a glass of glacier, please

8.31.2012

Just after six a weary-eyed Suraksha comes to room six to do homework.  Right.  We finished the toffee and she’s staring at the chocolate raisins.  Twelve hours later she has just eaten three pieces of dark Dutch chocolate that says it is 75% pure on the outside wrapping and the intrepid nine-year old has, in a matter of minutes, become possessively obsessed with eating the remaining 17 disc-shaped pieces, discarding the kit-kats, Cadbury chocolate macadamia bars, and the others with more sugar for the near purity of a mind-altering, palatably organic satisfaction experience. 

Does this happen to other women?  Yes, I saw the movie “Chocolat”.  

At 9am I went down with Suman and met the taxi just as we reached the elementary school.  The driver dropped him off at his boarding school forty minutes later and then took me to immigration where I got another one month visa.  I’m afraid to admit I’m always writing something spurious on these forms, like now, what is my permanent address, Salalah?  Where else for the worldly homeless can I say is my permanent home?

At 3pm we picked up a tourist from the UK at the bus station and up we went to Sarangkot.  I carried the woman’s huge back pack up Moti’s Way and it felt good to sweat and feel the cool air.  Hannah didn’t know we’d be walking up and by the time we’d reached the steps to the view point she declared she was asthmatic.  ‘Well, there are only 84 steps to go.  You’re almost there.’  I didn’t tell her those countable cement steps were uneven, some at femur snapping heights.

The rain pounds everything at 9pm.  The new dining room ceiling is holding steady.  If anything leaks now is the time to catch it. 

While at immigration Ramesh came and I gave him photos and money for the trekking permit.  Right now I’m raring to go in a week’s time.  I don’t know who will be my guide or if I will go alone, either way I need to walk into nature.  I would like to drink from a glacier.  What does glacier water taste like?  Is the water free from the usual minerals you find in the purest bottled waters? 

I would like to see a snow leopard but I think I’ll be going in the wrong direction.  I’d like to wrestle with one and get it’s holy fur in my nose and then have masala chai afterwards.  Thunder booms outside, Tame Impala travels inside.

cement this

8.30.2012

The rain fell heavily through the night and into the morning, bright skies in the west while gray-blue darkness and fog hang over the Annapurnas, patches of blue sky above Pokhara on a cool Thursday. Walking up to the dining room, gasp!, the wall behind Ramus and his wife’s new house collapsed, right into the garden, again thankfully no one was hurt, but what a job to clean up. 

The coincidental woman walks down with her new sister-in-law and quickly glances to where I stand, half covered in mud from pulling stones off flower beds.  I don’t know why she bothers to look this way.  She knows, I  know, the community knows, I was wrong three years ago to have followed another’s well-intentioned but misleading leading.  I was so sure Grandma Ranagan’s spirit had brought me to her feet and nothing could have been more wildly insane than to have assumed one night she’d show up in Al-Ain with an entourage of blind assassins and we’d escape through Pakistan, up into Tibet and to Turpan, where the Caucasoid Shaman’s bones lay and then finally to New York, where the greatest story ever told would shock a world into prayer and fasting and we’d wait for the end together. 

I don’t hope nor expect any union between us.  I think the look she gives is one more of how long is he going to keep showing up.  Well, I’m not here for her and come 2013 she won’t have to worry no more, for I will be gone and will leave this misguided faith of mine to the jungles of Sarangkot. 

Didi is most likely the strongest woman I have ever known.  She shoveled cement onto a bag I held that weighed over a 100lbs, then she harnessed a rope around her forehead while I guided the bag onto her back as she slowly stood up, and then the woman in her early forties climbed a narrow spiral staircase that goes to the tower situated on the roof of the building that includes the kitchen.  I helped her do this three times, and I don’t know how many times she had carried such a weight before I came around. On the roof she mixed the cement with water for the fella who chiseled away to make room for rows of bricks that would give the roof its rail.  Yes, Didi carried up all the bricks too.  She definitely earned an imported cigarette for such unmanly efforts.  

Borough size black clouds drift by; before last night’s rain got intense, white lightening flashed in the dining room under construction like God’s paparazzi, followed by pop-corn crackles and booms.  The two towers have never been hit I am told.  In May of 2009 lightening came close enough you could hear zips and sizzles of electricity and I ran around giving everyone little Virgin Mary pendants expecting all of us would fry wherever we were on that mountain, the bolts would come right into the rooms and under the beds we because we were just too close, too close to God I once thought foolishly.

