So was the following fate? felt like it at the time- maybe destiny, maybe both.
“Dear Fred,
Rightly or wrongly I still presume the truck is owned by someone named Fred and he, or I suppose it could be a she, parks on Charlotte Street. I still think that your Black on Prussian skies plus this truck would make a very cool painting.
A couple of years ago I stood on Vendue Street in what some see as my rose colored glasses and you said “I remember you”. Yes, years ago on one Spoleto afternoon in Marion Square I mentioned how much I liked your truck and you looked at me as if I might be quite mad.
“The old Ford,“ I said finding it odd that I would be having to describe your own car to you “Custom paint, sky blue with clouds and FRED painted on the rear panel.”
The juxtaposition of sky colors, the advertisement value and it saying “FRED“- well it hadn’t seemed that great a leap that the Fred truck would be your truck.
You looked at me, again, as if might be quite mad.
“Well have you seen the FRED truck?” I asked wondering if perhaps I had gone and was going mad “Well maybe you’ll see it someday”.
Thanks for Charleston Shutters,
and the map,
Maren Al(fred/ford)”
Though written in yellow I remember and still it strikes me upon seeing the name fred on that cloud covered truck that fred is written in red. Maybe because red is in the name itself? or because the time I first saw the truck’s back panel I experienced it as if it were a neon sign “fred” written where “ford” would normally be, the last syllable of my last name- replaced as it often is by fred or ferd.
“The Alfred file”
I’d received a torn envelope on which a man wrote “The Alfred File” referring to me and upon reading “fred” instead of “ford” a little piece of me was torn apart. But the tearing had just begun as if I myself were a document scheduled for a good shredding.
‘The only face I remembered and he doesn‘t remember my name.’
I had thought that was the bitterest pill possible but it wasn’t and of course there’s how I came to swallowing it, them really.
And now, now there’s only ‘what ifs’ of here and there and how one unrelated thing lead to another unrelated thing and came to be in unlikely proximity.
“What if”- a dangerous pursuit? True-
but what if I had gone back to Kianouche for treatment instead of to Twoie or at the very least not changed course that spring and gone back to Montreal as I had been planning despite my last trip. Or even better what if Nadine had just brought her passport like a sensible person? then what happened with Homeleand Security and Border Control never would have happened and it’s doubtful my return trip to Canada would have been as eventful.
But then of course the next time Nadine and I were together in the states and going on a trip -all of sudden there’s an extra 10 or 100 thousand Euros in her account and she’s on the horn to France trying to get them to figure how the money got there. Maybe - oh I don’t know- but then we went to Atlanta and thus I had to see someone because the Atlanta osteopath had made things worse. I had to see someone soon and Canada- that made me nervous, so to Twoie.
Was still spooked about returning to Canada- or trying to. And without all that I never would have met Twoie much less been treated by her and even more so something as infeasible as being on some NSA watch list wouldn’t have had the sliver of plausible credibility. Well that and nobody would have been messing with my chakras in the first place.
“I’m Persian,” Kianouche had said in 2003? 2004. That had been what he’d asked Nadine to translate to me. Only after the appointment did she tell me that Kianouche, a predominantly French speaking osteopath practicing in Quebec Province, was born in Iran.
Me being American during George W‘s America, it had been Kianouche’s instinct that perhaps it was best I didn’t know about his family being from Iran. Understandable as many Americans in the 911 world saw and see someone of a Muslim country and automatically thought/think “terrorist”. But I am and Nadine had known me to be the strange breed of American who upon being faced with an Iranian born but French trained osteopath, I could only think that in his family’s native country our appointment would have been criminal because he is male and I am female.
It had been Nadine‘s idea “Let’s go to Quebec Province- I want to be somewhere totally French before I am living back in France and we can get you to a French trained osteopath”. That was her gift to me before she returned to France, after her graduation and before her departure. She had been correct because after seeing Kianouche once- for the first time in three years I wasn’t regularly leveled into the kind of pain where you want a gun or for someone to severe your head and neck from your body - not to die just for a temporary break from physical pain.
I had mentioned to two doctors that among all my other issues after a too close encounter with an SUV that “it feels like my tongue doesn’t fit in mouth”, for which I’d received a strange look, a you are strange look. I had surgery of course, physical therapy, cortisone injections but the pain didn’t stop- just kept getting worse; that and my tongue still didn’t feel like it fit in my mouth. Not that I bothered mentioning that anymore. Nor did I have anyone to mention it to once I became an American with a pre-existing condition and no health insurer who would cover anything related to the accident.
After my appointment with Kianouche I said with huge relief “This is first time since the accident my tongue has fit right in my mouth.” He’d adjusted my palette- it had been thrown/knocked out of place. After nearly two hours in Kianouche’s Montreal office I was thrilled and knew I’d be flying back to Montreal for more treatments, even before I knew that for the first time in years I wouldn’t be in any physical pain. Life, having one started to become a possibility. Nadine did that for me, she got me there but she also had gotten us and maybe me flagged at the US Canadian border before we ever entered Canada and visited an Iranian. McGill University recommended him as did the clinique who had a six month waiting list.
