I don't know if my ear hurts right now from talking on the cell phone so much this evening or from the painful crunching sound of the deer smashing into the car that I haven't really processed yet.
Mondays are just not my days I guess. Each of my past three Mondays have been marked with dangerous experiences. February 11th I drove alone to Southern West Virginia for a lecture at a University. On my way home my car spun out of control. First it started swerving to the left then to the right then to the left then it just hit ice again and
started spinning out of control. I closed my eyes and remembered my dear Lord Govinda. The car got spun 270 degrees and got stuck on the edge of a ten foot embankment. It was a total blizzard. I got out of the car and some one got out of their car running towards me asking if I was ok and said they were calling a wrecker. I was really confused not understanding the term wrecker. It is the Appalachia term for Tow Truck. Not wanting to pay the 50 bucks for a tow I waved down a large truck and asked him to pull me out. With out much hesitation he took out his tow strap and easily pulled me off the embankment. A police officer who was present gave me a panthlet inviting me to his church if I was ever around town again. He said everyone needs Jesus in their life. I asked the man who pulled me out for his contact info so I could send him a thank you card but he stopped half way through writing his address and said, "you know what, just do something nice for someone else some day." I drove the rest of the way to Athens in great anxiety about slipping on the ice again. I made it home safely but in about three times as long as it normally would have.
On February 18 I drove from Athens to Columbus. The weather was great all day long. I stoppped into the Accra African market to buy plantains. palm nut cream and fufu for our African lunch later in the week. I then went to the temple for Darshan where I ended up doing kirtan and speaking for half an hour to a weekly meeting of new devotees about Bhagavad Gita and Lord Nityananda. When I left the temple at 7:30pm four inches of snow had covered everything and it was still snowing. Out of nowhere a blizard hit! I drove over to Mother Kamagiri's home to see the family and have dinner. We talked for about two hours and I had to hit the road. It was horrible! Because the storm hit so late and unexpectedly the snow just packed down and turned to ice. There were no snow plows out. Literally every hundred feet there were cars off the road. We were driving about 20 miles per hour. I had another 70 miles to drive at night, after a huge gluten feast, and in a blizzard. The weather got worse and worse so I pulled over into a shopping center and read for about an hour hoping the storm would stop. It was about 11 pm so I decided to sleep some. I woke up to the sensation in my toes of frost bite. I got back on the road and drove the rest of the way home where i made it in bed by 1:30am.
Today I stayed at New V until all the festivities were over. After the huge paneer subji had entered my body I needed to rest for about two hours. Around 4:30 I packed up the car and jumped in. Chris and Devanada Pandit Prabhus were wishing me off when I started the car and removed the emergency break. It was then that we heard a huge SNAP!I tried to back up but the car would not move an inch. The rear wheels locked up. No mechanics were around so Devananda Pandit Prabhu and I jacked up the car to see what we could find out even though both of us knew nothing about cars. Chris Prabhu chanted next to us for spiritual support. We had to removed each wheel and then bang on the break drums to loosen the brake pads from the drum. We think that the freezing weather kept them locked. Maybe the emergency cable broke too. We now know that I need new break pads. So it worked and I got off to the road. I made it to Athens safely.
When I got to the house one of the high school boys who comes to our program was sleeping in the living room. I woke him up and asked him if everything was ok and if he needed a ride home. His mother called at that time to see if he was ok then we drove home. On our way to his house a deer jumped out on to the road. I was driving about 40 miles per hour. I cringed and slightly swerved. The deer smashed into the side of the car breaking the side view mirror. We stopped to look for the deer. We could not find it anywhere and there was no blood on the car. It was a very loud sound which instantly reminded me of a story a close friend was retelling a month back as he picked me up form the airport in Albany.
He was a bit reserved for some time when we were driving. After about an hour of talking he shared what was on his mind. He told me that just three hours previous he had remembered hitting and killing a woman when he was a teenager. He forgot about the whole incident that morning. After it had happened his father told him to forget all about it because he had taken care of everything. So he did that. He went on with his football playing and high school partying. He went through college, He worked for 20 years, had got married and had two kids. This day while sitting having breakfast with his father in law and wife, his father in law told him a recent headline. A woman took her two daughters out to a highway removed everyones clothes and walked out in front sick. He excused himself from breakfast table and went to another room where he laid on the floor in great pain. He felt like vomiting. He was bewildered why he felt so much pain. All the remembrances of his own experiences entered his memory after so many years. He was driving home one night when a woman jumped out onto the highway. He hit her and she flew into the windshield. He clearly remembers the striking sound of her bones crushing against the windshield. It was present again, the whole experience. The whole traumatizing experience which he was told to forget. That experience didn't disappear it was hidden deep within and some how it was time to come out.
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