The rains came and then Suman came and then Baba came, and with the rest of the family and seven workers in the dining room, the children sought refuge in room six, mama follows with a plate garden grown cucumber slices and says everyone is sleeping in room five tonight.  Suman must return tomorrow for a math quiz and he’ll return again.  Baba came out of the fog, sat for a minute to eat a few rotis and some curried squash then went into the darkness of dusk, cut down corn stalks and then carried a huge stack of stalks on his back, back to the homestead where his pregnant buffalo doesn’t do much at all except shit and eat every day.

remember the chickens

8.29.2012

Seven men-boys slept in rooms seven, eight and five, enjoying the free beer and food in order for them to begin work on the ceiling early.  Most of the work now is the wiring for the twenty lights that are far too many for this room.  Ah well, everyone knows what they’re doing I guess.  And that isn’t much.  Everyone’s waiting for something to be finished before the next step, so the men-boys gather in room five and watch tv. 

Below at Prem-Maya’s house her husband Tika prepares one of his prized chickens for slaughter.  It appears the four Chinese travelers who drink whiskey on their roof have ordered dinner.  Tika takes the white chicken by the neck and walks to the back of the house.  He looks up to see me watching, thankfully far enough to watch but not close enough to repel.  He smiles and I give the sign of the cross before he twists the chicken’s head off. 

There is a mix of haze and cloud today.  Another overnight rain I never heard.  I do not know why I am so tired, a nap a few hours after waking up and another long drowsy afternoon drift in and out of consciousness after the second breakfast at 10:30am.  The door lock for room three is jammed again.  I offered Laxman to pay for new locks.  Meanwhile the men-boy went up earlier to continue with the ceiling. 

Maya’s brother returns home today.  I wonder if he tired of being sent to my room.   ‘No work here, no tourists, my head hurts, my hands no good.  Sleep good. I need to sleep more.’ 

A quick look at jobs.  If I was interested in something, and I wasn’t, I still wouldn’t go now.  September and October are coming.  The trek to the base camps don’t need much planning, and there are only a few things I need to buy such as trail food, tp, socks, warm clothes such as a heavier coat, gloves and ya di da.  On the trek to Muktinah I don’t remember having a heavy coat so maybe it was just the shawls.  I did buy one along the trek.  Gee, I’m not feeling too smart here, it will be pretty cold at the three-mile high level. 

In this month it appears that the male Chinese traveler is more likely to take his shirt off after climbing than anyone else. 

After Nyima, the Tibetan Shaman, performed the puja he left me with four instructions.  One was always be nice to people.  Sounds like the easiest of them but when one is suspicious of one’s intentions when being nice is taken advantage of and quickly like a tiger jumping on its prey we’re on the defensive.  What’s worse is being suspicious of people’s intentions at the beginning.  Forgive me.

Maya came to room six because I didn’t show up for lunch at four because I told her two breakfasts were enough.  At six pm waiting in the garden was a bowl of spicy egg soup and a plate of momos.  And Mana.  He had his own plate with two momos and a splash of chutney.  Pr ogress has been made with the ceiling and today five men here to work on the moving and maintenance of the internet tower eat dal bhat late. 

And with fog and rain closely holding the occupants of this mountain tonite, a brighter moon lurks and radiates light through a darkest pass. 

 

 

up the ceiling

8.28.2012

5:50am. The family from Krakow is up and ready to go.  The morning sky promises easy travel.  Suraksha and Mana appear, looking for free chocolate before breakfast.  What to do.  I think I’ll put the kibosh to Turkey.  God bless you Emine and Sener, but I’ve got a glacier to visit. 

Washed the clothes by hand, hung them to dry, clouds and fog and steady winds.  The Polish lawyer with four children asked me who would win in November and I said Obama in a landslide, place your bets now, the gates are open.  She was somewhat surprised that I was so confident and there are many reasons for this, but only shared one. 

I did not sleep well last night, too many trips to the loo and now the chillim is not helping me stay awake.  Heavy rain around 3am broke the 24 hour drought. 

The almost full moon is bright enough to read Uris.  The men-boys did a day’s work on the ceiling, fastening a lot of tin that will hold heavy plasterboard.  Meanwhile the neighbors and Bishnu, the very dark skinned Christian Nepali, showed up to make a do with repairing the gaps on the roof between the dining room and kitchen. 

 

And in the process of putting this ceiling up Laxman needed to remove wires that would cut off the internet for a few hours.  Last year I used Laxman’s pc once a day when it was available.  What did I do with the rest of the day?  Now I’m hopelessly addicted to the darn thing.  Sleeping, eating, reading sometimes, there is work to do, outside stuff, but there’s no rush to anything and our expectations of what we want to do with me is different from last year, where I worked my ass off.  I want to be a freelancer before I run out of money, which incidentally, needs to keep me going for another four months. 

This chillum and a bad night’s sleep are kicking my butt at 8:45.  Should I go up?  For three weeks a mouse has lived in the back of the fridge.  Today he let me see him.  He senses I can live with it in this room if it doesn’t eat any of my food or clothes.  A second ago it squeaked like it was not happy about something.  Steps coming closer…dinner at nine.