We had driven to the border for what was the first time I’d ever left United States. At the Niagara border crossing I had asked Nadine for her passport as the car idled in line.
“I didn’t bring my passport,” Nadine had said “I can get in with just my driver’s license.”
“Ah no that’s a special relationship the US and Canada have, we’re not going to be able to cross.”
“No my parents took us when we were kids from South Carolina, from when we lived there,” she said giving me what I’d come to regard as the Dora-look, for Dora in “Finding Nemo”.
“That’s you,” Nadine had said and we had both laughed because it was true. I was that happy go lucky forgetful fish and I, Dora, her concerns had no weight. I figured the whole trip might be over as Nadine sat assured all would be well but I wondered if my car would be taken apart.
I’d heard something on NPR about that, that border control can on mere suspicion completely disassemble one’s vehicle, not put it back together and then you’re not only without your car but having to pay someone to scoop up all the parts and re-assemble it. Surrounded by cars, there was no turning back.
Nadine and I were of course taken into custody, she being a foreign national attempting to exit the United States without proper documentation, a foreign national who on paper had no job but was depositing four grand a month in cash into a her bank account. I’d been one of the few students in the Theatre Dept. who hadn’t judged Nadine when she took to stripping to make her tuition money. Though I did tell her to save up for therapy. Her attempted illegal border crossing along with a long history of making large untraceable cash deposits -it couldn‘t have looked good.
Tom Ridge and George W. Bush had stared out into the waiting room, photographs only of course. After a few hours border control let Nadine go; they’d threatened deportation but because her student Visa and everything else were in order they didn‘t hold her or fly her straight back to France. She’d been so shaken up, had insisted she’d feel better if she could drive and proceeded to nearly have a head on collision at which point I insisted on driving.
A friend Fedex-ed her passport to New York but we crossed at a different border crossing. Nadine had been afraid to go back through that particular crossing, irrational she knew but they had really shaken her up so we detoured to a very cute and rural Vermont, crossing at a downright quaint border stop. And that couldn’t have looked good either.
The trip went smoothly thereafter, we went to the Magdalene Order’s museum, neat story given what the nuns were sending back Europe, who was resting on them, etc.- well that what priests and deacons raise their eyes from the book to say. So as to emphasize.
Too, we went whale watching where we got a show. The announcer said “This never happens!” Even the crew was excited, a sperm? Whale had followed the boat and kept doing these huge leaps. I think he or she knew and knows applause and have decided they likes it. Probably just as entertaining for them - all these usually quiet creatures making all kinds of curious sounds. Plus the clicking noises, faint but definitely there from the little devices they/we hold in their/our hands. “Maybe they’re trying to communicate,” I could picture a whale wondering, or just hoping humans as a species aren’t as dumb as we must appear.
Nadine and I ended the trip with Montreal and Kianouche, an extremely talented osteopath who happens to be Persian. It was nearly six months after my appointment with him that I had another pain attack, minor comparatively but I figured I needed a tune up. I booked an appointment at the Clinique Camirand Muzzi, just outside Montreal really, in Outremont.
On my return trip back to Canada I took a plane, checking in advance what I’d need to board as I didn’t have a passport and it was over six months off until I would due to a post 911 policy change.
Jennifer dropped me off at the airport for an early morning flight and I had figured I’d be in Montreal in time for lunch but I was delayed at the Charleston airport. I hadn’t been allowed to board my flight and was redirected to a later flight a few hours later if I could “produce the following documents,” one of which being a voter’s registration card (?) which I didn’t have but got in a few hours. Then I flew into Canada waited in line with everyone else and was taken out of line and into an office.
“Why are you attempting to enter Canada?”
The question struck me as being weird and left me feeling a little panicked as my day really wasn’t going as planned and had already been more complicated than it seemed like it should have been. I told the agent I had come for medical treatment, had to explain why I couldn’t get the same care in America. I gave him Kianouche’s information so the appointment could be confirmed, thinking that would clear things up and having only a fleeting thought that Kianoche’s birth place had been Iran.
I was allowed to enter Canada.
While in the Montreal airport I went to the cash machine. I hadn’t bothered with travelers checks or any large amount of money because my bank had said I could access any cash machine in Canada.
I went to the ATM and got some weird message; I can’t remember what it was but I just figured the machine was broken and went to another machine where I’d seen a traveler get money out just fine. And then the same thing happened, same little message- whatever it was, I might have tried another machine but point being I was finding I couldn‘t get cash. Finally I went to currency exchange and found they don’t do debit or credit cards, only cash and I couldn’t get any- at least not at the airport.
My available physical cash had shrunk when I’d had to call a cab from Charleston International airport to deal with the whole additional documentation thing. Jennifer and Jay, my ride to the airport, were at work and school so I’d just paid what I’d needed to pay a Charleston cabbie so I could get on my later flight and not miss my appointment with Kianoche. As I stood at the Canadian exchange I had enough money to get me, hopefully, to the hotel and figured there was just some computer communication problem between the company providing ATM service at the airport and Bank of America. Perhaps those two institutions didn’t work together?
