The Karmic In Between
Before I begin and before you develop even more preconceived notions about the subject of this entry, I’ll admit that I don’t really know a thing about “Karma” as defined by those who might be considered experts in the matter. All I know is that there’s definitely a “what comes around goes around” method to the universe, and for lack of a better description I’m going to call it Karma. It’s that unearthly intangible somewhere between Skywalker’s Force and Neo’s Matrix, the thing that supplies us with sometimes opportune and sometimes unexpected poetic justice, retribution, and just deserves. It’s the thing you’ve been waiting for as well as the thing you dread, the miracle and the disaster, and at the heart of it all is that undefinable space between, where you’re not sure if you’re being rewarded or punished, but you know damn well there’s no way you’re being ignored.
The problem with the space between is that unlike the good or the bad, you can never be entirely certain what it is you did to bring on this wave of ambiguous fortune. Just like a huge credit card bill, at some point you can’t tell whether you’re paying for Saturday night’s dinner or that sofa you bought last year. When it comes down to it, you’re just paying. Something like this happened to me over the course of the last two months, although it’s not actually what spurred me to write this entry. Around November of last year I decided, quite suddenly (as all my decisions go) to request an extension to my work assignment and stay in Zurich for another year. My manager verbally approved it, at which point I procrastinated until the week before Christmas to submit my official paperwork for formal approval. To make this short, my procrastination caused some bells to go off and my extension approval was subsequently delayed for two months during which time I languished in the purgatory of not knowing whether I was coming or going, quitting or staying. While the delay wasn’t all my fault, going into the details is irrelevant to this discussion and will only encourage me to start anew my blame distributions, so I’m not going to do that. Instead I’ll just say that I was convinced I was somehow being punished for misdeeds in my past, though I could never be sure what they were. About two weeks ago, the great karmic wheel or whatever it is reversed with a squealing of rubber and not only did my assignment extension suddenly go through, but I found and was offered a new apartment in Zurich after only three days of searching. (If I haven’t before mentioned the Zurich apartment fiasco, remind me and I’ll write another entry on it, as it certainly deserves its own.)
With my wheel of fortune (minus Vanna White) rolling along smoothly now, I was feeling like I’d somehow gotten it together, made amends, taped the wings back on the fly, done whatever was necessary to make those fickle karmic deities happy. This morning I set off on my long train ride to Friedrichshafen, Germany, where I was due to catch a flight home to the U.S. for Frigg’s wedding. I had decided to fly out of Friedrichshafen as a cheaper although less convenient alternative to leaving from Zurich. Somehow, after nearly two hours of perfect train changes and nothing particularly interesting, I managed to miss the stop for the airport. No problem, I reasoned, I had padded my trip a bit and decided to simply get off at the next stop and take the next train going in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, I had efficiently boarded an interregional express train that only makes about three stops between this tiny German airport at the edge of Switzerland and, well, the other side of Germany. I’m not sure if I was halfway to Munich before the train actually stopped. It doesn’t really matter because it’s more like the weather report - they can say it’s 50˚F out but if it feels like 32˚F to me then does it really matter? I was halfway to Munich, or I might as well have been halfway to Munich because either way I was now doomed to miss my flight.
When I got off the train in what was effectively the middle of nowhere Germany, I did feel that old, familiar panic rising up from my gut towards my throat. Interestingly, this panic has nothing to do with the possibility of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, or being stuck where no one could speak English, or being stuck in say, Rome at 3 a.m. after the airport shuttle never arrived to pick me up at my hotel and no public transit was running and there wasn’t a taxi in sight and my flight was leaving in two hours, which actually happened and also did not cause me to panic. The panic was more this fear that I was going to freak out.
For years now, I’ve suffered from this partial but debilitating inability to control basic emotions. Now you might think, but Jess, you seem perfectly fine when you talk to me! Yes, this is probably because I was perfectly fine the last time I spoke to you. This isn’t a constant, unpredictable berserking and raging. It’s more of an overreaction to seemingly mundane setbacks in life, like getting a parking ticket or missing a flight or even screwing up a pass at hockey. Instead of blowing it off, I seemed destined to always take it to heart, bursting into a heaving, sobbing mess or alternatively, stomping and cursing and fuming. And yes, since I freak out about such trivial things you can imagine how I react when something devastating actually occurs, or a series of these smaller things multiply to become one devastating thing.