 

happy seventeen HJO

8.27.2012

It is impossible to forget someone’s birthday when you use the date and time and location everyday in various passwords and usernames.  So, today, somewhere on the west coast a teenager I know not will become seventeen. 

An overcast morning, calm, the birds sing happily, the Dutch boys in room five were up at six, like I was, all the windows for rooms five to one are open.  Only my windows are closed for while the cool air is perfect for sleeping the quarter-kilo mosquitoes are not good for sleeping. 

Work begins on the dining room ceiling.  The rain holds off, a good thing with all the chairs and tables outside.  There are definite benefits to having a considerably extended family nearby, two men have been here since yesterday helping in the kitchen and this morning both of them showed up at room six requesting my presence in the dining room.  Illness, injury, mental cognitive restraint and just damn ol plain poverty leave people of such young ages here in such run-down states, and that is where the institution of the family takes its positive or negative approach, how do you help a man whose uncle is his brother’s sister’s mother. 

You make him carry water, cut onions, make momo skins, a meal will be given.  And if there is work we can help, no work, well…then off ye be going to other family members not far away at all.

Kave is 36 years old, has a boy of six, he’s been a guide for twenty years, knows the Annapurna Base Camp trek well and he has a health issue, gallstones, he measures with a red crayon how big they were, take your medicine. 

Ramuz has been out of work for some time and there’s a desperation about him that makes me restrain.  I was chided once before for offering him a small glass of beer, so while I respect the order of this swathy family tree you never really know when you’ll show deference to the wrong person.

And for what it is worth, around noon the electricity went out and remained out for four more hours so work in the dining room never started.  So, a wasted day, no rain no power no work.  Ke garne, what to do.  At dusk heavy fog rolled in and Sarangkot remained inside the cloud until nine pm and yet the three quarter moon showed itself defiantly.
 

The Polish family will be greatly missed by the family.  Easy going, nothing bothered them, like no window in the room three toilet or the bottle of Nepali wine that should not be allowed to be called wine.  Not a complaint.  Those are good tourists.  Tomorrow they wake up at 5am, breakfast follows and then down the hill at six for a taxi to the bus station.  Places are always strangely quiet once children leave.  A bittersweet moment always.  

no rain sunday

8.26.2012

The sun is out bright and strong as are the mountains.  Seven or eight days of serious rain but last night all was calm.  The restaurant has plenty of folks coming in, guides bring their tourist for an omelet and coffee.  The Polish family comes up, here for four days, food for six in the first three amounted to around a hundred bucks.  Yerrik and his wife invited me for a couple of beers and instant coffee yesterday, Yerrick has that look that is identical to Frank’s; clear blue with an edge. 

By the end of this week I will need to renew my visa, and then next week decide on a trek to the Anapurna Base Camp or Turkey.  What?  Are you serious?  Really the most annoying obstacle is having no clothes to attend any social function.  Can I rent a suit? 

I’d like to think that a climb up Sarangkot is more difficult than doing the same distance over three or four hours.  I don’t believe any part of the trek to Machupuchere is as steep as what we got right here.  I am surprised I am not sore at all this morning.  My calves were getting burned, but thankfully nothing that disabled me, like the knee going down, except of course for Friday’s late afternoon excursion.  No problems there for the first time.  So are we as ready as we’ll ever be?  Glaciers, a walk around a Fish tail. 

The Sarangi instrument is a haunting violin with an echo.  It’s also very settling, I listen closer to this sound for it feels it contains spiritual intonations like the didgeridoo produces where ripples and waves reach into other dimensions and bring back an experience of some natural synchronicity… perhaps.

I was asked to do something about the mangled bricks along the wall that fell two weeks ago on top of them along with a dozen plants and flowers.  But we hesitate, a hot sun, nice breezes, an hour or two should be more cover.  But what to do for two-three hours except admire a chillum and hope for the best.  Yerrick took his 18 year old daughter with him down the mountain.  Good luck to them.  Mother, whose name I can’t recall, remains behind with the three, to read, to sleep under the shade of a banana tree, to keep the kids entertained while it is hot.  A tall European man and his two sons wearing Yankees hats check into room five.  I can’t cough quietly, so I shan’t cough.  The large black spider in my hat is now on the wall.  The mice were in my sweaty clothes that lay on the floor next to the welcome mat.  Serves them right.  Last night Laxman paid a visit and a bat followed him into the room and then into the bathroom where they played around, dirtying my nice clean floor, before he opened the door and the bat made its way out without injury. 

And now that the bricks are all lined up as straight as a curving left-hander is able, it’s a hot shower.  The men, I hesitate to say even young men because the leap from teenager to adult feels younger than 16 here, are carrying up heavy sheets of posterboard into the dining.  A serious makeover but I have doubts, how is this sealing up all the leaks?

