One year later

Retrospectives and Resolutions

This seems like a good time to make another blog post, especially as I have more pressing things to do, and doing the least important things first appears to be my modus operandus…

One year ago today David and I were in the Franco-Vietnamese hospital, in Saigon, feeling both exhilarated to be alive and rather stunned to be so broken. The days went by quickly, in spite of the fact that we had nothing to “do”. While I spent much of my time on Google chat or watching cable TV, David spent hours every day – or so I thought – smoking in a fog out on the hospital terrace. It turns out he was wildly calling all his friends and family on his cell phone, trying desperately to make the connections in his brain work again, and in the process running up a phenomenal phone bill.

As I was sorting through my medical papers this morning in a last-ditch effort to get myself organized enough to get some of the last expenses reimbursed, I came across a paper I’d scribbled on in the hospital a few days after the accident. I shall let the following image serve as an introduction:

I did have my computer set up by then, so I can only begin to guess why I actually had a pen and paper on hand… perhaps the morphine was making me feel more creative, who knows?

It’s interesting that I was worried about both of our minds – David’s because he had incurred trauma and mine because I was flying high on drugs (and kind of enjoying it.)

Anyway, this paper had lots of “in-the-moment” things on it, and I had to smile at my desire to put inconsequential things down for posterity, even at that point…

Some tidbits:

Tues., March 17

Speaking to the French Consul on the phone from the hospital – Suddenly a blip in the line, the Consul doesn’t blink an eye (I don’t think, I couldn’t see him) and he says “Apparemment un petit oiseau vient de se poser sur la ligne.”

“

Tues. Mar. 17

David accidentally broke the cord on the vertical blinds in the room, and I said I wouldn’t tell on him. Later, when I couldn’t reach the cord to switch off the reading light over my head, we BOTH thought it would be a great idea for him to cut the broken cord off the blinds to make “rallonges” for our reading-light pulls.

This morning the nurses quietly put in a work order to have the blinds repaired… I apologized for us both, saying we were not normal in the head. Accident, you know.

… But now we have nice, long pull-strings on our reading lights!

Wed. 18

Call from Annie McElroy

On these same sheets are assorted scribbled notes to myself, call Srey Aun to find and send me my credit card, find my Carte Vitale, the phone numbers and email addresses of various people to contact – Consuls, friends of friends (Ilona being the one who brought me the most immediate comfort, as she gave me her own power cord for my Macintosh – mine had somehow been lost…), Vietnamese doctors, nurses…

Among those same papers were other, more disturbing items:

A hand-written list in Khmer of all the possessions David and I had on us when we were scraped off the side of the road…

Bills from the Cambodian clinics for outrageously expensive and largely incompetent care. Bayon Clinic in Sihanoukville: “Drops, stitches and cleans, injection, X-ray : $350.” For 350 dollars in Cambodia, one can pay ALL the teachers in a typical elementary school for three months. And I’m not quite sure what they were actually charging us for – I was told afterward that they simply stitched us up without bothering to clean the wounds first… And they gave David a “good to go home” only hours after the accident… ! X-ray, did you say??

The infamous business card of the hotel David and I were staying in in Sikanoukville, the card which allowed the authorities to get in touch with Val, who had decided to spend the day at the pool.

A set of postcards of Cambodia, bought in spite of the fact that I thought it was unnecessary to do so, as I’d have the time to visit all those places myself in person and take my own photos.

… / …

As I sit here today, in a blind state of panic that the financial walls are finally coming down around my head, I am almost nostalgic for those first days when the only thing at issue was giving my body time and space to heal. At the moment I am deep, deep in debt, and have no work to speak of, no home, a lot of huge questions STILL going around my head, and sometimes it seems to be too much to handle. I’m not depressed any more – that’s an enormous plus. But I still can’t see how all of this is going to work out. I have a pile of urgent matters to deal with, as the French administration refuses to believe that I was actually incapable of working for much of last year, and for the rest of the year DIDN’T work – they are asking me for thousands of euros in “back” charges.

I’m going to sort it out. I realize that my biggest issue is, in fact, dealing with the administration and with financial questions. It’s always been the case, and I am beginning to realize that if I don’t make that situation a non-issue once and for all – by just simply doing what has to be done – I’ll never grow up.

Today I am officially announcing “Face the Music Day.” No more sticking my head in the sand, in the personal or administrative domain. No more being someone who skims along the edges of life, hoping nobody will actually come along and jerk her into the flow.

I’m going to get into the flow, and stay there.

And if I announce it on my blog, I’ll have at least a few people to be accountable to…

It’s also my hope that I’ll begin to write in this blog again, but I have to admit that what I’ve been living since last September seems so uninteresting to me that there is absolutely nothing that I feel will interest anyone else. That’s probably not true; many of my friends think I’m living some romantic existence, here in Paris – and perhaps I am in a way. Perhaps I should stop moaning that life isn’t turning out the way I expected it to, and be grateful to have such a fabulously beautiful city to call my own, and a great community of caring people around me.

For the past few months, I’ve had my iPod touch on me at all times, and whenever waiting for a bus, riding on the bus, waiting for something to happen or for opportunity to knock pleasantly at my door, I have played Scrabble. Yesterday I didn’t play Scrabble while on my way to church for my Wednesday rehearsals. And I suddenly noticed that Paris is magnificent.

Of course, it helps that it’s not freezing cold here at the moment – I’m VERY sensitive to weather, and part of my depression was finding myself back in the Parisian climate after truly enjoying the heat and sun in Asia for so long. But spring will be here soon, and I’ll have at least a few months of respite from my S.A.D.-induced deliriums.

From my eyrie I can hear birds of all kinds chirping from the garden below, as well as the bells of several churches and of the convent next door at all sorts of odd hours of the day, calling the nuns to whatever. The white of the building across from my window is so bright on my poor computer-abused eyes (when I choose to actually look up at the sky) that it’s a constant reminder to get up – get out – get up – get out.

Reminds me of a bilingual joke I made up when I was first learning French: “What’s another word for “Molière”? “Mise en taupe.” Not a great joke, I know, but in a quirky way it reminds me of what I’ve been doing here – running away from the humanity and its demands, burying myself in my hole like a blind mole.

But all that is coming to an end. Concert season is upon us. Papers must be dealt with. Mosaics and websites have been commissioned. Have to get up early for work tomorrow in Argenteuil. Busy times.

One year, time to turn the page. And if I have any strength of will at all, my new pages won’t be just “getting back to normal”, but moving on to another level of competence on this human plane. Finally allowing myself to be a fully-functioning member of this odd place we live in – as much as I wish, rather often, that I didn’t HAVE to be doing this particular journey, would rather just kind of slip up the ether passageway to my next stage of evolution, no homework necessary. … Yes, I know, that’s the POINT. We HAVE to do our homework. And mine is growing up.

OK, then, back to work. Thanks for listening. XOXOX