More on Terminals, and Borders

Suzanne wrote back after reading the last post, with more of a taste of the border.

As the last lines of someone's deatbed poem go -

"Don't ask the blacksmith
the taste of iron
Ask the horse
Who holds the bit in his mouth"

what you don't know is the problems i encountered at heathrow having a
PAL/NTSC/SECAM vcr in my mom's 1960's pan am flight attendant suitcase.

the head of heathrow security called my name on the speaker system
minutes before take-off. i was wearing those thick green eyeglasses
(you know the ones i wore when i had photo-sensitivity) and my hair was
frizzed out and messy from the flight. i must have looked like some
emma goldman-type. when they searched the suitcase, they discovering
the secret of my sloppiness. underwear wrapped around mini-dv tapes,
pieces of mosaic stolen from crumbling parsi mansions in matheran, and
the vcr.

i cried when they interrogated me about the vcr. the security official
called me emotionally unstable. i had no money - the last of it was
spent on that phone call to eric - except a check reimbursing me for my
time in apollo hospital, which i had no way of cashing in london.

at the last minute, he let me on the plane.