At sunset yesterday, Suraksha and I went to the view top.  She stopped in each of the temples, left flowers in each, came out with a self-administered tiki, but before we left stopped at the ticket booth and she gave herself a yellow tiki and then she gave me a vertical stripe on the forehead and then threw a five rupee note into the locked temple located in the cellar of the new one being built that won’t finish before the end of the year. 

And to end the day, standing on the terrace, a little closer to the router, last thoughts are no thoughts are good thoughts.  It is hard to think of things to say when it feels like I write to no one in particular.  While on the other hand to write about experience is to write about what each desires and it is interesting to write about, even if no one reads it.  Today I desired a moment of sleep this afternoon.  Nothing else no one else. 

Ah, that’s not exactly what I was thinking. 

pokhara for the day

Three years ago a walk up Sarangkot took 75 minutes. I was in decent shape.  Yesterday it took two hours.  An extra 10-15 kilos wrapped around my waist will do that. 

 

And in Pokhara as a rule I never stay in the same place.  The Sampada Inn, might change my mind.  Renovated three years ago, it's clean and smart, and for $20 plus breakfast, even without a tv or much hot water, it's surroundings made up for that.

 

 

 

 

kernals of rain

8.23.2012

Last night Mana sat on my lap and we watched the Rabbit of Seville on youtube.  He didn’t laugh at all.

A changing morning, Lamjung and his companions make a brief albeit spectacular appearance before clouds and fog sweep in.  The sun peaks out brilliant heat then flees. 

 

Yesterday’s forecast at the Annapurna Base Camp had temps in the mid thirties with heavy rain every day for the rest of the week.  How much is that going to change in two weeks, maybe three?  I can wait, I guess until mid September.  Parchese mountain intrigues.  It’s not far, two days to reach.  Dark fog always feels ominous, as if it can physically take and shake you of all your mental belongings. 

Laxman is out, Suraksha is at school, Didi and Maya cleaned my room, god forbid anyone see a bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned in three weeks.  Why let it go?  Well, I don’t know.  Because I’d have to clean it every day to keep it as wonderfully clean as it is now? 

So, I sat in the reception room, A few Good Men is on again.  I watched it three times in Salalah.  Ok, Maya calls me away, pani pani, the rain picks up.  It is such a bright fog that hurts and itches the eyes.  And I am quite thankful there has been no serious issues with the intacs.  In the corneas now for seven years.  One supposes they have adjusted to the age of my eyes and thus far the results are what they were when Dr. Grim implanted them. 

Rain on mountain tin amplifies gradually.  I can still hear WGBH Classical, I turn my volume up, nature turns hers up.  Who can’t be creative in a foggy thick thunderstorm accompanied by fading French horns?

Ah, a mug of Maya’s world famous masala chai with buffalo milk. 

So, what’s on your mind?  I stood and leaned on the reception door frame looking at tourists going down, smoking a cigarette, unshaved for a week, no shower in three days, wrinkled, and I knew that click was aimed at me and three Japanese travelers sitting in the dining room holding big cameras looked at me then at each other and then at me and I said it was ok.  I didn’t tell them to remove my belly in Photoshop please.  Cute adult-kids these Japanese travelers were in bright shiny new outdoor clothes.

Rain good.  On a mountain the only danger are landslides.  The foundation here is solid.  I picked 10 ears of corn from the patch under my room.  Mice and birds eat too well, Maya removes the kernals for a fried or boiled snack.  We sit and chat.  In a very small community it is close to impossible to not talk and not know what is going on with everyone.  It is a form of self-policing gossip I suppose.

A family of seven Poles come in from the fog, five children aged 15 to 4, ordering cokes, water and an $11 bottle of wine someone has to rush down to Shiva’s a buy a bottle.  Yes, this is good.  Oh, I see, Maya comes up, a bottle in each hand.  I hope it’s not Nepali wine. 

crying uncle

8.22.2012

It’s always good to get off the mountain when trouble brews.  Where to go.  The city, another city.  Long walks have three options and from there?  Another hotel for a night?  A change of pace, it’s ridiculous, how often I need a change of pace.  Last night’s overwhelming display of frustration led to the family having breakfast together.  I was given my breakfast outside.  I’m sure my influence with regards to eating when I am hungry and not when the family eats may have contributed to this ‘what is my role here in this family, we don’t eat together, we’re not eating our food…’ ya da, I speculate. 

In any case, not staying busy leads to the itches.  Less than two weeks from a planned trek up to Annapurna.  Am I in worse shape today than I was when I trekked to Muktinah?  Well, I didn’t smoke cheroot then…the sun makes a breach…

I think it’s time to give facebook a cleaning.  What’s a cleaning?  The disconnecting with those I never hear from and those who ignore my questions.  The former is understandable but the latter, are we required to answer everything you say, no matter how bizarre it may come across?  That bizarre interpretation is speculative because unless people respond I can only imagine and we are left to think that silence is a show of disapproval. 