After discovering that the next train in the other direction wouldn’t get me to the airport in time to make my flight, I spent twenty minutes in the middle of nowhere debating whether I should attempt to find a taxi or take the next train back to the airport to plead my case to the gate agent. Muddled, frantic, and dragging my huge suitcase all around through the snow, I stopped for a minute. Ok, I reasoned, perhaps this bad karma was because of something I did. Or maybe it’s really good karma in disguise. Or maybe it’s a test to see if I deserve better karma. As I stood there with the snow blizzarding all around me, turning my hair to frizz and soaking my luggage, I recognized that I wasn’t actually freaking out. I didn’t even feel a freak out coming on. I actually cynically wondered how long it would last. I calmly dragged my bag back up the steps of the train station and over to the platform where I caught a train back to the airport I’d missed the first time.
Ever skeptical of my ability to manage a situation without making it worse, I stood behind two other people at the Lufthansa ticketing counter, waiting for that intimate hysteria that’s accompanied me into every critical situation since I was a kid to step up and ring the doorbell to my serenity. The customers in front of me walked away and I strode up to the counter with a closed smile, the corner of my mouth twitching downward ever so slightly. l explained the situation. The gate agent told me what Lufthansa had told me over the phone - that my ticket was completely restricted and that I couldn’t even pay a change fee, that there were no more flights out of Friedrichshafen that day that would get me to Frankfurt in time to catch any of the San Francisco flights, and that if I wanted to buy a new ticket to fly out tomorrow it was going to cost €1400+ (on top of the non-refundable $800 I’d already spent on the ticket I wouldn’t be able to use). This is pretty much always the point where if I haven’t freaked out yet, I go absolutely postal. Most people don’t respond very well to this, especially airport personnel, who are not only used to this sort of behavior but no doubt trained in how to deal with it. And usually, they’re trained simply to tell you to go to hell because they aren’t paid enough to listen to someone else’s psychological shortcomings.
I stood calmly and smilingly, and asked what other options might be available. Interestingly, I think that when the gate agent noticed I hadn’t yet flipped after seeing the new price, she decided to search further for me. After nearly twenty minutes, she had printed out three possible new itineraries for me, although none of them could get me into Frankfurt today, and all of them still cost in the €1400 range. My options were staying overnight in Frankfurt or taking the train all the way back home to Zurich only to do it all over again in the morning. She suggested I take the itineraries, look them over, and “think about them” and then come back to the desk when I’d decided to purchase one. It was an odd suggestion, so of course I tried it, and sat for a while staring at all the different ways I would never make it home today and still have to pay nearly $1800 more. Ah damn you Karma, I thought, I did something bad. But what? I sat there for about another fifteen minutes, staring at the deluge of white drowning the airport parking lot.
I was still procrastinating on my decision when the very serious German woman who had printed the itineraries earlier came running around the corner, apparently looking for me. She gave me some instruction in German, then corrected herself and told me to wait for her in English. She then dashed away and came back a minute later, and told me she could put me on almost my original itinerary (except that I’d still have to fly out tomorrow morning since today’s flights were long gone) and I’d only have to pay a €250 change fee. “Oh my gosh, are you kidding?” I looked at her, astonished. “I spoke to the supervisor and told him that due to heavy snow you should be able to change this flight for only the change fee.” An honest to God “Dankeschön” has never fallen so freely from my lips. Who says Germans can’t be sweethearts when they want to? More shocking even than that was the eerie composure I had maintained so easily through the ordeal.
Now, you’d think it had ended there and happily ever after, but if that was all I don’t think I’d really have a case for writing about any of it. After all, who hasn’t experienced some sort of airport mishap, whether self-inflicted or through divine interruption? Or even an airport mishap that spontaneously (or not so spontaneously) resolves itself eventually? I’m actually writing this while sitting in a little square room of a little B&B run by little old German ladies who have little idea what I’m saying whenever I open my mouth. I’m staying here until my flight leaves tomorrow at 6:25 a.m., and the only way I even have a ride back to the airport is that I was able to use my horribly broken German to ask the cab driver to come back for me at 5 a.m. People in little towns in Germany feel sorry for people who speak terrible German, as I found out. So sorry that you have to feel more than a tad embarrassed for yourself and for them as well. I can’t be sure if it was my €1 tip or my pathetic plight (or both) that inspired my cab driver to carry my heavy ass suitcase up three flights of stairs, but he did. He then explained to the old lady running the B&B that I spoke “a little” German and that I was from California. To my wonderment, I understood their entire conversation. To my frustration, I couldn’t figure out how to contribute to that conversation.
My inability to form a complete sentence was irritating at best, but my surprise at mostly understanding what was going on around me overwhelmed my initial vexation. When I asked where I could get something to eat, the two gray-haired ladies bickered on about it between themselves, discussing what places were and weren’t open and which places were only open for coffee and tea. I watched and listened to them, fascinated, as if observing a thrilling tennis match. Finally, after calling a number of places, they realized that none were close enough for me to walk to. You know you’re in the middle of nowhere Germany when you need a car to get somewhere. At this point, I started to lose the gist of the conversation. One of the women put her coat on and picked up her car keys and motioned to me, then told me she was going to take me to a restaurant in her car. Did I mention that I used “Dankeschön” a lot today?
