've gotten hiking all over the city in the course of this week. A big part of it was the glimmer of sudden awareness that death was awaiting me in the upper floors of one building I'd been counting the apartments in. But there were other, smaller intuitions before that. I've learned to feel out a building for whether or not anyone lives there, regardless of outside appearances.
It all came to a head this afternoon, when I went out book-shopping. The latest in the Dresden Files series. A reward for myself for a week's hard work. And afterward, I went to Taco Bell, to get some burrito-y goodness. As I got out of my car and walked into the restaurant, I was AWAKE.
I could smell the grades of gasoline being burned in each passing car. I could taste the emotions of the people around me. I could hear the trees whispering to one another. All my senses returned to me. All that had been ground down by the mental drudgery of my last job.
And so, after reading about fifty pages of the novel and feasting upon the flesh of the unwary, I went out to my car, and just basked for a few minutes in the sensory symphony that I had been deprived of for so very long. This was what it feels like to be a god.
Then I got in my car, and the incalculable jackass tried very hard to get both himself and myself killed. But I was fully awake again. Time slowed down for me. I mentally calculated the motion vectors of every car and bird and bit of trash caught in the breeze. And I knew exactly what to do. I swerved to the right so that I could pull sharply back into my own lane, losing enough speed in the process to stop short enough for the back end of the jackass's car not to swipe my front end once he remembered to start moving again. And, having already sensed the need a couple minutes earlier for my headlights to be on, I had no doubt that every oncoming car on the other side of the road would see me clearly enough to avoid me, even though I had to cross over the double yellow line for this plan to work.
It did. Everyone behind me was far enough back to stop in time, and despite the fact that I'd been driving the speed limit of 45mph at the start of the moment, I came to a complete stop with five inches to spare between the corners of our bumpers, as the jackass swung out into traffic.
Of course, at that point I was stuck behind somebody with a proven ability to come to a sudden stop in the middle of the fucking road.
So I took the first opportunity to pass him on his right, and used my car's superior acceleration to get further and further ahead of him with every successive traffic light, until there were enough cars between us to ensure my safety from the multiple car pile-up this jackass would inevitably cause.
And if not for the fact that my senses had woken up an hour before hand, I would be dead right now.
God, it's good to be... me again.
I am more awake than I have been in ten months. Part of it is having a job that I can be good at again. Part of it is the pain from the sunburn I've gotten hiking all over the city in the course of this week. A big part of it was the glimmer of sudden awareness that death was awaiting me in the upper floors of one building I'd been counting the apartments in. But there were other, smaller intuitions before that. I've learned to feel out a building for whether or not anyone lives there, regardless of outside appearances.
It all came to a head this afternoon, when I went out book-shopping. The latest in the Dresden Files series. A reward for myself for a week's hard work. And afterward, I went to Taco Bell, to get some burrito-y goodness. As I got out of my car and walked into the restaurant, I was AWAKE.
I could smell the grades of gasoline being burned in each passing car. I could taste the emotions of the people around me. I could hear the trees whispering to one another. All my senses returned to me. All that had been ground down by the mental drudgery of my last job.
And so, after reading about fifty pages of the novel and feasting upon the flesh of the unwary, I went out to my car, and just basked for a few minutes in the sensory symphony that I had been deprived of for so very long. This was what it feels like to be a god.
Then I got in my car, and the incalculable jackass tried very hard to get both himself and myself killed. But I was fully awake again. Time slowed down for me. I mentally calculated the motion vectors of every car and bird and bit of trash caught in the breeze. And I knew exactly what to do. I swerved to the right so that I could pull sharply back into my own lane, losing enough speed in the process to stop short enough for the back end of the jackass's car not to swipe my front end once he remembered to start moving again. And, having already sensed the need a couple minutes earlier for my headlights to be on, I had no doubt that every oncoming car on the other side of the road would see me clearly enough to avoid me, even though I had to cross over the double yellow line for this plan to work.
It did. Everyone behind me was far enough back to stop in time, and despite the fact that I'd been driving the speed limit of 45mph at the start of the moment, I came to a complete stop with five inches to spare between the corners of our bumpers, as the jackass swung out into traffic.
Of course, at that point I was stuck behind somebody with a proven ability to come to a sudden stop in the middle of the fucking road.
So I took the first opportunity to pass him on his right, and used my car's superior acceleration to get further and further ahead of him with every successive traffic light, until there were enough cars between us to ensure my safety from the multiple car pile-up this jackass would inevitably cause.
And if not for the fact that my senses had woken up an hour before hand, I would be dead right now.
God, it's good to be... me again.