I hate the silent treatment and I am no stranger to doing it myself.  FB silence isn’t as bad since distance and dimension loss leave much to understand on the other side.  Nevertheless, I know I am the crazy uncle. 

I think stepping down from FB for a while, until a return from the trek, would be good.  A three week leave concentrating on this blog will be good.  Photos uploaded here are faster anyway. 

There was so much hope three years ago.  It is hard to admit but I thought I had the greatest story ever told in history and all the riches and acclaim that came with that wasn’t just a fantasy, an element of doubt remained, and does to this day.  To become wealthy with a story that may not be true sounds like a worst deceit, but I considered how I would be rich from it, it feels awfully selfish and unnecessary since you live alone.  ‘Yes, Lisa, I did find that island with my name on it, and it is available…’ If I were a rich man, singing it every where.   Getting rich with a story about the end of the world just isn’t right.  The affluent shaman maybe…maybe he had an idea but it wasn’t right. Wealth, a princess of 8, a movie, a book, all dreams. 

I wish coincidences were just simple dreams.  But they bloody aren’t. 

I want to be wrong, I don’t want to be wrong.  I speculate what could happen if the world doesn’t end as we know it.  To go on as if nothing happened, to accept the delusions and illusions and a wild imagination just totals to nothing more than a terrible case of cognitive dissonance.

I don’t believe that either.  But it could be true.  I will be happy to not write like this anymore.

A half dollar size spider was sleeping in my hat when I put it on, and I didn’t know it was escaping until I felt it on my leg.  I’m getting steam up for a circuitous walk to Moti’s for coffee.  Take the camera.  No Facebook photos.  Do you punish yourself or others when you make such decisions?  I think myself.  FB goes too fast and people forget quickly.  Sharing is nice, saying stupid things isn’t and it’s just time to shut up.  So, photos are ok?  I don’t know.  I think abstaining from any contact for a while is good.  Reading of others what goings ons is ok?  That’s what leaves you saying regrettable and hastily thought out things.

I think if I could do at least six or seven walks in the circuit every day I should be ready for Annapurna Base Camp.  I stopped at Moti’s Panoramic View Guesthouse, located at the end of the railed-steps with stunning vistas of Pewa Tal and the valley and Dan and his son were there.  It would take an entire blog to explain Dan’s story and his project up here but needless to say we talked and he supported the 12.21.12 party on the mountain, Moti refrained from offering a hasty opinion. 

Time for soup.  A leech on the top of my foot left a gnarly pool of blood that dripped onto my other foot.  Yuck and cool, my first leech. 

A group of Japanese travelers have checked into two rooms, with pink cameras come cute girls old enough to vote.  Suraksha in her painted face charms the ladies.  Their male counterweight looks shyly on.  Three masala chais a plain lassi and a banana lassi I was fortunate to have received a small glass of, was good enough to persuade them, if the food holds down, let’s enjoy a nice room to go with it.  And the views. 

And the old man in room six wrapped in a shawl that probably only women wear, will remain out of your shadows.

The painted face girl enjoys the Hersheys Dark Chocolate Bar, dividing up the last of the rectangular pieces’ ‘ok, six pieces, two for you, two for me, one for daddy, one for mommy. ‘  “daddy doesn’t like sweets”  ‘ and mommy can’t eat this, she no like’… (not exactly true)… ok, three for me three for you’.

Isn’t this what uncles do best? 

 

four months but who's counting?

8.21

Four months today.  I don’t consider the time remaining as a benchmark of any kind.  The date is from one source.  If it were from many sources then of course I’d be all behind the possibility that Earth will experience  an end- begin life-changing something in four months.

Bright heavy fog greets the morning and the rain holds off.  Tabasco with eggs is never as hot as Tabasco on samosas.  I can’t explain the difference.  Green tea and toast and I return to room six.  The Mother Teresa incense is nice, a candle, birds and farmers in the distance on low volume. 

How often do you hope you are wrong?  It doesn’t matter what people think of you and what you write.  Such precognitive wet dreams cannot be accepted on any terms.  And I’m sure it has bothered a few and is that ok?  Well, to bother a few, to wake ‘em up, make ‘em think.  That is the intention. 

But I’m telling you this Job and Jesus and God and St. Francis, I don’t know how I will think of ya’ll again if absolutely bleeping nothing happens.  All those coincidences, what the Bela Fleck were they for?  And raising my consciousness to the spirit world I will have to conclude all illusions, including a spirit world, all contact with souls were delusions of such grandeur produced in my head.  Such deceit is so sorrowful to imagine.  And to think I brought it on by pursuing divinically unexplained phenomena and elbowing into a presumptuous afterlife as a result of entheogens. Shame on me.

So, four months to go.  Life for three weeks on the mountain has been positive.  Last year’s stay was sometimes a challenge, running out of money, being quite indecisive which brought on feelings of depression and apathy.  I wish money didn’t leave me feeling more secure than faith swirling through my hair.  What to do. 

