Cars, Snakes and Synchronicity
A collection of short stories and essays
By Becky Shafi
Copyright 2011 by Becky Shafi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cars, Snakes and Synchronicity
She had said something funny. I turned to laugh as I entered the intersection. My eyes were off the road for no more than a second, or maybe two. Then I felt him. I guess I saw him before I felt him. It was a tall, black form appearing like a flash in the right side of my vision. Like a ghost or a specter, he came out of nowhere, slamming into my car - soft thud of body meeting hard, impermeable car. Then I sensed, or rather imagined, him falling away from the car, lying in a crumpled, still mound of mangled body parts. My car continued through the intersection. I pulled over to the curb, heart thumping, mind stunned, and all I could think was, “So this is how it feels to kill someone.”
All of this started because of a snake - a snake and a rattle-trap car. I was driving behind this heap of a car watching in amazement as intermittent sparks flew out from behind it. The sparks were generated by the radiator that tapped the pavement in an on-off rhythm as the car bounced along. This mangled and rusted machine piece swung from the bottom of the car like a calcified relic from an ancient rain forest. I was mesmerized by the light of the sparks, rippling in a mini light show from behind it. The sparks fizzed like a slowly dying meteor. This automobile, if you could call it that, was clearly falling apart. At any moment it would stop and a pile of rubble would appear in its place like a rusty car fossil, decaying silently on the highway.
I was going through a phase. I often go through phases, but this particular phase had to do with synchronicity and my becoming more aware of it. I was trying to shift my focus to pay more attention to my external environment and what sort of messages the universe might be sending me. It was during this phase that I saw the snake. I was driving with my daughter. It was an unseasonably hot day. Heat rose from the hood of the car and flashed in my eyes as the sun seared the dry, hard dirt and brittle grasses outside. As we sped down the hill toward home, I suddenly noticed a huge snake. It was black with yellow stripes and I thought it strange that I hadn’t noticed it approaching from the side of the road. It just suddenly appeared in front of the car, in a long squiggly ascent, it stretched from one speeding tire to the other. It was easily four or five feet long, seeming massive. I was surprised by the sight of this snake and was afraid I’d run over it. Though I didn’t hear a thud, I nearly stopped the car to see if I had hurt it. I was stunned, but as with most sudden occurrences, once the moment’s over it’s soon forgotten and I continued home - forgetting all about the snake - and the rattle-trap car.
After several days I began to notice that I continuously followed cars with pieces falling out from underneath them. Some of these cars had dragging pieces. Others had bouncing pieces. Still others were scraping the pavement or rattling down the road. I thought it odd that I would find so many cars that were in this condition driving right in front of me. I started to believe there was something synchronistic about these events. One evening I borrowed my son’s car. The weather was pleasant and the car was an old BMW convertible. I had the top down and had just dropped my friend to her house after the movie we’d just seen. Pretty soon I heard something dragging on the pavement. The night was quiet and I kept hearing a scraping noise. I became convinced that the sound came from under my son’s car. Sure enough, after pulling over and looking under the car, I could see that the muffler had come loose from the engine and was now dragging on the ground. An instant chill seeped into my stomach. The universe was absolutely trying to tell me something.
I’m at my desk. I’m at work, but I’m doodling. I often doodle when I’m on conference calls. I draw small triangles and stars and make patterns out of lines and dots, creating deep and basic designs that speak to the eternal and the fundamental. These ink lines portray bursts from the universe at the moment of creation. They are endless horizons and animal footprints and the innermost parts of flowers. At least that’s what I tell myself. This day I’m drawing triangle shapes that morph into a long line. I’m adding shadows, eyes and a forked tongue. Then I am struck by a sudden and shocking realization. I have drawn a snake. I realize that I’ve been drawing snakes for weeks. I look back in my notebook, finding no less than six snakes that I had doodled. Some were coiled, some straight, some wavy. Snakes. I was sure it was synchronicity. I looked up the symbology of snakes - snakes mean rebirth and transformation. I liked the sound of that.
My son gave me a call to tell me his car was stolen. Actually, it was my car that I had loaned him and now it had been stolen. Just a few months before he had totaled his own car so we gave him one of our old cars to drive. He wasn’t happy with the car, but it was better than no car at all. He really couldn’t really afford car payments and insurance premiums. Now this hand-me-down car had been stolen while he spent the night at his friend’s apartment in downtown San Francisco. He parked between a Toyota Pruis and a Honda Forerunner. Neither of those cars had been taken. They were both still there in the morning with a big gap between them like a missing tooth where our old Honda Accord used to be.
I was in second grade. It was evening, after dinner on a hot, summerish night. My mom took a call and I heard her scream or shriek. I was petrified. Bad things didn’t happen to me on a regular basis as a young child and a shriek meant bad news. It was my grandpa. He’d been hit by a truck and killed while changing lanes on the highway. Maybe the sun was in his eyes and he couldn’t see the truck because of the glare. Since that day, whenever I drive on the highway, I’ve had that image of my grandpa, changing lanes into a huge semi truck, the sun in his eyes as he thought his last thought before the truck took away any chances I’d have to ever spend time with him again.
I’m in the bath contemplating my life. I need to break the spell of cars in my life and banish my fears once and for all. I decide I need to forgive the truck driver who killed my grandfather. I need to say “goodbye” to grandpa, because I never dealt with his death as a child. I imagine my young self hugging the old man, loving him and letting him go. I forgive all the fears that I’ve had since that time and going forward. I forgive the person who stole my son’s car and the boy who ran into me while I was driving.
I realized that my life had been in a state of constant disrepair. I was so far gone that I sometimes thought I was dead, and I often wished I were. I needed to examine my inner life and make repairs. I needed transformation and rebirth, like shedding my old skin to allow a new fresh start. I needed to heal my fears and reassess the direction of my life. After some soul searching, I finally left the job that I hated. I started to write the book I had always wanted to write. I worked on losing weight and began to heal my closest relationships. In short, I began to like myself again. I found that I wasn’t dead inside. I was just dormant through the long winter, waiting for forgiveness to thaw me out and for inner healing to bring the spring so I could begin to bloom.
As I walked back across the street to check on the boy that hit my car, I was astounded to find that there was no crumpled lump of mangled body. There was only a boy standing, trying to repair his bike. I had hit a boy on a bike when he ran a red light and sped into the intersection because he didn’t see me coming. It wasn’t my fault, and he wasn’t dead. He was perfectly fine. In fact, he didn’t have a single cut or bruise on him. All was well. The same was true of my life. I may have appeared to be dead. I may have been in desperate need of repairs. But, once I recognized the need for the
work and began the slow process to rebuild myself, to repair my life and to change my direction, I was eventually healed.
The day after I hugged my grandpa and let him go, we got a call from the police station. They had found the stolen car. It was left at a local park, without a scratch on it.