Almost Carjacked....in Evanston, IL!!!!!

Yeah, you heard me. I spend the past five years in one of the most dangerous cities in the country never getting mugged or even harassed much. I spend a few moments in a really nice area in Evanston, for those of you who don't know is where Nowrthwestern University's beautiful campus is located, and whammo! I had to drop off a friend at someone's house. Since I had a three hour drive ahead of me which would get me home at an ungodly hour, they decided to brew some coffee for me. I decided to turn my engine off since I was running low on gas. My battery's been acting screwy so I turned my lights off, too. I see two stocky rednecks in my rearview mirror crossing the street behind my car. They suddenly notice me in my car with the lights and engine off. They hurry over to the direction of my car. Just as the two of them were about to reach either front door, I immediately turned the ignition on and sped off without even turning on my lights. I reacted none too soon - I figured out what was going on at the very last moment.

It was the culmination of a very strange day for my friend and I. The day revolved around getting profoundly lost in Chicago and getting terrible directions from the locals. This was my third time in Chicago and I couldn't believe how many times I got lost. Going home, I got stuck in the South Side of Chicago - not somewhere you'd want to get lost in at 1AM! I called the only person I could think of who might be able to get me back to Urbana from Chicago. He didn't know so we resorted to Mapquest. Since yahoo maps failed me earlier today, I didn't have much faith in anything at this point. My friend stayed on the phone with me until I got on the way.

On the drive home, many thoughts went through my head. Most notably, I was replaying the whole carjacking scenario over and over again. This brought up the other major fear in my life other than the afore-mentioned fear of sucking. I have a recurring fear of my ability to adequately trust my perception of reality. A major move to another continent along with several traumatic moments in my life reinforced this fear. It manifests itself as innocuously as feeling like the entire world disagrees with me on a certain issue to moments when I doubt some of the most unambiguous observations and experiences. Tonight, for example. I started doubting whether the actual event occur, whether I overreacted, and about how I'll ever know exactly what may or may not have happened. Sometimes, I even end up giving people the benefit of doubt even in instances where I know deep down inside that I'm right. I know that I'm not explaining this well - it's almost 6 in the morning and I still can't fall asleep. This is the reason why some of my favorite films have a surrealist element. Movies like 8 1/2, Being John Malkovich, Un Chien Andalou, and 2001 really speak to me. They make me feel that I am not the only one with this fear, no matter how irrational it may seem. Kevin Bacon's character in Diner asks his friend, "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?" That's how I feel about life a lot and it's not about an abstract pursuit of knowledge thing - it's something more basic than that.