An afternoon shower and a reason to watch ‘Enemy of the State’ and remember Tony Scott.  In three years on the road I have been carrying ten movies, and the HBO John Adam series, on an external hard-drive and I wondered when I copied them on if these would later be considered my top ten favorite movies, outlasting Woody Allen or Master and Commander.  I don’t know which is 1 and which is 10.  Scott’s movie is in the list I guess because of Gene Hackman and a great story. 

A do nothing much day, taking a nap, not going up to eat at the times they eat because I’m not hungry.  A big lunch of dal bhat and spinach curry and a glass of lassi.  The rain has stopped and large mosquitos are attacking…

Anticipation.  How often does that noun help you avoid or meet prepared head on impending crises?  So what’s wrong in believing me even if you know I could never be right and in fact I turn out to be wrong?  The least is you’ll have spent more time on your knees for the rest of the year. Consider it friendly end of the year advice, very free.

I mean really, you’re going to be angry with me because you prayed harder than ever your whole life and look, nothing.  It would be a shame to have prayed for four months and not cleared the attic my friend....

Third walk down

On this third walk down Sarangkot the knee felt much better.  I bought a map of the Annapurna and Machupuchere base camps.  To see glaciers would be a cool thing, sorry, really no pun intended.  A smattering of groceries followed with needs and wants and chocolate, cigarrettes and dehydrated mangos.

 Eucalyptas is a delicious meal for goats and works wonders on corns.

wondrous weekend

8.19.2012

A heavy fog shrouds the mountain top, not even the sun can penetrate this one.  Classes cancelled for all the schools, Laxman says there is something political going on.  So, Suraksha all ready to go changes clothes and is back wearing the tattered red dress she wore yesterday. 

I have a bag of laundry but there is no sun.  To put them on the line I may have to wait a day or two before they are dry.  Another risk is the ‘doosy’ the mold that is carried by the fog, making all susceptible to ruination. 

Plans to trek to Machupuchere base camp are slow, though still on.  I may decide to take a guide simply to allow myself the freedom of not handling logistics.  What cost that may be I do not know, though if I hire Ramesh a negotiable rate will be fair.  And he says he’s done this trek before so I won’t need a map though I’m still looking for one.  Other 1-2 days ventures are possible: a two day trek to Panchese mountain, and a bus to Baglung.  Seventy-two kilometers away it is a three hour bus ride.  Laxman says the attraction there is the city, located in a valley surrounded by very high mountains.  He doesn’t like it because he gets claustrophobic.  There’s nothing holding me back from doing this except...

The precocious nine year old arrives and calls her mother with my phone.  Let’s go and swing.  I don’t want to play, sweetie.  I want to relax, this is a school day even though you have no school.  I’d like to write and think and and…ok, let’s swing.  Dal Bhat is only a few minutes away.  Oh the rain comes, sorry kid. 

JMT responded to my query on his FB page.  There is nothing less complicated than a life of simplicity.  This comes when worry is resolved, where tension has no place, where faith isn’t challenged. 

Simplicity.  Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free.  Who doesn’t wish for a simpler life?  So why complicate things?  Simply accept you are right or you are wrong.  Three years ago I didn’t know how I’d fare waiting this long to know if I am right or wrong.  Only four months and two days to go. 

Ok, a disclaimer; if the Mayan Calendar were the only indicator of an event to occur I’d be greatly skeptical but the experience and other credible predictions together has me leaning towards a 60-70% chance today the consummation of time is hear for real and we won’t see 2013. 

It’s hard to have mental simplicity when one questions everything and nothing rests until it is accepted for what it is.  There is no simplicity when one thinks about the evils of cosmological thought.  So why think about evil and its awful rule in the experiment when it is an inevitability? 

Because the game has gone on long enough and the rules have been bloody unfair.  To those who have the least I will give much.  It’s time to fulfill that promise God-Om.

Suraksha shows up without invitation and starts snapping gum in my ear.  Uncle Uncle, swing.  I promised in an hour and she couldn’t wait.  This is one bored kid or I am just too fun, I don’t know.

I just locked her out.  No, she opened the window. 

Truly, real pure simplicity is having one faith and believing in nothing else even if it is possibly true there are other truths and all truth is God’s truth is true for them as well.  I suppose to believe in this, simplicity comes easy.

All of this is inconsequential when it comes to things of eschatology.

I am sorry so princess.  I don’t want to play, Lord, how can I want two things when I can only have one? Mountain people used to have great patience.  I guess with mother gone she’s a banshee looking to amuse herself.  I don’t mind, but I prefer a moment of solitude every day, something I got none of yesterday.  She’s outside talking to herself trying to stay busy fighting boredom.   And she won’t stop.

“be ready to go, and you will be ready to stay.”

