pearwaldorf | (no subject)

Totally not feeling good. I was all funked out at work, and I took off an hour early, thinking I would be able to work on translating the text I'm going to be quizzed about tomorrow (no, I am not expecting a passing grade in Chinese this term, why do you ask?).

So I'm walking home from the bus, and this pickup truck comes barrelling down the street, a guy driving and this woman in the passenger seat is screaming for help out the window. I mean, she's fucking terrified, and I still hear her screaming when the car is three blocks away. I call 911 when I get home and tell them what I saw, and a policeman magically appears (it was fucking amazing how quick they came) at my door. I tell him as much as I could about the truck, which admittedly, is not much. I couldn't even tell him if it was an Oregon or Washington license plate. I did all I could, but I still can't shake the feeling this woman's not all right.

And it's more than that, really. Every woman walks around knowing, intellectually at least, they're never really safe. It's not easy to think about, and so you just do your mace-in-hand look everywhere walk in bright spots and hope you don't become a statistic thing. And you do it, but don't really think about what it would mean if something really did happen. Until it screams down the street you walk once, twice, three times a day, and you're forced to confront that reality whether you want to or not.

Um. So this post doesn't end on a downer, go find a copy of Neil Gaiman's Adventures in the Dream Trade. It's a delightful collection of miscellanea (introductions, bits of poetry and short stories, the American Gods weblog) from Neil's career as a writer. It's quite lovely.