“I have a big auto,” she said in German as she giggled and gestured to her Smartcar. That’s it, that’s joke number three in German that I actually understood and laughed at (although to tell the truth, we laughed at the Swiss guy who told us we weren’t allowed to laugh at the yodeling CDs he was selling, and I’m not really sure he meant that as a joke, so maybe the count is only two). I’ve never been in a Smartcar. They’re amazingly roomy inside, but built like toys - plasticky and unpredictable.
The woman took me on a winding route down the slushy back streets to a restaurant that turned out to be very “geschlossen,” then tried to back out of the deeply bedded parking lot. Her Smartcar started to spin its front tires when she put it in reverse, and I thought for sure I had gotten an old lady and her car stuck in the snow because I wanted a sandwich. The day couldn’t have become more bewildering or absurd. I made a motion that I was going to get out and push the front of the car while she gassed it, but as I reached for the door handle she put her hand on mine and then pointed in a “stay” sort of gesture, the way you’d tell a toddler not to move because you said so. “Uh,” I mumbled, then sat back. I’d almost gotten my sedan stuck in the snow in exactly the same way when I lived in Pennsylvania, and I thought for sure there was no way this old lady knew how to rock herself out of this. All I can say is, don’t underestimate old German women who have been driving in the snow for years. She put the car back in drive and gunned it forward, plowing deeper into the snow drift. I raised my eyebrows but didn’t yet grab for the door handle. She then unceremoniously put the car in reverse after getting stuck in neutral twice, and lead-footed the accelerator while the little car whined in agony and then suddenly and unexpectedly popped out of the rut. Yeah I did. I had to clap. She smiled triumphantly as she turned back onto the main road, once in a while saying, “Oooo” when the car fishtailed.
I recall FlyBoy once saying to me, “I can’t believe the situations you get yourself into.” I suppose it’s telling that his remark came to mind again as I rode in an old lady’s Smartcar in the middle of snowy nowhere Germany. I just wanted to get to California, but karma makes you pay your due, as it were, and maybe it even helps you learn a little something about yourself in the process, my new, rational, sensible self. I still couldn’t believe my emotional heroics. In fact, I feel like I can’t even qualify them as heroics, because the whole thing was so easy. Emotional heroics are where you dig your nails into your forearm to prevent yourself from crying, or grit your teeth so hard they might crack to keep from saying something nasty. You just can’t physically (or mentally) keep something like that going. Having it come naturally to me is something I’ve vividly imagined for ages but could never, prior to this event, make reality. If I was forced to acknowledge any hint of regret at all about this extraordinary awareness, it’s that I wasn’t able to come by it sooner. Exemplary self-control is useful for a lot more than just airline employee charity.
We did eventually find a sandwich shop, in case you were wondering. The best part is that the old lady made me out to be an American Oliver Twist, this poor girl from California who doesn’t speak German and just wants something to eat. This is amazing actually, since I understood everything she was telling the woman behind the deli counter, and she didn’t once tell the woman that I was penniless yet the deli woman still gave me the sandwich for free. To my surprise, the old woman then bid me auf wiedersehen and took off in her Smartcar right after explaining to me that it was less than a 1 km walk back to the B&B. I wanted to scream, “No, take me with you, I’ll only be a minute!” but that was a little too complex for my limited vocabulary, so instead I just waved goodbye, wondering how I wouldn’t be soaked through by the time I got back to the B&B, if I managed to find my way back.
I decided to sit down, eat my sandwich, and ponder it a bit like I did earlier when faced with the prospect of bad and then worse. After ten minutes or so of deliberations, I watched as the deli woman came out from behind the counter and tried to explain to me in the kind of German you use when you’re talking to retarded people and Americans that she was off at 2 p.m. and would drive me back to the B&B if I wanted. How does that go again? Oh baby, dankeschön…
I guess maybe you’re wondering wtf this all has to do with karma. Or maybe you’re just wondering wtf in general. I kind of am too, since I’m still sitting here in this B&B wondering if something good happened, something bad happened, or both. On the one hand, I missed my flight for a pretty dumb reason, and I was literally almost at the airport. I had to pay a change fee. I had to get a hotel. I’m late getting home. On the other hand, I only had to pay a change fee. I had two German women who don’t even know me drive me around town and give me free food. I serendipitously realized that I understand a lot of German when German and not Swiss people are speaking it. I managed to finally write a new blog entry. Most of all, I’m conscious of the fact that somewhere along the line, apparently while I wasn’t even paying attention, insanity stopped coming ’round this place. There’s something about that feeling that points to some pretty good karma.