Oh my God.  Can I read this simply?  It’s a paradox.  Is he saying find balance between the two? In the Middle Path there is peace. 

I don’t know.  A puzzle to avoid perplexity.  It’s all about symmetry.  Meanwhile ten minutes on the swing and thankfully one of the ropes wrapped around a pillar broke with me in it and not our friend. 

The fog and spit kept me from going out, undecided, not ready to go, unwilling to stay.  What the blank.    

After hours of stalling, fog from Pame rolls in and up and with it heavy showers.  Laxman never put the garden chairs out today.  You live on a mountain all your life and instincts are in sync with nature.  Caught in the dining room can be a good thing.  New potatoes in oil cooked in a pressurizer and a hard-boiled egg for the afternoon meal.  Suraksha stays happily busy elsewhere, Prema and her husband Tika, who had been overseas for six-seven years until last year, sit below, tea cups in hand, waiting it out.  You do a lot of that during the monsoon season.  Thunder rumbles, rain falls harder, can’t hear others.  A young couple here decide to pay an afternoon fare for room one.  I think I’ll smoke another cigarette

I still feel Talbot’s response was glib. But who am I to question this man?  Not.  So, it is pertinent to ask him another, since I have his holy ear. 

1.      Have people stopped expecting the Lord’s return?

2.     We are to be ready, but how can one be ready if one says whatever, when the messiah returns the messiah returns, just stop telling me the messiah has returned because I won't believe you until this messiah comes with a bag of the supernatural end-times biblical kind of stuff to shower and amaze us into empirical proof.

I ask Laxman if the rain might be coming into the rooms, which are open. He says if these windows (pointing east) are wet, then yes.   A minute later he goes down to close them and I am not making this up, the wind shifts the intense rain and pounds the glass in front of me.  “Good timing, you think?”

3.      Do you think the spirit of a noble and just man who lived on earth before Christ would return as a deceitful spirit?

6:30pm  The rain continues, four men in their fifties arrive, take rooms three and four, ask for asian toilets, and now settle down in the dining room, ready to order.  Poor Laxman, doesn’t feel like cooking.  Here’s a day when you wish they ordered pizza and then you could order out for it. 

8.18.2012

A Saturday morning that for some reason feels like a weekend in the west: a bright foggy tranquility up and down the mountain, and a pot of tea from Laxman, already cooking at 6:30 for nine tourists who stayed last night.  A chance to continue reading Leon Uris’ ‘Trinity’ before Suraksha wakes up in her red dress and wants to play Uno but Daddy needs her to help with breakfast. 

Ed asked me what my plan was for the day.  I have no plans.  I have no routines other than the natural ones;  sleeping, eating, walking, writing, talking, taking photos, visiting and so forth. And of course doing whatever is asked me around the lodge.   I carry no watch or mobile here unless I walk down to Pokhara.  A great burden is removed when it doesn’t matter what time it is. 

Suraksha’s cousin Suson walks in.  I gave him a pair of these finger shakers because he knows how to boogie to any kind of music.  A few hours later he and Suraksha got the cement chalk and made some remarkable work. 

And for the rest of the day I played hide and seek, cards, the swing, and didn’t do any writing.  I wonder if that is what a Saturday is like here.

Friday's Fish

8.17.2012

Fog closes in, thunder rumbles past, a cool breeze and runny nose and it’s almost ten.  Laxman’s father comes by, a stately looking gentleman of a farmer if you’ve seen one.  A bad knee slows him down this year.  Last year he came every other day and cut buffalo grass then carried it back to his home, 20 minutes on foot.  Today is Father’s Day in Nepal and Beem gives Laxman, Maya and myself a big rice tika and a blessing. 

A nice albeit unclear skype chat with an old high school friend, both of us somewhat envying each other’s lot in life, but not too much.   I told Ed we were having a 12/21/12 party and was unable to persuade him he should come to the Himalayas because he would be turning 50 in a few months and what better place will there be when we’re beamed, floated, transported in a big pod, ok, we’re mocking and why the bleep not.    Will we go to heaven with regrets?  I don’t think so.  Fifty.  Why am I so sure I won’t see my own, and really, I don’t want to see it.  Unless I am in New Zealand which is of course the circled country right now, to go to the furthest ends and become someone else.  How will I be able to live with myself if I am wrong and all this shaman spirit crap is bull?  How?  It’s pissing me off.  And I think talking about a 12/21/12 party is a taunt at the cosmos and a joke on us for taking the universe and spirits too seriously.

People will never believe, a wolf has cried too many times, for what proof do I have other than my own experience?  And how different are my prophecies from the girls at Medujorge?  Well for one they aren’t saying the end will occur at the end of the year, and their secrets will no longer be secrets if they wait much longer .

Maya left at noon,  six to seven hours of travel by foot, bus and taxi to family.  What will two men and a nine year old do without the cement of the family inabsentia. 