I didn’t have a problem at the hotel, my card cleared fine. Didn’t have a problem grabbing some dinner with it at a little Bistro. I got up the next morning after a good night’s unworried sleep, had breakfast and went out to get some cash so I could pay for a cab ride to and from Kianoche’s office. He’d advised Nadine and I that the subway would be a no-no because of all the jostling, to wait two or three days after treatment before riding the subway, flying or taking a train.
I walked to a bank machine from my hotel, I had plenty of time before my appointment. But the same message, the same thing that had happened at the airport - I couldn’t get cash. I went to three or four different banks and it was all the same. The cashiers had no idea why I couldn’t get cash, they hadn’t heard of any Bank of America and Canadian banking glitches. I had less than a half an hour to get my appointment and no way of knowing if my card, my one card would cease working altogether and I didn‘t have enough Canadian for the cab ride, not even enough for a subway ride to the office.
Some cabbies were lined up and talking near the metro and I told them my plight. One stepped up, drove me to and from Kianoche’s with my verbal assurance he’d be paid but. He said good-bye when he dropped me off at the hotel and had looked as though he didn‘t expect to ever be paid but - ...Nice man and he finally got a really big tip.
When I called Bank of America, I don’t know that I ever got or even asked for an explanation I just told the rep what I knew: “I can’t get cash at any bank, from any ATM”. Between faxes and phone calls it was determined that I could pick money up from a Western Union. That could be arranged. I requested enough to cover my hotel bill and meals if something went further loopy with my card.
That had been my last trip to Canada and Kianouche; admittedly I was afraid to go back. Not really afraid I guess, but nervous because it had been kind of a weird trip.
That’s my what if, one of ‘em.
What if I’d just gotten a passport? What if I’d Nadine for hers before we ever got in that clogging of cars. What if I’d stuck to our border crossing? What if I’d just planned really well and gone back to Canada that May. But I didn’t go back to Canada, I went to Twoie instead, a massage therapist who uses energy work/ chakra balancing in her treatment plans and that’s a whole other story, part of the same story/mess building process. I’m still stunned by how much colluded and came to a single point.
God how one thing leads to and lines up with another in ways you’d just plain never expect. The money in Nadine’s account I’d figured some bank employee was laundering money. Great way to do it: park the money in one account, overnight it because who checks their account at 3am their time on a weekday. All of her previous traffic was probably super predictable while she was in France- that was until she went on vacation to the States. That’s what I figured at the time and still more plausible - well of course - too it could have just been an error. Nothing nefarious about it all.
I am so not a terrorist. Okay once, it could be argued, and I can argue it better than anyone, that for a time I did terrorize a small town Washington. I was way hurt and that led to wicked pissed- a rarity in my emotional landscape. I was an anger inward kind of gal before the TBI . It’s been a difficult learning how to manage that impulse, the lashing out at a target impulse. I just plain hadn‘t had to manage those kinds of instincts before but self hate- I was really good at that. Gifted even.
Fate or Destiny? What I know for sure is that there’s been and is the opportunity to interrupt, change the pattern. One of my prime goals, other then making sure things left unsaid got said was that the pattern didn’t repeat, that the pattern be broken and therefore, maybe just I - maybe he and I -don’t ever run this particular program again, ever.
I work on honesty- not the absence of lying kind but the other kind wherein the here and now and then and there aren’t just a series of edits.
The only other thing I know is that truth is a force unto itself. One can build walls or dams to contain it or canals to try and redirect it but the truth, whatever it is will have its way one way or another. Over time it’s a thing you can count on.
That I know for sure…that and I am so not a terrorist.
4.22.10
Out of nowhere I had just a wave of profound sadness hit me today at around 2:30.
"Where's this coming from," I thought.
Concluded it came from my shoe guy. I'd asked how he was doing- the last time I was there I just made it in before they closed for mourning. His father had died and I walked in just as they were covering the glass, the mirrors.
"Thirty years of working side by side everyday," he said "thirty years".
"I have no idea what that would be like," because I don't - I know, empathy and imagination can only stretch so far.
"It'll be a hard adjustment period," I said "but how lucky/blessed you were- alot kids just want to grow up just wanting to escape -but yours, you got one you'd acrtually want to stand next to thirty years."
I trace that as the point of profound sadness. At first - well too I am in PMS, and too I had personal failure, went somewhere I don't go- though when I do I have spot on timing. Or so it seems. I still like film and the above picture is why.
I posted on the 18th across four sites, essentially the same post. At least here- that post disappeared into a digital abyss. It said what I do and have occassionally wondered over years: Did I die in that crash? Am i in a coma somewhere and this just me hovering in some vanilla sky, finishing what I didn't get to finish in myself?
How would I know? Just like that box -Philosophy 110 or 101 at CofC with professor Tucker before or after her divorce- the question she'd posit to freshman classes "If you had everything you needed would you stay in the box?" And of course the class debated- which was the point.
No, I'd want out of that box. That's what I thought then and its what I/'d say now.