I told Beem I’d pay a visit.  I think that time is now.  It’s almost three.  It looks pretty hot out there, the sun has no resistance.    An hour later we’re almost there.

Sitting on the porch of Suraksha’s grandparents Ama makes rotis.  I arrived and found her on all fours in the green house sliming  the tomato plants’s stalks with this copper colored paste.  I hope I didn’t take her away from anything pressing. 

On the way I started out by going up the main path to the view top and after the last restaurant men were pouring cement for a new temple gate  like the one at the Kaskikot Temple.  I saw Laxman and sat next to him for a minute.  Along with the two of us were four men from the Sarangkot Tourism Committee.  One of those members was a 78 year old fella whose name escapes me and another man is the old dude with a long white moustache who sits in a booth at the view top at 5 in the morning taking 25rs for tourists and 10rs for locals and who takes my money even though Laxman told him not to take my money since I was a lifetime member of the committee. 

I continued on a path below and left of the temple under construction the mountain toward the newly finished roundhouse and there Machupuchere was looking sharp, the big fish comes up for air. 

After three rotis, a glass of lassi and a tea with buffalo milk and one cheroot I headed back to the guesthouse.   Beem offered the spare room if I wasn’t up for walking back.  Seeing it was still early and I didn’t have my toothbrush or anything else that would help me sleep in a farm house, I was on my way.

7:48. The fog gives way to rain.

The Anatolian Zealot

Two weeks on the mountain.  A hot sun for most of the day.  Yesterday’s rain continued through the night.  Today or tomorrow Maya leaves for her mother’s home.  It is a tradition practiced by all married women in Nepal every year.  Next month the women will celebrate the Teej holiday where they dress in red and dance the day away.  There’s also a tradition here where a wife can publically ridicule her hapless husband. 

I was invited by Laxman’s father to pay a visit to his home.  I look at the clock, I have two rashes in unfriendly places, I felt a little nauseous thirty minutes ago, there’s still a lot of sun out there, though clouds should prevail in a few hours.

Getting saved or becoming enlightened won’t make those gallstones disappear.  Suffering. 

Laxman bought some land and built a road that leads to the rear of the guesthouse.  Now he needs a jeep.  He should name the road after his wife: one suggestion, Maya’s Way. 

In truth getting saved and becoming enlightened are one and the same.  It’s semantics, dude.  On the road to Damascus Paul was seriously enlightened and most likely saved.  If you see the light you’ve experienced both. 

My Christian conversion, though, was anything but enlightening.  Well, it was in a reversed way.  Expecting peals of thunder and choirs of singing angels, there was absence, nothing.  Why did I expect a supernatural kind of saving experience when I got on my knee and asked Jesus in my heart?  Because I was going undercover and I didn’t know it until almost 30 years later. 

That’s right, I was born a Roman Catholic and put on the coat of evangelicalism to see how they worked, how they thought, what they believed and so forth.  When I entered the future through the acceleration of coincidences both their failures and successes were revealed to me.  Big mistakes on either side of the aisle, you’d never in your wildest imagination believe me if I suggested the church fathers in Nicea should have kept all of Paul’s letters separate and put them after the book of Revelation and called them a commentary because these men erred in not recognizing the difference between inspiration and opinion.  John and Peter saw. 

My intention was to never leave the Catholic Church, I just needed something with spiritual tangibility and was always interested in the faiths.  After the divorce it took a real long time to enter a church of any kind.  In hindsight though I was more or less like my father.  Cursing at God?  There is nothing wrong with that.  He was communicating in his most heartfelt way a gilded lace of profanities through the mid-Atlantic humidity, to God.  And God knew it, like Job, like Mother Theresa, it’s ok to shake your fist at God for that doesn’t shake your faith if your faith is on solid ground.  You’re talking and that’s all the Creator can ask for when you’re really p o’d at Him-Om.

Maya came in with a mug of masala chai.  God bless you, ma’am.  

So, should we discuss the curse of the Detroit Lions now?  

By four o’clock the sun is no longer menacing, it is safe to go out now.  And for what it’s worth just as I began to type ‘by four o’clock the sun is no longer menacing’ Dave Mathews sings ‘talk about the weather’.  What a cute coincidence.  Is there really so much to say that hasn’t been already said, Dave?

Paul, the Anatolian zealot.  Let’s ask a question:  Why weren’t any of Paul’s letters sent to Arab believers?  Because there weren’t any then?  Because they were of a different covenant?  If you wish to understand why Islam exists you can start with the Jewish dude from Tarsus. 

And ya know if I were a Jew I’d have more of an issue with Christians because Paul isn’t in their book!  Perhaps Jews before Christianity lived at least harmoniously with the Arab pagans, and were close enough politically, socially, economically they didn’t need their theological differences pointed out, way to go, Saul. 

Time for something to eat.